US Senate: Banksters the new Enron; manipulating markets to add trillions to consumer prices

Posted by Philip Dru on 11/19/09 • Categorized as Economy

“Ironically, hedge funds trading oil are not doing anything very different than the large investment banks such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, or Morgan Stanley already do. The proprietary trading desks of these and other large investment banks are actually ‘hedge funds in drag,’ just as Enron was.” — Peter C. Fusaro and Gary M. Vasey, Hedge Funds Change Energy Trading

 ``Enron did two things for us. It validated our model, and in 2000, 13 big market makers agreed to support the ICE's efforts.''-- Jeffrey Sprecher, Chairman and CEO, Intercontinental Exchange

“It’s one of the most frustrating things. We essentially have had modern-day bank robbers — except that they wore gray suits and not masks — and there’s been no accountability for it …

Every day we see energy speculators, war profiteers, managed health-care providers, media propagandists, and/or financiers given some unfair advantage over the average consumers and taxpayers, and the cumulative effect of the American people watching selfishness prevail over the public interest has been an undermining of the public’s trust in government.

There’s no question the system is rigged against the little guy. The bigger interests have a lot more information. They jerry-rig the system so that they always win.” – Senator Byron Dorgan

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations issued a report stating that in the oil market alone, manipulated trading adds 50% to the price for consumers. Other analysts document that these parasitic “trades” more than double oil prices. When other commodity markets are accounted for, the total addition to consumer prices are between $2 trillion to $4 trillion every year.
While legislation closed the “Enron loophole” in rhetoric since the Senate report, new legislation is being written to authorize trading on the banksters’ terms. Not surprisingly, Goldman Sachs defends their latest market structure of dark pools. The comments section of this Wall Street Journal article is revealing in their unanimity that GS’ rhetoric is self-serving rather than in the public interest. In related regulatory legislation, there are over 300 co-sponsors on a bill to audit the Federal Reserve (their New York Fed President, Tim Geithner, is current Secretary of the Treasury), but this will never be passed.
Allow me to put this all in context, for your consideration. Early 21st century Earth is still living in an antagonistically vicious political and economic paradigm. Our monetary system was designed by banks to allow them to create money and then lend it to us at interest, causing literally unpayable and perpetual debt. Wall Street “recklessly gambles” and then has the political power to have us bail them out to cause their profits both on the way up and on the way down. Professionals use language like “banana republic,” “mafia,” and “oligarchy” to describe our economic system. Economic parasitism extends into wars to dominate strategic areas of resources, thinly concealed behind propaganda for “national defense.”
The good news is that the corruption is visible and verifiable to all who choose to look. It might also be that such recognition is part of human evolution’s preparation for radical improvement, as elegantly communicated in the One Minute Shift video below, Metaphormosis. Also below is an insiders’ explanation of dark pool trading in a 6-minute video.
As always, please share this article with all who say they want to be competent as citizens over trillions of our collective dollars. If you appreciate my work, please subscribe by clicking under the article title (it’s free). Please feel free to use my archive of work to help build a brighter future.
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Examiner | Wednesday, Nov 18, 2009

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