Oil Rises to $80 as NYMEX Traders Dump 26M Barrels

Nothing much happened in the markets today as we drifted lower ahead of the Fed so let's talk about the nonsense going on over at the NYMEX.

It's not just the activity at the NYMEX that's disturbing but the way the press, who used to be the kind of people who would check out a story, simply publishes whatever spin the wealthy sponsors and their PR firms feed them.

You can't blame the media, the only word they love more than "crisis" is "scandal" but not when the scandal involves one of their advertisers.  So, given the choice, they go with "energy crisis" over "oil scam" but let's dig a little deeper than the average reporter….

The story you'll hear today is oil rose $1.10 to $80 on tight supply concerns drive prices higher.

The truth is that 257M barrels of oil for October delivery were bought AND sold on the NYMEX, which started the day with 197,270,000 barrels yet, strangely, suspiciously even, at the end of the day orders for oil to be delivered in October dropped to 171,442,000 barrels.  How can the price of something go up while the demand for it goes down?  COLLUSION.  Collusion is "a secret understanding, esp. for a fraudulent purpose."  Yep, that pretty much describes it in a nutshell.

If it were just the one day, we could brush it off as a fluke and consider our evidence circumstantial but here's how trading went for the past 4 days since Tuesday, when I predicted that NYMEX traders had no intention of accepting the 289M barrels they had ordered for October:

In the Boston Tea Party, patriots dumped tea into the ocean rather than pay the taxes imposed by a distant king.  On the NYMEX, they dumped 117M barrels that were scheduled to be delivered to the American people – BARRELS YOU ALREADY PAID FOR AT THE PUMP – in order to create a bogus shortage so you can pay record high oil prices to a distant sheik.

This isn't just criminal behavior – it's TREASONOUS!

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.” – Marcus Cicero

Look at what's happening.  I said on Tuesday: "I will tell you right now that these traders, including the 296M barrels that were bid yesterday to drive oil to record highs, HAVE NO INTENTION WHATSOVER OF ACCEPTING DELIVERY.  In fact I will tell you right now that in the next 7 days, they will cancel over 220M of those barrels, which will then be measured in the October inventory reports as a "shortage" and they will then concentrate on rolling over the November contracts, currently with 248Mb on order at $76.26."

So what did happen?  Well the traitors cancelled 117,558,000 barrels of oil, that's 29M barrels A WEEK from October delivery in order for the weather girl on CNBC to be able to tell you every Wednesday at 10:30 how tight supplies are.  And what did they do with those barrels?  The same thing they do every month, they "roll" the contracts into the forward months, creating a false demand there for oil they never intend to accept delivery of and they have done it EVERY SINGLE MONTH FOR THE PAST 2 YEARS! 

But, they are not done…

Were the traitors traders to accept delivery of the 171,442,000 barrels of oil that are still open today, BARRELS THAT THEY HAVE ALREADY BILLED YOU FOR, it would create the biggest glut of oil in US history and crash the oil markets.  So these traitors traders will, in the next 4 days, CANCEL ANOTHER 130M BARRELS OF CRUDE and slip the majority of them into the next 3 months in order to create the perception that there is, simultaneously, a record demand and a tight current supply.

It is all smoke and mirrors and it all takes place on the open trading floor of the NYMEX and it's costing the American people (at $80 a barrel)  $1.6Bn per day, $11.2Bn per week, $48Bn a month – $576Bn a year.  It's a crime that's committed right under our noses and the only way to stop it is for you to get mad!

Unlike Howard Beale in Network, I DO want you to write to your Congressman and I do know what you should say.  Tell them you ARE as mad as hell,, and you're not going to take it anymore!  Send them this article and tell them to LOOK.  Don't take my word for it just start to watch, have an aide make a chart and keep track.  Call a few traders in to testify and explain the logic of their actions.  Ask why we are being charged for oil at "front-month" prices when they manipulate the front month contracts by ordering barrels they have absolutely no intention of accepting delivery of. 

Ask them who gives the orders, ask them who signs the checks – FOLLOW THE MONEY!

Speaking of Exxon, that company's market cap jumped back up to $495Bn again and may touch the magic $500Bn mark again tomorrow so let's see if they can hold it despite the fact that refining margins, which saved them last quarter, are down over 30%.

Exxon is the world's most valuable company.  They don't cure cancer, they don't feed people, they only employ 106,000 people – 1/4 McDonald's 465,000 (market cap $65Bn), 1/3 of Sears' 352,000 ($18Bn), less than 1/2 of Home Depot's 247,000 ($70Bn), 30% less than P&Gs 138,000 ($212Bn), a little more than 1/3 of GM's 280,000 workers ($20Bn) and just over Pfizer's 98,000 (167Bn).  So we richly reward the company that rakes in the most money – through whatever means necessary, while employing relatively few people… 

Is this the map for America's future?

It's a microcosm of what's going wrong with our society, manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas and XOM gains over $300Bn in market cap since 2002 without hiring more workers or producing more oil – it's the same people, doing the same work for MUCH more money.  How much more?  In 2002 XOM billed us $200Bn for their products.  In 2006, they produced 5% LESS product and billed us $165Bn more ($365Bn) for it and their operating income jumped from $17.5Bn (8.7%) to $67.4Bn (18.5%). 

That's right, they raised the price of oil from $30 a barrel to $80 a barrel, costing the American people over $500Bn a year in retail product prices in order to make an exta $50Bn.  God bless us, everyone!

"War is when the government tells you who the bad guy is. Revolution is when you decide that for yourself."