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Level 3 Communications, Inc. - OT Democrats to the Rescue - LVLT - InvestorVillage
From another board.
You can't make this stuff up.
Recs: 0 Re: SEC moves on short sellers/Psy...
The rest of the story....
The dick strikes again...
Psy- Here's how the "Dick" finessed the deal....
A bill w/real teeth....
Dick Durbin and the Chicago Boys
July 11, 2008;
To listen to Democrats, Congress can't wait to crack down on all those greedy "speculators" who are driving up the price of oil.
To listen to one Democrat in particular, Illinois Sen.
Dick Durbin, is far more illuminating.
If the powerful majority whip is looking a little thin these days, it's because he has been feeling the squeeze.
On his left is his party, wild to find a villain on whom to blame high gas prices, intent on deflecting attention away from its own antidrilling policies.
It has settled on those unfortunate traders who deal daily in contracts for the world's short supply of oil.
AP
U.S.
Sen. Richard J. Durbin.
It's a "carnival of speculation," howled North Dakota Sen.
Byron Dorgan, who introduced a bill to "shut down casino-like betting." His colleague Maria Cantwell decried the "dark" market and demanded "rules." "We are putting oil speculators on notice," intoned House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to "investigate all energy contracts." Mr.
Durbin's local airline, United, has also joined in, looking for a scapegoat for its own financial woes.
On Mr.
Durbin's right is that financial engine of Chicago, the futures industry.
Among Washington's least-kept secrets is that no Chicago politician -- right, left or agnostic -- would knowingly let anything harm that hometown gravy.
And towering over the futures industry is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which, incidentally, is bidding $9 billion to buy Nymex -- the world's largest oil futures market and home to all of those nasty "speculators."
Give Mr.
Durbin credit: He's a main reason the Chicago futures markets have continued to thrive.
It was Mr. Durbin who only recently helped ensure the CME-Nymex deal passed antitrust muster.
It was Mr. Durbin -- along with Rep.
Rahm Emanuel, a Chicagoan, former CME board member and House Democratic Caucus Chair -- who in February sent a public screed to both Treasury and Justice, incensed that Justice would even suggest changes in the structure of the futures markets.
It was Mr. Durbin who at that time praised the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for its "vigorous oversight" of the futures markets.
That would be the same CFTC that his colleagues are now bashing as an ineffective regulator.
Given this awkward position, it should have come as no surprise when Mr.
Durbin recently made clear he was taking over the "speculation" debate.
Brushing aside bills that would raise margin requirements for futures trades or ban pension funds from the market -- measures that would send the futures business fleeing overseas -- Mr.
Durbin in June introduced his own legislation to "reform oil market regulation" -- which has since become the most popular bill in town.
What is this tough new oversight of the futures industry?
Mr. Durbin's bill calls on the CFTC to do more "investigation" of the market, and (bonus!) offers to supply that agency with the funds to hire a whole 100 new employees.
As one Republican put it to me: "It's fabulous.
We call it the 'Just Keep Doing Exactly What You're Doing But With A Little More Money Act.'" GOP senators were so thrilled with the Durbin nonbill that they incorporated it into their own energy legislation, robbing opponents of a key talking point...
...If this weren't enough, Mr.
Durbin has a few more insurance policies for the industry.
Left largely unnoticed is that Washington Sen.
Cantwell is impeding three key nominations to the five-person CFTC, hobbling the very agency Democrats expect to step up the regulatory pace.
Mr. Durbin is meanwhile set to mark up a spending bill designed to fund his CFTC "reform," though Senate Democrats have zero intention of bringing any appropriations legislation to the floor.
Link below....
Excerpt from the wsj.
http://www.stltoday.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=551559&sid=35d2009b0b805abf9e375bdda0c73ce5
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What these bananas don't understand is that even if speculators have pushed the price of oil higher than warranted by the current supply and demand situation, they are doing so because they are looking outseveral years and also looking at our monetary policy and the possiblefurther declineof the US dollar etc...
Oil, Gold etc....
Have become the refuge for people that want to park cash in a hard asset because they don't want to hold paper currencies (especially the USD) and accept negative real interest rates on cash while the Fed floods the world with dollars
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But my question crimi is what are they doing there in the first place?
Why are the pension funds of teachers, etc.
"invested" in oil futures?
Someone please tell me that those pension funds are going to take delivery of some future shipment of crude (or corn, or sugar, or pork bellies for that matter...).
That market was designed forthe pipeline operators and other deliverers to hedge their risk in volatile markets - never for the types of groups we see "betting" in those markets today.
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