Koch brothers: wealth grew from $7.5 billion to $50 billion in last seven years

[IBMer]

How cute, another complete failure of a thread.

You are right, because obviously Obama's policies so far have been stifling any ability to make money in this country and obviously the "Job Creators" need tax breaks to make more jobs.

I wonder how many new jobs were made on the way from 30 billion to 50 billion while Obama was in office.

 

[Ausm]

Ignorant and immoral person you are, you can't tell the difference between rewarding constructive things, and rewarding theft, crime and other harms.

Progressives are the group who want Americans to do well - not just one, sitting as a slave owner on all the wage slaves making peanuts, but to have broad opportunity.

The Koch brothers' activities are partly designed to harm the people of the country, partly parasitical simply draining wealth, not adding value. Hence your ignorance.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

The Koch bros would screw a cadaver to make a buck they are TRUE SCUM!

It looks like President Obama's policies are sure stagnating their wealth

 

[the DRIZZLE]

No, you made an obnoxious, idiotic comment.



You can't read. I linked information discussing their oil speculation.

No, you linked information that made an illogical jump from participating in the unregulated derivatives market to accusing them of unjustly driving up the price of oil. Again, as far as we know they were shorting oil futures as a hedge and lost money on these positions. You also imply that these derivatives are the source of their wealth increase with no evidence. You are either a hack or incredibly stupid if you can't see the giant wholes in your attack.

 

[Craig234]

No, you linked information that made an illogical jump from participating in the unregulated derivatives market to accusing them of unjustly driving up the price of oil. Again, as far as we know they were shorting oil futures as a hedge and lost money on these positions. You also imply that these derivatives are the source of their wealth increase with no evidence. You are either a hack or incredibly stupid if you can't see the giant wholes in your attack.

You can't read, and you are wasting the time of myself and other readers here by constantly repeating the same idiocy you could get answered from info I posted.

How many times do you need it spelled out?

Is this clear enough that they are "driving up the price of oil"?

In April, ThinkProgress caused a stir when we uncovered a series of Koch Industries corporate documents revealing the company’s role as an oil speculator. Like many oil companies, Koch uses legitimate hedging products to create price stability. However, the documents reveal that Koch is also participating in the unregulated derivatives markets as a financial player, buying and selling speculative products that are increasingly contributing to the skyrocketing price of oil. Excessive energy speculation today is at its highest levels ever, and even Goldman Sachs now admits that at least $27 of the price of crude oil is a result from reckless speculation rather than market fundamentals of supply and demand. Many experts interviewed by ThinkProgress argue that the figure is far higher, and out of control speculation has doubled the current price of crude oil.

Emphasis added.

How much are they doing? The Koch company said it's one of the world's top five oil speculators; data shows it's among the top traders.

They don't release specifics; Bernie Sanders released leaked documents showing some of the biggest traders.

These parasites make money on the speculation market going up and down.

What part do you not understand that people taking many billions of dollars out of the oil market in a zero-sum game are raising the costs, which consumers pay?

You can't click a link and read, but in case you learn, related links:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/04/13/153206/koch-industries-price-gouging/

http://thinkprogress.org/report/koch-oil-speculation/

 

[Ausm]

Koch bros vs Soros here you can see who the biggest player is when it comes to manipulation of our Gubermint.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/09/opensecrets-battle---koch-brothers.html

 

[the DRIZZLE]

You can't read, and you are wasting the time of myself and other readers here by constantly repeating the same idiocy you could get answered from info I posted.

How many times do you need it spelled out?

Is this clear enough that they are "driving up the price of oil"?



Emphasis added.

How much are they doing? The Koch company said it's one of the world's top five oil speculators; data shows it's among the top traders.

They don't release specifics; Bernie Sanders released leaked documents showing some of the biggest traders.

These parasites make money on the speculation market going up and down.

What part do you not understand that people taking many billions of dollars out of the oil market in a zero-sum game are raising the costs, which consumers pay?

You can't click a link and read, but in case you learn, related links:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/04/13/153206/koch-industries-price-gouging/

http://thinkprogress.org/report/koch-oil-speculation/

Is that power point your smoking gun? They think the price of oil is going to go up so they sit on as much inventory as possible, big deal. They are a large oil company so of course they are one of the most active traders. You still have not provided any evidence that they are doing anything unethical or that these activities even generate a profit. Everything in that power point looks like legitimate business activities to me.

 

[matt0611]

Yes, you did. Why do some people need what they said repeated back so much?



This shows you have no idea how speculation works, only a simplistic phrase about 'supply and demand' that makes it impossible to make net money on speculation.

According to you, if they 'make a lot of money bidding up gas prices beyond supply and demand', then that money will have to be lost when 'supply and demand' forces the prices down. Legendkiller explained to you how speculators actually do make profits they keep, large ones, driving the price up above 'supply and demand'. Simple logic says the massive sums made this way are parasitical extractions of wealth from the people paying the inflated prices.

Except they are not only speculators, they also produce and sell the energy as well. I never said people that sell energy would lose their money, energy is always in high demand. Stop your nonsense.

Is that power point your smoking gun? They think the price of oil is going to go up so they sit on as much inventory as possible, big deal. They are a large oil company so of course they are one of the most active traders. You still have not provided any evidence that they are doing anything unethical or that these activities even generate a profit. Everything in that power point looks like legitimate business activities to me.

This.

No, you linked information that made an illogical jump from participating in the unregulated derivatives market to accusing them of unjustly driving up the price of oil. Again, as far as we know they were shorting oil futures as a hedge and lost money on these positions. You also imply that these derivatives are the source of their wealth increase with no evidence. You are either a hack or incredibly stupid if you can't see the giant wholes in your attack.

He's both.

 

[rchiu]

You can't read, and you are wasting the time of myself and other readers here by constantly repeating the same idiocy you could get answered from info I posted.

How many times do you need it spelled out?

Is this clear enough that they are "driving up the price of oil"?



Emphasis added.

How much are they doing? The Koch company said it's one of the world's top five oil speculators; data shows it's among the top traders.

They don't release specifics; Bernie Sanders released leaked documents showing some of the biggest traders.

These parasites make money on the speculation market going up and down.

What part do you not understand that people taking many billions of dollars out of the oil market in a zero-sum game are raising the costs, which consumers pay?

You can't click a link and read, but in case you learn, related links:

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/04/13/153206/koch-industries-price-gouging/

http://thinkprogress.org/report/koch-oil-speculation/

Your propaganda website purposely phrased as if Koch is engaging in something immoral when there is no proof.

1) It says Koch engages in the market but with a vague description of "buying and selling" speculative product that are increasingly contribute to the skyrocketing price of oil. Is your website dumb or what? Please show how both buying and selling speculative product contribute to increase of oil price. And if you don't have a clue how much they are buying or selling, how the heck do you know they contributed to the increase in price, if at all.

2) And then your website takes an investment notes from Goldman Sachs to their client that the market is over priced at that time and advise their client to take short position that Goldman Sachs "admits" there is "excessive speculation". Again, your website either try to twist the fact or is totally ignorant. That statement is just like any other investment advise, derivative or not, that something is over bought and time to sell. In fact, Oil drop $3.25 after Goldman made that notes and their client probably made good money taking short position because the market is out of wack.

3) Again, your slide shows Koch to be top 5 traders, which can either be hedging or speculative trader. But then in your post, they became the top 5 "speculator"

Seriously, can you show more bias and ignorance in your posts?

 

[Genx87]

Your propaganda website purposely phrased as if Koch is engaging in something immoral when there is no proof.

1) It says Koch engages in the market but with a vague description of "buying and selling" speculative product that are increasingly contribute to the skyrocketing price of oil. Is your website dumb or what? Please show how both buying and selling speculative product contribute to increase of oil price. And if you don't have a clue how much they are buying or selling, how the heck do you know they contributed to the increase in price, if at all.

2) And then your website takes an investment notes from Goldman Sachs to their client that the market is over priced at that time and advise their client to take short position that Goldman Sachs "admits" there is "excessive speculation". Again, your website either try to twist the fact or is totally ignorant. That statement is just like any other investment advise, derivative or not, that something is over bought and time to sell. In fact, Oil drop $3.25 after Goldman made that notes and their client probably made good money taking short position because the market is out of wack.

3) Again, your slide shows Koch to be top 5 traders, which can either be hedging or speculative trader. But then in your post, they became the top 5 "speculator"

Seriously, can you show more bias and ignorance in your posts?

This is fail234 we are talking about here. Just give it time.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Koch industries provides energy, I never said their profits would dissapear.

They provide much more than energy, they own Georgia Pacific and several other large companies.

 

[momeNt]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil_speculators.pdf


I'm not sure anybody here except Matt knows how speculation actually works, yet he is the one getting run out of the thread because of baseless claims.

The only way a speculator can actually manipulate the markets is if they accept delivery on the oil or somehow control enough of the information to make people think Cushings or some other place is out of oil... good luck with that, and good luck accepting delivery on a few billion barrels of oil to trick everybody else into thinking there is a supply shortage.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/markets/oil_price_speculation/index.htm

Manipulation of oil gets found out very quickly because somebody doesn't just go buy up oil from Cushings and hide it to force up a bunch of calls on oil going up while placing their puts. Information travels too fast to corner oil.

 

[halik]

That's not the definition of price discovery. You don't plow boatload of money into some asset "trying to find what's the price". You plow boatload of money when you think the asset is mis-priced. Therefore the mechanism is suppose to correct mis-pricing in the system.

Vast majority of the money in commodities and main reason for the recent run up comes from institutional hedging of expected liabilities and/or portable alpha strategies (ie active management). There are billions of strictly long positions with CTAs working on behalf of money managers. Again those people are not speculators in the price-discovery sense; but rather are using the asset class as an investment vehicle.

 

[momeNt]

vast majority of the money in commodities and main reason for the recent run up comes from institutional hedging of expected liabilities and/or portable alpha strategies (ie active management). There are billions of strictly long positions with ctas working on behalf of money managers. Again those people are not speculators in the price-discovery sense; but rather are using the asset class as an investment vehicle.

peak oil!

 

[Patranus]

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

Huh?

He almost tripled his wealth in 4 years and you are bitching about a pair of brothers who increased their wealth 5 fold over 12 years.

The fact that you are referencing "ThingProgress" is LAUGHABLE as it is directly funded by George Soros.

 

[LegendKiller]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil_speculators.pdf


I'm not sure anybody here except Matt knows how speculation actually works, yet he is the one getting run out of the thread because of baseless claims.

The only way a speculator can actually manipulate the markets is if they accept delivery on the oil or somehow control enough of the information to make people think Cushings or some other place is out of oil... good luck with that, and good luck accepting delivery on a few billion barrels of oil to trick everybody else into thinking there is a supply shortage.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/markets/oil_price_speculation/index.htm

Manipulation of oil gets found out very quickly because somebody doesn't just go buy up oil from Cushings and hide it to force up a bunch of calls on oil going up while placing their puts. Information travels too fast to corner oil.

ROFLCOPTER...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research

 

[momeNt]

ROFLCOPTER...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Energy_Research

Similar articles can be found elsewhere, it was my first google.

Feel free to refute something though.

 

[shadow9d9]

Just face it, Obama revealed the liberal agenda and American Tax Payers have resoundingly said - "fuck no you don't".

See you in November 2012. You're on the wrong side of history.

If we had more than 1 liberal in the senate, there might actually be a liberal agenda.

You simply mirror slave owners in the south who thought the north was on the wrong side of history.

Keep stocking up on guns and paranoia.

 

[Franz316]

Any way you slice it, the fact is the system is failing. And to think any politician can just come in and fix everything is stupid. The system is fundamentally flawed and will continue to break down. The jobs that were lost are not coming back. The free market capitalist system worked great when money itself wasn't treated as a commodity. Now that it is, you get an inflated economy that is built out of thin air.

 

[halik]

http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/oil_speculators.pdf


I'm not sure anybody here except Matt knows how speculation actually works, yet he is the one getting run out of the thread because of baseless claims.

The only way a speculator can actually manipulate the markets is if they accept delivery on the oil or somehow control enough of the information to make people think Cushings or some other place is out of oil... good luck with that, and good luck accepting delivery on a few billion barrels of oil to trick everybody else into thinking there is a supply shortage.

http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/24/markets/oil_price_speculation/index.htm

Manipulation of oil gets found out very quickly because somebody doesn't just go buy up oil from Cushings and hide it to force up a bunch of calls on oil going up while placing their puts. Information travels too fast to corner oil.

The volume and size in far away contracts is pretty shitty, so with not whole lot of money (~$8K margin) you can push the price up. Then people arbing the calendar spreads will bump the price of the nearer months (to the point where roll cost < pv of the far contract) and eventually that bubbles up to spot.

I trade on CME for living; not commodities however.

 

[Ausm]

If we had more than 1 liberal in the senate, there might actually be a liberal agenda.

You simply mirror slave owners in the south who thought the north was on the wrong side of history.

Keep stocking up on guns and paranoia.

Don't waste your time on that mental midget...

 

[the DRIZZLE]

The volume and size in far away contracts is pretty shitty, so with not whole lot of money (~$8K margin) you can push the price up. Then people arbing the calendar spreads will bump the price of the nearer months (to the point where roll cost < pv of the far contract) and eventually that bubbles up to spot.

I trade on CME for living; not commodities however.

Right but it doesn't always work that way. You can push the price up and someone else can push it back down. The spot price can get arbitraged up or the future price can be arbitraged back down. The ease of moving the price on far away contracts goes in both directions.

 

[thraashman]

70,000 employees globally, 50,000 of which are located in the US.

The current numbers are approximately 67k employees. However they had 80k employees in 2007 and are currently making record revnues and profits and record personal income. So while they're making record amounts these "job creators" have actually eliminated 13k jobs in the past 4 years. This is what happens when Republicans get their way. They rich get richer and the not rich lose their jobs.

 

[blackangst1]

The current numbers are approximately 67k employees. However they had 80k employees in 2007 and are currently making record revnues and profits and record personal income. So while they're making record amounts these "job creators" have actually eliminated 13k jobs in the past 4 years. This is what happens when Republicans get their way. They rich get richer and the not rich lose their jobs.

Riiight. And if Democrats were in charge (wait, what?) only the rich would get let go in a company, and not the little guys. Hell we see that all the time with big companies that have Democratic leaning boards. Right?

Go ahead and keep sipping that kool aid.

 

[Craig234]

He almost tripled his wealth in 4 years and you are bitching about a pair of brothers who increased their wealth 5 fold over 12 years.

The fact that you are referencing "ThingProgress" is LAUGHABLE as it is directly funded by George Soros.

And? Can you show anything is wrong in the info? I didn't think so.

One clue: is Soros spenidng his on lobbying to shift more wealth to the top?

 

[Londo_Jowo]

The current numbers are approximately 67k employees. However they had 80k employees in 2007 and are currently making record revnues and profits and record personal income. So while they're making record amounts these "job creators" have actually eliminated 13k jobs in the past 4 years. This is what happens when Republicans get their way. They rich get richer and the not rich lose their jobs.

LMAO!!!!! So only those who own businesses and support the Republican party have down sized since 2007.