I'd like to see any supply/demand curve throughout history for anything that has the slope that is implied by these prices, any real commodity.
Did you watch the Senate Committee hearing on speculation on all of this? One of the more interesting things was how JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were heavily invested in these oil futures. There was one bank when had pretty much locked down the entire oil heating market in the North East.
No sooner does demand destruction assert itself via subsidies being cut in Asia, when speculation about the new US peso causes a reverse of course:
Oil prices shot up nearly $7 a barrel Friday... after a Morgan Stanley analyst [Ole Slorer] predicted prices could hit $150 by the Fourth of July....
Friday’s surge [of $6.27 to $134-06] builds on a $5.49 gain Thursday, which was the biggest single-day price increase in the history of the Nymex crude contract....
“Asia is taking an unprecedented share” of Middle East exports to build up stocks, Slorer wrote in his report.
....
The dramatic reversal in what had been a weakening oil market began Thursday after ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet suggested the bank could raise interest rates and the euro climbed against the dollar. ... Many investors tend to buy commodities such as oil as a hedge against inflation when the dollar is falling....
I've highlighted the quote that suggests Asian governments/refiners are hoarding oil in anticipation of price rises (from the ending of subsidies). Remember that hoarding (and breathtaking changes in daily prices) is a symptom of panic, not regular supply and demand.
Which brings up an entirely new aspect of this discussion. Some 60% of H1Bs are granted to outsorucing firms according to Tonelson. In this fashion foreign workers and companies can come here learn as much about US business practice , culutre and intellectual property as possible - go back to india to either open an offshore facility for the sponsoring corp., or go back and start up a competing firm - absolutely insidious. It was never about "attracting the best and brightest" - US workers are the most productive and best educated in the world - yet some 350,000 annual college grads have to compete with H1B workers for the 140,000 give or take job openings - no wonder we have degreed engineers installing cable or fixing copy machines instead of engineering.
As far as the complete lie that outsorucing magically creates jobs - I have asked the supply side global free marketeers on other boards numerous occassions to name some jobs created - they always stammer - change the subject -or attack me personally, have yet to hear exactly what those jobs are.
and they have bought many a Senator, President and Congress Representative in order to do it. I believe the actual workforce in the US is more like 100M so more like 40%. I wrote on here a blog piece "FET - Fictional Employment Theory" and I'm sad to report, I have seen both Obama and McCain quote the insanity that if one displaces Americans that magically creates jobs. They don't even recognize there is a huge reason NASSCOM and India itself lobby and push heavily for guest worker Visas. It facilitates offshore outsourcing and they consider Indian workers "part of trade", i.e. they are "services" to be traded and work hard to put these into WTO GATS mode 4.
Several months ago I caught a piece on The Nightly Business report - they were interviewing India's finance minister. He said that India was aggressively putting the infrastructure in place to accept up to 40 million outsourced jobs over the next decade.
No economy no matter how "resilient" can absorb that kind of job loss.
40 million - isnt that about 20% of the total US workforce?
I think I heard that on CNBC that it's dawning on a few moving cheap plastic buckets for Wal-mart around the globe might actually not be cheaper. How do these people get these jobs even? Unreal they don't count the supply chain costs.
Service jobs, esp. those that can be done over the Internets, we're in big trouble. Blinder estimated $40M are vulnerable to be offshored.
Localization has many benefits from keeping jobs at home, to being more fuel efficient and less environmentally damaign as there is less need for long distance transport.
Higher fuel costs may actually be the friend of localization
____________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
Theodore Roosevelt famously said in favor of progressive taxation (and I paraphrase here cuz i don't have my Bartlett's handy) The wealthy gain greatly from the benefits of a free society and therefore have a moral obligation to contribute back to it.
He was branded as a traitor to his class for saying that
________________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
Just how much more do we need to give away to the corporations? How much lower do taxes have to be before we see any benefits? This is just more of the same tired old supply side fairy tales.
Under the New Deal, taxes and regulations were much higher than they are todya, and we also had 4 decades of unprecendented prosperity.
As the new deal has been gutted, we now have speculative bubbles and all the other economic ills we are experiencing today
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
Did you catch just how much Goldman Sacs, JP Morgan had in oil futures? It's like Enron, part II. I would imagine if they pull subsidies out it would cause a major price drop but my first thought in reading this are those infamous "free trade" folks putting out press releases to chastise any government who tries to regulate and esp. price control anything. So, I'm not so sure I believe the premise in so many words.
The Canadians and Europeans do have much more of a social safety net in place in terms of unemployment compensation, educational opportunities and provided health care. They are also more loyal to their own domestic brands of products and industries than Americans tend to be.
One of the GM plant closings is in Oshawa Canada. On NPR's Nightly Business report a few weeks back they had Canada's trade minister - he said that Canada is losing as many if not more jobs to offshoring as the US
_________________________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
I had someone claim, oh they will not move manufacturing offshore. It's astounding how out of touch so many people are with manufacturing and the effect this has on local economies.
If Michigan secedes to Canada who could blame them at this point?
Until we consumers get smart and buy locally *ONLY*, the race to the bottom will continue. And that goes for *EVERY* market- it's either take control of your freedom and that of your neighbors- or let other countries buy you out and own your slavery.
It's high time every corporation that does not show "loyalty or altruism" to the community looses the right to sell in the market of that community- entirely.
Until we do that, we're just slaves to the rest of the world- they've defeated the US without firing a shot.
For every direct Auto worker job there are at least 3-4 more indirect jobs lost at suppliers and service providers. These closings send a tidal wave thru the communities in not just the lost jobs but also the lost tax base
one of the testimony pieces showed that they literally cannot go offshore if they regulate it in the US markets and even if they do, because it's US futures markets, they would still be subject to regulation. There is a webcast of the hearing and I believe where this is covered is in the Q&A.
The offshore threat is used also to get more cheap labor (oops) guest worker Visas but the truth of the situation is those Visas are used to facilitate the technology transfer to offshore. They cannot offshore outsource major pieces of their technology without them.
Another threat is corporate tax code. Corporations threaten to move their headquarters offshore if the US removes the tax incentive to keep capital/profits offshore for US corporations. Well, if it was more amenable to move offshore, incorporate elsewhere, they would have done it by now. There are reasons they are in the US and it's not loyalty or altruism.
The threat of "going offshore" is one best dealt with by collective uniform regulation by the EU, US, Canada, Japan etc. It would come in extremely handy in the labor and environmental areas as well. And seeing as everybody is in the same globalization boat ....
I won't pretend to be anything close to a commodities trading expert, but I don't understand how futures trading in paper (i.e, gambling/hedging where the delivery of the commodity is never done) can lead to an actual difference in the spot (i.e., delivery) price. That's where Krugman's point about the necessity to prove hoarding makes the most sense.
Despite the fact that oil prices have doubled in the last two years, worldwide oil production has fallen slightly (by 31 million barrels a day).
I just checked, world production is about 82 million barrels a day. So ... !!! Maybe you mean 310,000?).
P.S. I found it interesting that Soros mentioned Asian subsidies as one of the big reasons oil demand has remained so high, and also cited failure of those subsidies as the most likely trigger for a reversal.
I'd like to see any supply/demand curve throughout history for anything that has the slope that is implied by these prices, any real commodity.
Did you watch the Senate Committee hearing on speculation on all of this? One of the more interesting things was how JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs were heavily invested in these oil futures. There was one bank when had pretty much locked down the entire oil heating market in the North East.
No sooner does demand destruction assert itself via subsidies being cut in Asia, when speculation about the new US peso causes a reverse of course:
I've highlighted the quote that suggests Asian governments/refiners are hoarding oil in anticipation of price rises (from the ending of subsidies). Remember that hoarding (and breathtaking changes in daily prices) is a symptom of panic, not regular supply and demand.
Which brings up an entirely new aspect of this discussion. Some 60% of H1Bs are granted to outsorucing firms according to Tonelson. In this fashion foreign workers and companies can come here learn as much about US business practice , culutre and intellectual property as possible - go back to india to either open an offshore facility for the sponsoring corp., or go back and start up a competing firm - absolutely insidious. It was never about "attracting the best and brightest" - US workers are the most productive and best educated in the world - yet some 350,000 annual college grads have to compete with H1B workers for the 140,000 give or take job openings - no wonder we have degreed engineers installing cable or fixing copy machines instead of engineering.
As far as the complete lie that outsorucing magically creates jobs - I have asked the supply side global free marketeers on other boards numerous occassions to name some jobs created - they always stammer - change the subject -or attack me personally, have yet to hear exactly what those jobs are.
and they have bought many a Senator, President and Congress Representative in order to do it. I believe the actual workforce in the US is more like 100M so more like 40%. I wrote on here a blog piece "FET - Fictional Employment Theory" and I'm sad to report, I have seen both Obama and McCain quote the insanity that if one displaces Americans that magically creates jobs. They don't even recognize there is a huge reason NASSCOM and India itself lobby and push heavily for guest worker Visas. It facilitates offshore outsourcing and they consider Indian workers "part of trade", i.e. they are "services" to be traded and work hard to put these into WTO GATS mode 4.
Several months ago I caught a piece on The Nightly Business report - they were interviewing India's finance minister. He said that India was aggressively putting the infrastructure in place to accept up to 40 million outsourced jobs over the next decade.
No economy no matter how "resilient" can absorb that kind of job loss.
40 million - isnt that about 20% of the total US workforce?
I think I heard that on CNBC that it's dawning on a few moving cheap plastic buckets for Wal-mart around the globe might actually not be cheaper. How do these people get these jobs even? Unreal they don't count the supply chain costs.
Service jobs, esp. those that can be done over the Internets, we're in big trouble. Blinder estimated $40M are vulnerable to be offshored.
Localization has many benefits from keeping jobs at home, to being more fuel efficient and less environmentally damaign as there is less need for long distance transport.
Higher fuel costs may actually be the friend of localization
____________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
Theodore Roosevelt famously said in favor of progressive taxation (and I paraphrase here cuz i don't have my Bartlett's handy) The wealthy gain greatly from the benefits of a free society and therefore have a moral obligation to contribute back to it.
He was branded as a traitor to his class for saying that
________________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
Just how much more do we need to give away to the corporations? How much lower do taxes have to be before we see any benefits? This is just more of the same tired old supply side fairy tales.
Under the New Deal, taxes and regulations were much higher than they are todya, and we also had 4 decades of unprecendented prosperity.
As the new deal has been gutted, we now have speculative bubbles and all the other economic ills we are experiencing today
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
Did you catch just how much Goldman Sacs, JP Morgan had in oil futures? It's like Enron, part II. I would imagine if they pull subsidies out it would cause a major price drop but my first thought in reading this are those infamous "free trade" folks putting out press releases to chastise any government who tries to regulate and esp. price control anything. So, I'm not so sure I believe the premise in so many words.
The Canadians and Europeans do have much more of a social safety net in place in terms of unemployment compensation, educational opportunities and provided health care. They are also more loyal to their own domestic brands of products and industries than Americans tend to be.
As is Europe, but I believe their respective governments and social safety nets are more amenable to doing something about it all.
One of the GM plant closings is in Oshawa Canada. On NPR's Nightly Business report a few weeks back they had Canada's trade minister - he said that Canada is losing as many if not more jobs to offshoring as the US
_________________________________________________________
"If the hand of the Free Market is invisible, how come we can see it?" Tom Tomorrow
I had someone claim, oh they will not move manufacturing offshore. It's astounding how out of touch so many people are with manufacturing and the effect this has on local economies.
If Michigan secedes to Canada who could blame them at this point?
Until we consumers get smart and buy locally *ONLY*, the race to the bottom will continue. And that goes for *EVERY* market- it's either take control of your freedom and that of your neighbors- or let other countries buy you out and own your slavery.
It's high time every corporation that does not show "loyalty or altruism" to the community looses the right to sell in the market of that community- entirely.
Until we do that, we're just slaves to the rest of the world- they've defeated the US without firing a shot.
For every direct Auto worker job there are at least 3-4 more indirect jobs lost at suppliers and service providers. These closings send a tidal wave thru the communities in not just the lost jobs but also the lost tax base
one of the testimony pieces showed that they literally cannot go offshore if they regulate it in the US markets and even if they do, because it's US futures markets, they would still be subject to regulation. There is a webcast of the hearing and I believe where this is covered is in the Q&A.
The offshore threat is used also to get more cheap labor (oops) guest worker Visas but the truth of the situation is those Visas are used to facilitate the technology transfer to offshore. They cannot offshore outsource major pieces of their technology without them.
Another threat is corporate tax code. Corporations threaten to move their headquarters offshore if the US removes the tax incentive to keep capital/profits offshore for US corporations. Well, if it was more amenable to move offshore, incorporate elsewhere, they would have done it by now. There are reasons they are in the US and it's not loyalty or altruism.
The threat of "going offshore" is one best dealt with by collective uniform regulation by the EU, US, Canada, Japan etc. It would come in extremely handy in the labor and environmental areas as well. And seeing as everybody is in the same globalization boat ....
I won't pretend to be anything close to a commodities trading expert, but I don't understand how futures trading in paper (i.e, gambling/hedging where the delivery of the commodity is never done) can lead to an actual difference in the spot (i.e., delivery) price. That's where Krugman's point about the necessity to prove hoarding makes the most sense.
I mistook a period for a comma. Maybe I need new glasses.
I just checked, world production is about 82 million barrels a day. So ... !!! Maybe you mean 310,000?).
P.S. I found it interesting that Soros mentioned Asian subsidies as one of the big reasons oil demand has remained so high, and also cited failure of those subsidies as the most likely trigger for a reversal.
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