Coming from Goldman Sachs, this shouldn't be allowed for them to forecast the price. They are pretty much telling people to buy into oil so that the cost will rise and it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oh, and I know, there is no such thing as an oil speculator and they can't be the cause or part of the cause of rising oil prices....right?
Well the Government is sueing a couple of traders from back in 2008.
Listening on the radio on this on the way to work one of the defendants that purportedly received $50 million in ill-gotten gains sounds word for word like one of the posters in here, perhaps someone will all of a sudden not have any posts on the subject anymore. I believe he said he worked at Parnon.
5-25-2011
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110525...5bl9oZWFkbGluZV9saXN0BHNsawN1c3N1ZXNiaWdvaWw-
U.S. sues big oil traders for 2008 manipulation
Regulators launched one of the biggest ever crackdowns on oil price manipulation on Tuesday, suing two well-known traders and two trading firms owned by Norwegian billionaire John Fredriksen for allegedly making $50 million by squeezing markets in 2008.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said traders James Dyer of Oklahoma's Parnon Energy, and Nick Wildgoose of Europe-based Arcadia Energy, amassed large physical positions at a key U.S. trading hub to create the impression of tight supplies that would boost oil prices.
Later they dumped those barrels back onto the market, causing prices to crash and racking up profits from short positions they had accrued in futures markets, the suit said.
"Defendants conducted a manipulative cycle, driving the price of WTI (crude) to artificial highs and then back down, to make unlawful profits," the lawsuit filed in New York said.
"This is a very big deal in that we seldom allege that the defendants manipulated the crude oil market to the tune of 50 million dollars in ill-gotten gains," CFTC commissioner Bart Chilton told Reuters.
FREDRIKSEN EMPIRE
Parnon, headquartered in Oklahoma, owns at least 3 million barrels of storage facilities at Cushing. London-based Arcadia is a major global oil trading firm, which typically markets about 800,000 barrels a day of crude and product around the world.
Volatility in commodity prices has renewed calls for the CFTC to crack down on speculators in oil markets, with some lawmakers calling on the commission to immediately impose position limits.
According to the Commodity Exchange Act, manipulation or an attempt to manipulate the price of physical commodities or futures on exchanges like NYMEX are illegal, and distortions in futures spreads that are deemed to have been caused by such trading are also considered violations.