THE OBAMA - GOLDMAN SACHS SCORECARD!

First Published February 27, 2009

THE OBAMA - GOLDMAN SACHS SCORECARD!

We have still received no explanation from the Administration regarding the secret meetings and millions of dollars in support that Goldman gave to or raised for Obama to get him elected. We still have received no comment from the Administration during the campaign or now that Obama is elected about the role Goldman played in the sub-prime mortgage mess, the oil price run up, or the billions of dollars in executive bonuses paid by Goldman. The silence is becoming deafening.

Maybe this will help explain why the Administration is keeping the media attention away from Goldman. Look at the stock value of our major investment banking houses, the largest in the world, since Obama got elected.

On election day, November 4, 2008:

Goldman Sachs traded at $95.00
Bank of America traded at $24.62
Citigroup traded at $14.81
JP Morgan traded at $42.42

On the day Obama was sworn in as President, January 20, 2009:

Goldman Sachs traded at $59.13
Bank of America traded at $6.50
Citigroup traded at $3.58
JP Morgan traded at $21.27

Yesterday, February 26, 2008:

Goldman Sachs traded at $94.00
Bank of America traded at $5.89
Citigroup traded at $2.83
JP Morgan traded at $24.18

Since Obama got elected:

Goldman Sachs lost 1% of value
Bank of America lost 76% of value
Citigroup lost 81% of value
JP Morgan lost 43% of value

Hummm. Goldman loses 1% while the rest lose 43%, 76% and 81% of value. There seems to be something seriously wrong with this performance since Obama got elected. Wonder why Congress seems to have no interest in it?

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North Korea Defies Obama - Shoots a Blank with Rocket

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Invasion of Yellow Sea a Success

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the 29 year old seeking his first success to demonstrate he is following in his father's footsteps, discovered the dangers of military and intelligence advice.

His rocket launch, to be witnessed by media from throughout the world, lasted all of 61 seconds before blowing apart and falling into the ocean.

While they actually admitted failure for the first time in the history of North Korea, there were mumblings of sabotage by sinister Western forces.

The people of North Korea were told the invasion of the Yellow Sea was a success.

What next?

see more epicfails

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Can Goldman Silence the Media?

Article from Daily Telegraph of UK

Wednesday 15 April 2009 Banks and Finance feed All feeds

Website of the Telegraph Media Group with breaking news, sport, business, latest UK and world news. Content from the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph newspapers and video from Telegraph TV.

Goldman Sachs hires law firm to shut blogger's site
Goldman Sachs is attempting to shut down a dissident blogger who is extremely critical of the investment bank, its board members and its practices.

By James Quinn, Wall Street CorrespondentLast Updated: 2:16PM BST 11 Apr 2009

The bank has instructed Wall Street law firm Chadbourne & Parke to pursue blogger Mike Morgan, warning him in a recent cease-and-desist letter that he may face legal action if he does not close down his website.

Florida-based Mr Morgan began a blog entitled "Facts about Goldman Sachs" – the web address for which is goldmansachs666.com – just a few weeks ago.

In that time Mr Morgan, a registered investment adviser, has added a number of posts to the site, including one entitled "Does Goldman Sachs run the world?". However, many of the posts relate to other Wall Street firms and issues.

According to Chadbourne & Parke's letter, dated April 8, the bank is rattled because the site "violates several of Goldman Sachs' intellectual property rights" and also "implies a relationship" with the bank itself.

Unsurprisingly for a man who has conjoined the bank's name with the Number of the Beast – although he jokingly points out that 666 was also the S&P500's bear-market bottom – Mr Morgan is unlikely to go down without a fight.

He claims he has followed all legal requirements to own and operate the website – and that the header of the site clearly states that the content has not been approved by the bank.
On a special section of his blog entitled "Goldman Sachs vs Mike Morgan" he predicts that the fight will probably end up in court.

"It's just another example of how a bully like Goldman Sachs tries to throw their weight around," he writes.

Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Mr Morgan explained how he went through a similar battle with US homebuilder Lennar a few years ago after he set up a website to collect information on what he alleged was shoddy workmanship in its homes. The pair eventually settled out of court.
"Since I went through this with Lennar, I've had advice from some of the best intellectual property lawyers, and I know exactly what I can and can't do. We're not going to back down from this," he promises.

Mr Morgan adds that if Goldman manages to shut down his site, he has a number of other domain names registered.

• Speculation is mounting that Goldman Sachs is set to raise several billion dollars via a share sale, possibly next week, in order to pay down a $10bn (£6.8bn) US government loan, as revealed in The Sunday Telegraph last week.

THE OBAMA - GOLDMAN SACHS SCORECARD!

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We have still received no explanation from the Administration regarding the secret meetings and millions of dollars in support that Goldman gave to or raised for Obama to get him elected. We still have received no comment from the Administration during the campaign or now that Obama is elected about the role Goldman played in the sub-prime mortgage mess, the oil price run up, or the billions of dollars in executive bonuses paid by Goldman. The silence is becoming deafening.

Maybe this will help explain why the Administration is keeping the media attention away from Goldman. Look at the stock value of our major investment banking houses, the largest in the world, since Obama got elected.

On election day, November 4, 2008:

Goldman Sachs traded at $95.00
Bank of America traded at $24.62
Citigroup traded at $14.81
JP Morgan traded at $42.42

On the day Obama was sworn in as President, January 20, 2009:

Goldman Sachs traded at $59.13
Bank of America traded at $6.50
Citigroup traded at $3.58
JP Morgan traded at $21.27

Yesterday, February 26, 2008:

Goldman Sachs traded at $94.00
Bank of America traded at $5.89
Citigroup traded at $2.83
JP Morgan traded at $24.18

Since Obama got elected:

Goldman Sachs lost 1% of value
Bank of America lost 76% of value
Citigroup lost 81% of value
JP Morgan lost 43% of value

Hummm. Goldman loses 1% while the rest lose 43%, 76% and 81% of value. There seems to be something seriously wrong with this performance since Obama got elected. Wonder why Congress seems to have no interest in it?

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The Economic Meltdown - Where do we go from here?

If you were a regular reader of the Coltons Point Times or previous work by the editor you would be a lot richer than you are today. Since the '70's we have predicted the economic, stock market and housing fluctuations, trends and crashes with unusual accuracy from the oil manipulations of the '70's and 2007 and 2008 to the real estate mess in the early '80's and 2007, from the dot com meltdown of 2000 - 2002 to the interest spiral of the late '70's.

For years we have warned you of the conflict of interest of the "industry analysts" employed by Wall Street to influence stock prices. We listed the billions of dollars in fines paid for fraud and corruption in the financial and pharmaceutical industries and watched with awe as Congress passed the $700 billion bailout to save the same firms. Over and over we warned that there was nothing "free" about our free market system that is being manipulated by sources far more powerful than our government.

Wall Street and Madison Avenue, the financial and advertising centers of the universe, have joined forces to brainwash and spoon feed the American public with seeds of greed, obsession with materialism and disregard for laws and authority. Here we are today, a new president, a Democratic congress, and an inspired electorate yet the same architects of our current economic chaos are firmly in control of both the present and new administration.

Nearly a trillion dollars in bailouts have already been approved by Congress and our new president, a second multi-billion dollar bailout will be approved before Obama is even sworn in as president. House Speaker Pelosi is meeting today with the auto manufacturers and union leaders to decide on a second 25 billion dollar bridge loan. Barney Frank has promised just about everything to everyone while Pelosi is treating the Treasury as an endless pit of money and our new president may not even have a voice in what takes place.

Make no mistake, Madison Avenue convinced us we must have everything and Wall Street served it up through the maze of financial tricks of the trade and no one bothered to ask do we really need all this stuff. No one bothered to wonder why car companies were making more money off repairing your new car than selling it as "planned obsolescence", in other words making cars that would break down, became a bigger profit center.

Our FDA has turned its head to the proliferation of new drugs from an industry used to charging about 10 to 20 times the fair market value for prescriptions. Tens of billions in fines have been paid by the same pharmaceutical firms for fraud, price fixing, and bribes to doctors and hospitals. Yet Congress wants to expand our already broken and highly corrupt health industry to provide unnecessary medical care and drugs to everyone.

Many consumer product companies are in serious trouble because people did the only thing they could to survive the financial disaster, they stopped wasting money and started saving what little they had left. That is a very good thing but will extend a recession for those interested in bailing out Wall Street. Our media became dependent on advertising dollars that no longer exist so watch for television, radio and cable stations and networks dependent on advertising to start going under.

Our internet firms like Yahoo, Google, E Bay and millions of small businesses on the net will see their value collapse even more as the ad money dries up and as people realize that internet advertising really is the most over-valued method of reaching people with an undiluted message. Credit card fraud, cell phone fraud and identity theft flourish as a result of the internet and the failure of anyone to protect the consumer from such predators. Automated banking will be the next victim of the internet.

Entertainment companies including the record industry are operating with a broken business model and have had to resort to corruption to make money. The five largest record companies in America have paid tens of millions of dollars in fines recently for bribing radio stations to play records and now over 600 radio stations are under investigation for corruption. The record industry is beyond fixing and must collapse.

Many of the very industries our Congress is saving have no business in a free market economy where innovation, quality, service and competition are supposed to be the dominant attributes. Right now we reward fraud, corruption, greed and unfair business practices. How long is the American public going to continue to support the industries with their money and support their protectors (Congress) with their votes? The day of reckoning is at hand.

The worldwide financial meltdown. Are the players, analysts and media guilty as well?

Why does Obama surround himself with them?

If there is anything we have learned this election cycle it is that the experts in the fields of economics, banking, housing, defense, automobiles and a host of other industries have been dead wrong for years and as a result there may be nothing left of the economy for the next president to inherit. Make no mistake, they have been wrong over and over again and yet the media gave them credibility so like just like the Pied Piper, we have followed them down the path to self-destruction.

Now we are faced with a choice for president between well meaning but relatively inexperienced people and we are about to entrust them with our future in perhaps the most difficult period of our history so what lessons have we learned? Ironically, many in America continue to blindly follow the Pied Pipers, the very same people who taught us the meaning of greed.

Thanks to the overwhelming lack of humility of the media I feel a little uncomfortable saying it but wasn't it Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount who said; "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). What a shame when quoting Jesus can result in condemnation from the very media who is supposed to be telling us the truth.

Well this very media has been engaged in a financial conspiracy dedicated to establishing greed, desire and possession as the virtues of American society as they have bombarded us for decades with all the things we had to own to keep up with the Jones's or to be a leader. Fancy cars, clothes, country club memberships, spas, lattes, you name it, there is not enough money on earth to acquire everything they want you to buy and the more expensive the better.

Oh yes, the media had to attract the billions in advertising dollars from the greed mongers in order to brainwash an unsuspecting public into following a path of economic moral bankruptcy. But the day would come when the excesses of corporations and the lies and deceits of the experts would finally bleed the last drops of blood money from the public and that day has now come not just here but around the entire world.

The American public could see this coming and the experts didn't. Public opinion poll after public opinion poll showed the people no longer trusted politicians, Congress, financial experts and the media as their credibility ratings dropped to the lowest levels ever recorded. What was the difference? Well the experts relied on the philosophy of the products of the best businesses schools in the world while the meek relied on the Bible and the teachings of a humble man named Jesus.

What is the result, economic chaos. What is the conclusion, the experts were wrong. So if they were wrong, why does the media continue to embrace them, give us their latest version of what is going to happen, and expect the public (the fools in the world according to the media) to still follow?

Barach Obama, the least experienced of the candidates, did the only thing he could and used an enormous war chest of money to surround himself with the best, most experienced experts in the world, a Whose Who of Policy experts. These are the very same experts who caused the economic destruction of the world we now face and make no mistake, we are only feeling the beginnings of the fruits of deception and greed.

Look at the record. My last article detailed how the executives of Goldman Sachs recruited Obama to run for president and have helped finance the most expensive campaign in history. To give himself the benefit of others experience Obama surrounded himself with former Goldman executives as his key advisors and endorsers including Robert Rubin (former Goldman CEO), New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine (former Goldman CEO) and a host of fund raisers from Goldman's that gave over $800,000 and raised millions more.

Obama was seduced into supporting the Wall Street bailout, in fact was a leader in bringing it about according to the Democratic party press releases, a bailout designed by yet another former Goldman CEO Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen. Finally, Obama says billionaire Warren Buffet is his close friend and closest advisor on the economy. Buffet also is now one of the largest stockholders in Goldman Sachs with over $5 billion in the company. There is an old Chicago motto that comes in to play as Buffet not only propped up Goldman but went public to tell Congress to get the bailout done! That motto, "Ubi Est Mea" means "Where's mine?"

To establish his foreign policy credentials Obama got the endorsement of Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State. This was another beneficiary of Goldman largess and was the one who personally took the case to the United Nations to justify the invasion of Iraq, a war Obama says he opposed from the beginning though he was only a young state senator with no involvement in world wars at the time. In housing, there are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac people throughout his campaign.

So does surrounding oneself with the very people who have led the nation down the path of destruction give one the experience necessary to lead us through the worst period of our history? Judgment is a very interesting thing when selecting people to prove you have credentials as having experience is not nearly as important as learning from experience. If the very people that brought on these deceptions and mistakes are the people you rely on, then not only do you rely on the wrong experience but you demonstrate bad judgment as well.

It would seem the Obama cabinet might as well meet in the Goldman Sachs boardroom as the faces of his team already line the walls of former executives, benefactors and stockholders of the company whose corporate motto is proudly proclaimed as, "Long Term Greed!" Now maybe it is time to update the motto and add, "Take the Money and Run!".

The World Economic Meltdown - The Hopi Purification of Mankind?

My Friend Grandfather Martin Gashweseoma, Hopi Elder, Spiritual Leader and Guardian of the Sacred Stone Tablets of the Fire Clan standing before the Sacred Hopi Prophecy Stone.

For a few thousand years the original inhabitants of America have had prophecies and oral histories talking about the future coming of the White man and the eventual destruction of America as the future rulers did not listen to the pleads of the natives to change our ways by honoring Father Creator, showing respect for Mother Earth and demonstrating love for fellow man.

These prophecies told how a lust for power, a hunger for possessions and an obsession for what others had would corrupt civilization, bankrupt our morality, and in the end, if mankind was incapable of correcting those flaws then divine intervention would be necessary to protect Mother Earth. For thousands of years Native American nations like the Hopi have patiently worked to protect Mother Earth and awaken humankind.

At the end of the present cycle of civilization there would come a quickening of time, everything would seem to be moving faster and faster as the frequency of Earth increased in order to achieve a lighter density in preparation for the planet Earth to separate into two worlds, with the New World moving to the next higher frequency or dimension.


Ancient Hopi Petroglyths:

The Old World would remain behind with all those who refused the opportunity to become enlightened and refuse to remember our original mission on Earth. Those who thrived on the control and misery of others, who sought material gratification, and forgot how to love all God's creatures, would remain.

The New World would return to the original mission of humankind on Earth living in service, peace, harmony and being free of evil or illness. The survivors would inherit the New World and begin a new cycle of civilization in a higher dimension. These are the people who recognized the quickening and took action to remain open and calm as the frequency storm hit Earth. Many signs are given to awaken the people. Not all people will notice them. Some will choose to ignore them as they are trapped in the dark side of humanity.

At the end of the quickening comes the purification as taught by ancient Hopi prophecy. Many believe this is another version of the Christian Rapture. Of course the Hopi prophecy pre-dated Christianity by many thousands of years but many indigenous peoples and cultures have similar prophecies of the time of the purification. If we were to judge a little less and listen a little more we could see the many common truths in all the Creation, Purification and End Times prophecies.

So what if we are in the time of the quickening that precedes the purification as many peoples believe? Some of the more common signs among cultures is that the institutions of the Old World, those that have controlled people, corrupted economies and marketed immorality with an astonishing degree of success, will suddenly fail. There will be signs to make people aware. Perhaps the potential collapse of the financial system throughout the world is one of these signs.

If you wanted to send a message and get the attention of the people of the world, all at once, then destroying the global economic system would be far more obvious than a remote war. The world is addicted to an economic system that epitomizes all that is bad from corruption to greed, possession to power, and lust to jealousy. The domino effect this would have on all the other corrupt institutions of the world would be amazing from religion to politics, government to banks, media to medical care, pharmaceuticals to entertainment. Things would rapidly ground to a halt.

If there is a silver lining in the dark clouds on the horizon they are this. Many people have studied the ancient prophecies or the more recent body of prophecies by the Holy Mother Mary. Very specific ways to prepare for the purification are provided if your intent is to raise your level of consciousness and move on to the New World. We are taught to visualize ourselves in the eye of the hurricane where there is peace and calm in the middle of the chaos and destruction.

When you open your eyes and see what is happening to our world today, you must seek out those who are here and can help you. Call them adepts or enlightened, they have heard the warnings, have studied the signs, and can help you if you choose the path to the New World. Seek them out among your neighbors and friends. They will be the ones not caught up in the hysteria of the moment, not shocked by the speed at which our institutions are failing, and not bound to any dogma except serving and helping people find their way.

If the prophecies are right we must be prepared to let go of everything we know and remember everything we forgot. We must remember the power of unconditional love and the strength of giving. We must not judge but embrace empathy and hope. Most of all, we must pray in whatever manner allows us to be comfortable, but pray with the right intentions.

Albert Einstein with the Hopi:



If the prophecies are wrong, well they might just be delayed a bit because some people are working to bring good to the world. And that would still give us time to try and heal our institutions and Earth before it is too late. The continued economic chaos and the blinding speed with which things change gives one cause to think that maybe the prophecies are right. Are you prepared for the quickening and purification?

The Big Bailout - Free Market Socialism or Government Regulated Capitalism?

Somewhere between the wildly vacillating stock market, the global economic response and the confusion in Congress there is a presidential campaign nearing a conclusion. As the market soars down 2,000 points one week then up 1,000 the next day and governments around the globe step in to fix crisis after crisis it is no wonder the American public has no clue what just happened. Well certain aspects of the market have been repaired and a lot of manipulation has been covered up. The American public will now be a major shareholder in banks and other companies and a whole lot of hidden losses by the greed mongers will be paid off by the feds.

What price did we just pay for stabilization of the stock market? Did we just take a giant leap into the abyss of Free Market Socialism or Government Regulated Capitalism, either of which has never been a part of the American capitalist system? Even more important, did it fix the problems? Since the raid on the US Treasury went so smoothly don't be surprised if more demons of past behavior don't surface in the near future that also have to be addressed to save the struggling economy.

What hasn't been done? For one, the Congress and other elected officials must be banned from taking campaign money from all special interests from the corporations of Wall Street to the labor unions. This bailout is the best evidence yet that campaign contributions from those with a conflict of interest have no place in America. Beyond that lobbying by any group or organization benefiting from any of the many packages to bailout Wall Street or Main Street must be prohibited. Blood money from lobbyists has contaminated our political process to a degree never seen before. Does anyone think Congress and the new president will have the guts and honesty to do this?

Second of all, why has there been no discussion of the hidden debt or losses already incurred by the Wall Street titans in terms of unregulated derivatives and swaps I have discussed in previous articles? I believe there are about $62 trillion more in hidden losses directly attributable to greed, a level of losses far greater than what we have already dealt with in this crisis. If I am right, the economy could go into a severe recession or even depression and if the losses are any larger the consequences could be unimaginable.

In an earlier article about the resilience of the American economy I said the rest of the world cannot afford to let us fail. Recent events demonstrated just what I meant as a problem in the American housing market nearly destroyed the world economy. Perhaps I need to rethink my conclusion as we just were witness to a world teetering on the brink of economic destruction because of a little greed in the way mortgages were approved. It just might be that the world no longer has the ability to help America if we collapse and the interdependence of world markets and speed of world communications will bring down everyone within days.

One thing is certain, our economic system and congress are permeated with people who hold greed to a higher standard than honesty, with people who believe taking is more important than giving, and with people who place far more faith in the almighty dollar than the Almighty God. The foundation of our nation's existence is that we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable Rights. We are a nation that puts "In God We Trust" on currency and "One nation under God" in our national anthem. Somehow the Christian values so important to the formation of this nation have been lost in Washington, in Wall Street, in the media and in the overwhelming desire for more power, wealth and control.

What could happen? Read Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged and you will see as the mysterious John Galt led the disappearance of the little people who were the foundation for the wealth accumulated by the rich and greedy and all the puppets who served them. Fascism, socialism and communism were all targets of her failures of civilization and a couple of them could still be around today. Come to think of it, after the great nationalization efforts this dark October things may not be all that different.

Hey Wall Street - Enough is Enough! Or Did You Already Bet on Obama?

In yet another slap in the face to the American consumer the greed mongers on Wall Street have gotten everything they wanted from the President, the Congress, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, the international central banks, even the two candidates for president Obama and McCain and still they refuse to release the trillions of US dollars they are hoarding while continuing to hold the economy hostage.

Over two trillion dollars in American pension savings have gone up in smoke this year as the forces behind the government have manipulated and raped every treasure trove they could find to protect their precious credit, line their pockets, and demonstrate to the government just who is in charge of the US economy. Such behavior almost borders on criminal if there were any laws that existed to prosecute the predators of lower Manhattan. But thanks to the millions of dollars in special interest contributions poured into the campaigns and pockets of our elected officials no such laws exist.

Is it just circumstance that only two investment houses survived the economic meltdown this year and gobbled up all their competitors, two firms now sitting on billions if not trillions of our funds? Is it circumstance these firms have the power to call accounts in other companies, in other words demand early payment, when there is no money to be had thus driving those competitors out of business?

Is it circumstance that the survivors, Goldman Sachs and J P Morgan owned and controlled the London energy futures market used to drive up the price of oil and devastate our economy and that of the world? Well is it circumstance that these companies have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the campaigns of our elected officials and both were the primary beneficiaries of stunning government actions to rescue the economy?

As of August 31 according to the Center for Responsive Government Barack Obama had raised about $460 million compared to about $230 million for McCain. Obama is the first federal candidate in our history to refuse public financing even though he pledged to take the public financing which would have greatly reduced his spending in the campaign.

Goldman Sachs temple in Wall Street.

So what financial interest did Goldman Sachs have in Barack Obama? Since the beginning of his campaign the boys at Goldmans have been the biggest contributors to Obama and helped bring in millions from the Wall Street establishment. Goldman executives alone have given Obama $739,521 and have helped raise the following from Wall Street firms for Obama. CitiGroup - $492,548, J P Morgan - $475,112, UBS - $419,550, Lehman Brothers - $391,774, Morgan Stanley - $341,380 and various amounts from Bear Stearns, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.

What could be Obama's fascination with Goldman Sachs? Well it goes back as Bloomberg News reported Obama was the featured speaker at the Goldman's annual partners meeting in 2006 in Chicago. This was a junior member of the US Senate who had not even been in office two years yet he was speaking to the top executives of one of the most powerful investment houses in the world. There is something very strange about the circumstance.

The story only gets better. On May 3, 2007, Barack Obama attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan that was not on his public schedule and is only now surfacing. The exclusive private dinner was for Goldman Sachs traders and featured a discussion on issues moderated for the Wall Street firm by NBC's Tom Brokaw. Once again the circumstances are strange as a year later Brokaw would be moderating the second presidential debate between Obama and McCain and the economy and Wall Street were the main points of discussion. Of course the debate commission and McCain were unaware that Obama and Brokaw had already held a practice session the year earlier when Obama was facing a withering attack from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden in the democratic primary.

Now that is three most unusual encounters between Obama and Goldman Sachs. Then comes the economic chaos and the president calls a meeting of Congressional leaders, Treasury and Federal Reserve staff and the presidential candidates. Obama, who was staying away from Washington during the crisis got the call and at the meeting was the only person to talk about a Republican alternative proposal for the crisis, a proposal that had not even been made public at the time.

Former Goldman CEO and now Treasury Secretary Paulsen.



It was later learned that a Treasury staff member reviewing the confidential proposal from Republicans was able to smuggle the information to Goldman Sachs employees who emailed it to Obama staff and it was given to him before the White House meeting, thus enabling him to pre-empt McCain from offering the new Republican proposal. Of course the Secretary of the Treasury was a former Chairman and CEO of Goldman Sachs.

Do we really know anything about the relationship between Obama and Goldman Sachs other than their massive fund raising for him? Since he has been secretly guided and financed by Goldman people from the very beginning of his presidential campaign were they influential in his economic platform. While he now admits things have changed and many of his proposals might be delayed or dropped, he still proposed a tax on the rich which would seem to be opposed to the Goldman executives.

Yet it was convenient that Goldman faced billions in losses from the sub-prime mortgage mess and they helped trigger the economic collapse with the manipulation of oil futures driving the world into a credit crisis, a crisis that helped them make billions of dollars through spiraling oil prices. Most convenient of all, the $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan was approved just before a new president was elected so the new president would not be blamed for anything that went wrong.

Obama never questioned the role of Goldman in the sub-prime fiasco nor in manipulating the oil futures prices. When Goldman specialists tried to drive the price of oil up to $200 a barrel Obama never said a word. His meetings with them over the years were in secret and his actions were a wall of silence as the boys from Wall Street destroyed the economic system forcing a historic bailout by Congress that gave Wall Street nearly unlimited access to the US Treasury. Now did all of these incidents slip his mind as well as if his secret meetings with Goldman had nothing to do with the economy. I hope he can explain to the public just what has been going on and what, if anything he promised them in return.

Is Wall Street Arrogance To Blame for Failures in Congress?

Today the Wall Street bailout failed in Congress. Immediately after the financial experts on television began threatening yet again that the public is too dumb to understand the problem and as a result there will be no money for mortgages, autos, credit card purchases and other needs of Main Street America.

The financial experts went so far on CNBC to say the people in Congress are limited to liberal arts and law degrees and have no understanding of the economy and that is why the bailout failed. One day the many people whose lives and pocketbooks are lined by their close relationship to Wall Street may wake up and discover their own arrogance is what is fueling the public opinion revolt against them in their efforts to raid the public Treasury.

Long ago the general public stopped paying attention to idle threats from those demanding access to the Treasury to solve all the problems of the world. The international banking cartel and financiers from around the world have made run after run on the U.S. Treasury since the days of the American revolution to the Civil War to the latest crisis resulting from the mismanagement and greed on Wall Street.

Clever public relations people hired by them told them to stop talking about Wall Street and keep talking about how their problems are really the problems of Main Street but the American public knows better in spite of the public relations efforts. Today's problems on Wall Street were caused by greed, incompetent government regulation, Congress looking the other way while the financial institutions lined their pockets and campaign treasuries, and the expectation that the taxpayer could be hoodwinked into covering their losses.

Now the American taxpayer is expected to pay $700 billion to buy all the "toxic" loans that were issued by banks and mortgage companies and have resulted in a tightened credit market. What in the world makes them think the public should buy all the toxic loans and bail them out of their mismanagement and greed? If Wall Street had not started meddling in the mortgage market by packaging sub-prime mortgages when they saw how much money could be made in real estate we would have no crisis.

So they get caught with a couple of trillion in worthless mortgages and decide the American taxpayer has a responsibility to bail them out or they will cut off credit to Main Street. Where I come from that is not a request for help but blackmail. Then they say the financial integrity of our 401k, IRAs and pensions are in jeopardy if the bail out is not approved. That is second degree blackmail. The only way our pension money could be threatened is if the thieves on Wall Street invested it in the crooked stocks to begin with. Of course they did.

A reasonable way to help Wall Street while protecting the federal Treasury is possible and maybe now that the stampede to action has been halted by the vote in Congress perhaps the arrogant experts on wall Street who are demanding the handout can simply ask the stupid public for help in a nice and honest way and maybe this time they will get it.



Perhaps most important, the financial elitists and their liberal apologists had better learn humility and take responsibility for the mess we are in that they caused. Their days of unlimited feeding at the public treasury are over. The public has no responsibility to pay them for the mess they made and if we do give help, then we have every right to prosecute them if they violated the law. As for the financial television channels, turn them off, there are far better ways to spend the day.

Hijacking of American Economy Stopped by the People

Bush Pelosi Obama bailout of Wall Street fails!

To the absolute amazement of Wall Street and the weak-kneed Democratic leadership the people of America spoke through their elected representatives and the takeover of America by Wall Street was brought to a screeching halt in a stunning vote today.

Obama who refused to consider the negotiations over the vote worthy of returning to the capitol but remained available via telephone found out just what Americans thought of his "call me if you need me" attitude. No one called him. Pelosi called the Republicans "unpatriotic", hardly a way to encourage cooperation.

In the end the strange alliance of Bush, Obama and Pelosi to save the money mongers on Wall Street and help pursue our course toward socialism got, well, bushwhacked. Obama ran from his leadership chance while Pelosi again demonstrated why she has no business acting like a leader.

The American public, overwhelming against this Wall Street bailout and unwilling to use public dollars to reward corrupt corporate executives were finally heard by the Republicans in Congress and about 94 Democrats opposed to their own leaders bitter partisanship attacks. If just 11 votes were needed to pass the bill why did Pelosi lose 94 from her own party?

For the moment the world witnessed the real strength of the American political system. No political party nor Wall Street is going to steal the banking system from public accountability nor hijack the American economy. Our Constitution remains intact and our country remains the strongest light in the world toward a true nation devoted to "We The People."

What the Hell is Happening on Wall Street?

What a week we just saw as the ship of state shipwrecked and in the process drug us all through the media frenzy and speculation only Wall Street and the media could generate. For a long time it seemed there was as much lying, distortion, misrepresentation and outright stupidity in the media reporting of the financial crisis as their coverage of the Obama versus Palin presidential campaign. No Freudian slip on that one.

Is it possible to summarize the complexity of what just happened to the American economy? Either we just saved the US and world economies with a pretty breathtaking rescue plan or, we just gave away more control of the US economy to the financial warlords of the world who have been controlling things for the past few centuries.

If the answer was the first then the villains of Wall Street have now been stopped, only a few hundred more insignificant banks should collapse, our government should make a profit of a few billion saving the banking system, and long term stability should return to our real estate and financial institutions. If we could figure out a way to throw out all the financial experts in the media who failed to be the watchdogs of the public interest for the past decades we would further strengthen our system. If we could throw out the Congress and the lobbyist corps sucking up to them it might even all work.

On the other hand, if the latter explanation is true, then we continued to have a government that is a puppet to much more powerful forces who can buy and sell all the nations of the world. The invisible power of this mysterious force that has operated in the shadows of the world the past few centuries is every bit as real as our media, our government and institutions.

However, even this force needs a source of life blood and that is the US so whether we are saving the financial systems of the world or saving the Masters of the Universe the result is probably about the same. Neither the forces of good or bad can afford to destroy our economic system. As we have witnessed first hand the past few days, as the US goes so goes the world.

The greed that forced us into this mess was prevalent throughout the world as the world was deeply involved in the US economy. They got too greedy, they forgot that if Americans aren't kept happy they will put an end to the gravy train. They compounded their problems further by using even more sinister techniques to try and save them from the mistakes they already made.

Thanks to a bewildered administration and comatose Congress, both seduced by lobbyists with endless piles of cash, the wizards of Wall Street spun a deeper and deeper web of deceit as the savings and loan groups, dot coms, home mortgages, oil and wheat futures and eventually the investment banks themselves fell prey and were milked of every last penny of profit from our financial system.

When it finally became clear that the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street were grounded on a foundation of quicksand the game ended and when the dust settles, and it will settle, and the economy has recovered and is back to serving as the cash cow again, no doubt the Masters will probably rise again and when they do we better be ready.

In the meantime the American public will be given stable banks and lower home prices. Lower gas and oil prices will return. Savings and pensions will be protected and jobs will be created. Inflation will remain stable and the stock market will again flourish. All of these things are the bones we are thrown for serving as the cash cow for the world. All of these things are the necessary progression of our historical cycles within our cultural evolution.

So how will this impact on the election? It doesn't matter. Whoever wins the presidency will be blocked from needed reform by an antiquated Congress who have been in office too many years to turn on the forces who keep getting them elected. No viable change will come until after the 2010 elections when the American public finally realizes that no president can be effective without a Congress willing to accept responsibility for past failures and embrace change. When the scoundrels are thrown out of office the change can finally be realized.

Is Obama Really The One? The $440 Million People's Person

Everyone in America knows we are in the midst of a serious economic crisis. First came the Bear Stearns collapse and Barack Obama refused to take a position saying we should wait and see what happens. Then came the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bail out by the government and the Lehmann collapse not bailed out. That was followed immediately by the AIG collapse that was saved at the last minute by the Federal Reserve. Each time Obama said we should wait and see what happens though our economy was a mess because of Bush.

Now that sounds like a Harvard educated response to the series of events. Is that leadership? Is that how he intends to govern through these tough times? He did promise us tax breaks and tax increases, a whole lot of them. And Biden did attempt to clarify how they would create new jobs, through public works projects. Yet another form of federal welfare destined to create dead end jobs with no career path at a cost to the taxpayer of billions of more dollars.

Some say the twin mortgage companies of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the root cause of what has happened. Well they were created by a Democratic administration and run by former Clinton insiders so I think that might be a Democratic problem that triggered the catastrophe. Some say a bill sponsored by Republicans that was passed in 2005 and impacted on the investment and commercial banks was the cause but that same bill was approved by 90 of the 100 Senators including the Democratic leadership.

For the past two years Nancy Pelosi has controlled the House and Harry Reid has controlled the Senate, presiding over Democratic majorities. If they control the Congress why didn't they fix the problems? In fact since they did control both the House and Senate why didn't they do anything the past two years after making all kinds of wonderful promises? Empty promises - broken leadership.

Now they want you to give them control of the White House as well. So how fiscally responsible is the candidate for president for the Democrats? Well, he is spending more than twice as much in the 2008 presidential campaign then anyone else in history, having already raised over $440 million. McCain has raised $190 million. And while he claims the largest donor base in history, the million plus donors don't get access to him.

No, the only contributors that get personal pictures with Obama and get to sip wine and get served by waiters in tuxedos are the Hollywood elite who pay $30,000 to have dinner with him. Now the price of the evening ticket to be with Obama is equal to 60% of the median annual family income in America, meaning the average family would have to work from January until July 15 to pay for a single ticket. If you want to take your spouse you will have to work 14 months for the tickets! The savior of the common people only dines with the richest of the rich, how Ivy League, how elitist and how disconnected with the common people he claims to champion.

While he sips wine in Beverly Hills we patiently wait for Obama to tell us how he will really help the people. While he dines for dollars, very big dollars, with Barbra Streisand and Bon Jovi at million dollar private parties people are suffering. While he waits to see how things work out before he takes a position Wall Street continues to crumble under the weight of its own corruption and greed. While he throws hundreds of millions of dollars at us to convince us he is THE ONE, people are fighting wars and digging out from hurricanes so there is an America left for someone to govern, but I am not certain what he has demonstrated is a convincing argument he is REALLY THE ONE.

Who really Controls America? The US Government or Big Money?

This past week has seen an amazing display of courage by some and arrogance by others as the economy has tried to stabilize after the incredible series of events including fraud, mismanagement, manipulation and greed that has contaminated the US economic system.

Take for example the case of Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks on Wall Street and in the world. For months their financial analysts have been downgrading banks, investment houses and companies driving stock prices down while at the same time other Goldman analysts have been driving the price of oil futures through the roof as explained in a recent CPT article.

A little over a week ago an analyst from Deutsche Bank in Germany downgraded the rating and value of Goldman Sachs citing exposure of the banking giant to credit weakness. He was joined by another analyst from Oppenheimer & Company. The result was a 6% drop in the stock value of Goldman the same day from a previous high of $178.00 to $167.30.

In the next few days analysts from Ladenburg Thalmann and Thomson Financial joined the field downgrading Goldman who thought they had avoided public notice of their credit problems. By Wednesday, August 20 shares in Goldman went for $158.25, a loss of $20 a share in little over a week.



The next day Citi Investment Research projected additional asset problems for Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley due to credit problems yet to be reported by the giant firms and the stock dropped to $156 a share, a loss of $22 per share and a bit too much for the Goldman gang to stomach.

The next morning Goldman declared the price of oil, which had dropped to $114 per barrel from $149, would spike back up to $149 before the end of the year in what could be considered a last desperate attempt to stop the downward spiral of their stock and drive it back up. Of course Goldman is one of the largest traders of energy and oil stocks in the world and a temporary oil price spike might help refill the coffers.

Oil did indeed spike the next day by an astonishing $6.00 a barrel, a huge daily profit for a firm that might have a few trillion dollars at play on oil futures, while the stock market was being driven down nearly 400 points in two days because of the credit crisis. Fortunately, after one day of temporary insanity on Wall Street a calm Warren Buffett was on television Friday morning telling the world a whole different story and the stock market shot up 200 points while the oil price had the largest one day loss in years, over $6.00 to completely wipe out the Goldman hike of the day earlier.

Goldman has made the following oil price forecasts this year. December 2007 oil projected to reach $105 in 2008. May 2008 oil projected to reach $141. June 2008 oil projected to reach $200 by year end. August 2008 oil projected to reach $149 in 2008. Oil did indeed reach a record high in 2008 being pushed to $149 a barrel and driving gas, diesel and heating oil right through the roof.

The huge houses like Goldmans might have made billions in profits on oil using a variety of strategies like ownership of the futures market, commissions off stock sales, and a host of alternative financing schemes outside the regulatory control of the government including institutional funds and swaps. For the first time this year Goldman did not get its way and drive up the price of oil for longer than a day. One can only hope they were in and out of the market fast enough to make a killing overnight or their own strategy might have backfired and cost them in futures contracts.

Now who really controls America? Did I mention that as of August 22 Goldman Sachs people have given $456,702 to the Barack Obama campaign and $174,820 to the McCain campaign. Before you think Obama receives twice as much money from financial institutions as McCain consider this. During the entire campaign people from the financial sector including Wall Street have given a total of $22.4 million to Obama and $21.6 million to McCain. I wonder how they classify that investment?

Here is how Goldmans rewarded employees last year and what they will be missing this year. The following appeared in a New York Post story by Paul Thorp, December 19, 2007.

Toiling at profit powerhouse Goldman Sachs is so lucrative that even a secretary's bonus can exceed Gov. Eliot Spitzer's whole $179,000 paycheck.

As the Wall Street giant yesterday celebrated its fourth-straight year of record profits - despite a general wipeout at most banks - Goldman Sachs was also jubilant over the record bonuses it's handing out in early 2008.

Overall, Goldman will pay employees a total $20.19 billion in pay and bonuses, or an average $661,490, up nearly 23 percent from $16.46 billion a year ago.

While the average is only a statistical snapshot, the real bonus packages - to be distributed in the first quarter of next year - are equally impressive, ranging from around $3,000 for a mailroom clerk to $20 million for top bosses.

"It's not unusual for an administrative assistant or a secretary of a very senior person to get more than $200,000," said Alan Sklover, a compensation lawyer who represents Wall Street executives.

"There's a great value for someone who gets you on the plane in the middle of the night and plans your daily life," he said.

"The higher up the boss, the bigger the bonus for his support staff, which at Goldman Sachs is often paid by their bosses of out of their own bonuses."

With Goldman the envy of Wall Street as the only bank awarding any big bonuses, the formula of how the $12.1 billion pot of bonuses alone is distributed is based on two principles: favoritism, and how much profit your department generated, experts said.

A junior trader who helped Goldman keep ahead of the rest of Wall Street rivals could expect to get a bonus of between $500,000 and $2.2 million - on top of their regular pay. A more senior trader would get up to $3 million or more.

CEO Lloyd Blankfein is expected to reap up to $70 million in pay, stock and bonuses.

"Its hard not to be a Goldman executive and walk away a multi-millionaire," said Sklover.

Oil Price Speculation - Who do you believe?

For the past two years the Coltons Point Times has been investigating and raising the alarm about the federal rules changes that allowed oil futures to exist and then to be less regulated, that allowed electronic futures purchases from the futures exchanges, and that allowed electronic foreign purchasing of futures on American commodities markets.

We pointed out the failure of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to monitor and regulate the futures industry and the need to commit federal resources to investigating links between investment houses losing billions in sub prime mortgage markets and the same houses using alternative investment techniques to manipulate the multi-trillion dollar institutional funds and drive up the commodity prices.

In spite of denials from the financial analysts, government, Treasury and oil industry that such practices were being used, the CFTC finally launched an investigation in late May and on August 21 The Washington Post published an article saying evidence of widespread speculation possibly involving over 80% of the contracts sold on the New York Mercantile Exchange have been discovered in the preliminary investigation.

Of course the CFTC and Wall Street are saying The Washington Post is wrong but Wall Street has tried to cover up every scandal by the financial Dark Angels of Wall Street that stole blood money from American and world citizens including the schemes since 2000 resulting in about $35 billion in fines. As for the CTFC, if they were doing their job we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. But I love it, who do you want to believe, Wall Street and the CTFC or The Washington Post?

The same giant investment houses responsible for the sub prime disaster manage your money, the institutional funds of America. These are the mutual funds that target persion funds, endowments, and other high net worth entities and individuals. Institutional funds usually have lower operating costs and higher minimum investments than retail funds. Often their main objective is to reduce risk, so they invest in hundreds of different securities, which makes them among the most diversified funds available. They also do not tend to trade securities very often, so they are able to keep operating costs to a minimum. Although in the past investors typically needed at least $1 million in order to invest in an institutional fund, nowadays some discount brokers offer access to these funds for smaller amounts. (Definition from InvestorWords.com.)

A capital pool of up to $35 trillion to $70 trillion may be in these institutional funds. Now this includes your retirement, insurance, IRA, 401K, and even investments if you have deep pockets. Since you may be like me and have trouble grasping the size of a trillion dollars, let alone 70 trillion, just remember that the total size of the dreaded US National Debt is $9.6 trillion, meaning the institutional funds are a heck of a lot bigger than the total national debt.

This morning Becky Quick of CNBC, a young up and coming reporter and favorite of billionaire Warren Buffett did a three hour interview with Warren that should be required viewing for everyone in America and on Wall Street. This Midwestern born financial reporter was excellent while Buffett, in his typical low key Nebraska style offered wisdom so powerful that the stock market went up over 100 points and the oil prices dropped over $2 just during the time of his interview.

Stay tuned. As Warren Buffet, our favorite financial guru known as the Oracle of Omaha and the richest man in the world says, "You only find out whose been swimming naked when the tide goes out. Well we found out that Wall Street has been kind of a nudist beach. There has been one discovery after another of firms that either didn't know what they were doing or did things they shouldn't have knowingly."

Goldman Sachs Again Tries to Prop Up Oil Prices

Goldman Sachs massive NYC headquarters.

Today Goldman Sachs announced that oil prices would rise to $149.00 a barrel before the end of the year. The price is hovering around $112.00. Why is Goldman trying to push oil prices higher? Does it have anything to do with the fact Goldman is an equity owner in the oil futures market, is the stock broker for the ICE futures market, manages institutional funds with substantial oil investments, participates in energy swaps to help manipulate the oil prices, and has consistently used its position and analysts to influence the oil market?

Ever since the purchase of the London Oil Futures Market by ICE, the public offering of ICE stock managed by Goldman and the huge increase in institutional investor involvement in the oil futures market Goldman has been projecting major increases in oil prices. Goldman research activity seems to be driven more on profit potential than objective oil market analysis.

The following excerpts from several stories on Goldman over the past 9 months shows the incredible leadership position Goldman took in pushing the rapid rise in the crude oil price. Now that the price has dropped about $35 Goldman today made another push to drive prices back up. Do you think there is any connection between the fact a number of financial analysts downgraded Goldman this week to a sell status rather than a buy status, thus undercutting its financial value?

One might think the actions by Goldman are so reckless, such blatant conflicts of interest, and clearly concerted efforts to manipulate the market without disclosing the company ownership position in the market that it seems Goldman's might be in serious financial trouble. Do not be surprised if sub prime mortgage losses combined with reckless credit risks and mismanagement of the oil investments doesn't result in the collapse of Goldman Sachs in the imminent future. If oil prices continue to go down the Goldman organization may very well go down with it.

Goldman's famous philosophy of being "long term greedy" may have finally caught up with them. Goldman's was formed in 1869, the same year that Black Friday took place when speculators tried to corner the US gold market and destroy the US economy. It was also the year Rasputin, the Russian mystic, Nadezhda Krupskaya, wife of Soviet founder Lenin, and Mahatma Gandi were born. A very strange year indeed.

Coltons Point Times
June 2, 2008

The CFTC, Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was set up in 1974 to protect Americans from manipulations in the commodity markets. It was last updated in 2000 even though in 2006 a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said there was substantial evidence of price manipulation in the commodity oil futures markets and a gaping loophole in U.S. Regulations that would lead to further speculation and manipulation.

That was the same year the Administration allowed ICE, the new oil futures market owner in London to trade American oil futures in London. Oil prices were $59-60 per barrel then and since the gaping loophole in our regulation prices have more than doubled, meaning the price impact of speculation could be $60 per barrel today.

So Goldman Sachs represents ICE in securities offerings and was an original equity owner of ICE. The current Treasury Secretary was former head of Goldman Sachs. The current head of NYMEX, the New York Mercantile (Futures) Exchange whose contracts can be bought through ICE in London, is James Newsome who also sits on the Dubai Exchange, the third and last oil futures exchange in the world. Interestingly Newsome is a former chairman of the CTFC.

The current CTFC Global Markets Advisory Committee includes Newsome and Jeffrey Sprecher, Chairman and CEO of ICE, along with representatives of J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, UBS and Barclays among others. The CTFC Energy Market Advisory Committee includes Newsome and Sprecher from the futures exchanges along with Goldman Sachs, Shell Oil, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Brothers, J.P. Morgan, and others.

So the two key advisory committees to the CTFC contain many of the very firms that are under investigation by the CTFC and the largest investment houses, banks and oil companies of the world are the target. The five CTFC lawyers could spend decades searching for truth.

Why did Congress and the Administration refuse to act to close the huge CTFC regulatory loophole two years ago when it was identified? Why were no changes made in CTFC regulations to enable it to effectively stop oil price manipulations since Bush took office? Why does the Treasury Secretary ignore what may be massive oil price manipulations by the financial sector speculators? How can the CTFC investigate the largest and richest corporations in the world with five lawyers?

If Congress or the Administration have any sense they will assign all the investigative resources of the federal government to the CTFC investigation including the FBI, SEC, FTC and any intelligence service monitoring the world oil situation. If ever there was a need for a national security investigation this is it as our economy and the world economy are at risk. This could be the last chance for Bush to actually do something for the good of the people before his Administration becomes a target of the investigation.

And don’t forget these same financial and oil companies have already given $1.6 billion to the campaigns of our U.S. Senate, House and presidential candidates in this election year and another $1.6 billion will be given before November. Let’s hope $3 billion cannot buy the influence of Congress. They have also paid over $20 billion in fines for fraud and stock manipulations in recent years so such behavior may not be anything new.

Reuters News Wire
December 12, 2007

According to Reuters the most active investment bank in the energy markets, Goldman Sachs, released a new forecast today that said U.S. oil prices will head higher in the coming year. The bank also expects the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) to restrict crude oil production levels, even though global demand may rise. Goldman is forecasting U.S. crude oil to cost an average of $95 a barrel in 2008, up $10 from a previous projection. Analysts at the bank suggested that the price could even reach $105 by this time next year. The new price forecast for 2008 is 7% higher than the most bullish projection among 37 analysts recently polled by Reuters.


Bloomberg News
Published: May 16, 2008

New York: Crude oil futures rose above $127 a barrel Friday for the first time, leading other commodities higher, after Goldman Sachs raised its forecast on speculation that Chinese diesel purchases would strain supplies.

Goldman raised its price outlook for the second half of this year to $141 a barrel, from $107, citing supply constraints. China may increase fuel imports to generate power after a May 12 earthquake. Oil and other commodities, like gold and platinum, also surged on the falling dollar.

"We can blame Goldman again," said Nauman Barakat, senior vice president of global energy futures at Macquarie Futures USA in New York. "In March 2005 they predicted that prices would rise dramatically, and they did. Prices jumped to the $125 level after another Goldman report less than two weeks ago. At this point nobody wants to bet against Goldman."

Crude oil for June delivery rose $3.13, or 2.5 percent, to $127.25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract surged to $127.82, the highest since trading began in 1983. Prices have doubled in the past year.


New York Times
By Louis Story
Published: May 21, 2008

Arjun N. Murti remembers the pain of the oil shocks of the 1970s. But he is bracing for something far worse now: He foresees a “super spike” — a price surge that will soon drive crude oil to $200 a barrel.

Arjun Murti at Goldman Sachs studied the 1970s’ oil spikes. One had drivers lined up at a gas station in San Jose, Calif., in 1974.

Mr. Murti, who has a bit of a green streak, is not bothered much by the prospect of even higher oil prices, figuring it might finally prompt America to become more energy efficient.

An analyst at Goldman Sachs, Mr. Murti has become the talk of the oil market by issuing one sensational forecast after another. A few years ago, rivals scoffed when he predicted oil would breach $100 a barrel. Few are laughing now. Oil shattered yet another record on Tuesday, touching $129.60 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gas at $4 a gallon is arriving just in time for those long summer drives.


Reuters News Service
June 9, 2008

Kuala Lumpur: Oil prices are likely to hit $150 a barrel this summer season, the global head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs said on 9 June, as tighter supplies outweigh weakening demand.

“I would suggest that the likelihood of that happening sooner has increased tremendously ... sometime in summer,” Jeffrey Currie told an oil and gas conference in the Malaysian capital, referring to oil at $150 a barrel.

Goldman Sachs, the most active investment bank in energy markets and one of the first to point to triple-digit oil more than two years ago — a once unthinkable level — said last month oil could shoot up to $200 within the next two years as part of a “super spike.”

Forecasts that oil could head towards $150 and above have multiplied over the past month as prices broke through several records, the latest being last Friday, when oil soared more than $11 a barrel on Friday, its biggest one-day gain ever.

Oil hit an all-time high of $139.12 on 6 June on the back of a weak US dollar and mounting tensions between Israel and Iran.

Goldman Sachs forecast almost a month ago that US crude would average $141 a barrel in the second half of 2008, up from a previous projection of $107, due to tight supplies.


Al Jazeera
UPDATED ON:Saturday, July 12, 2008
With oil prices having more than doubled over the last 12 months, various reasons are being cited for the price increases.

Adhip Chaudhuri, a visiting professor of economics at Georgetown University's campus in Doha, Qatar, explains the cause and effect of high oil prices.

Is the increase in oil prices plunging the global economy into stagflation?

The United States is, for all practical purposes, in a recession. The European Union's growth rates are being revised downwards below 2 per cent. The shine is coming off even China, India and Korea.
The recessions and the low growth rates represent stagnation and hence connote the 'stag' part of "stagflation", and high oil prices have a lot do with it.

Oil prices, together with simultaneous, huge increases in food prices, have increased worldwide inflation rates. Both China and India now have high inflation rates with China at almost 8 per cent and India at 11 per cent. The rising inflation is the "flation" part of "stagflation".

The worse thing about stagflation is that the central banks find themselves in a dilemma. If they lowered interest rates to spur growth, they would raise inflationary expectations. On the other hand, if they fought inflation by raising interest rates, the reduction in money supply will have contractionary effects on the GDPs of their countries.

For policymakers stagflation is a "lose - lose" situation.

Is the growth in world demand for oil the main reason?

Demand is one part of what the money market calls "fundamentals". The other is, of course, supply. In the opinion of the Bush administration, and the majority of the Wall Street establishment in the US, demand is the principal reason why oil prices are going up astronomically. However, this point of view does not correspond to facts.

Consider first the oft-mentioned demand from "China and India" which is frequently put forward as the principal reason why oil prices are going up.

According to official statistics published by the United States government, China consumed an additional 377,000 barrels of oil per day during 2007.

However, during the same time period Germany and Japan together decreased their consumption by 380,000, and hence, the net effect of China’s increased consumption is zero.

Even if China doubled its consumption in the first half of 2008, say to stockpile for the Olympics, the increment would be a drop in the bucket of total world consumption of 86 million barrels per day.
The same is true of India. It increased consumption by only 150,000 barrels per day during 2007, which is virtually indiscernible in the total world demand.

Notice also that the sum of additional consumption from "China and India" barely exceeds 500,000 barrels, an amount that Saudi Arabia has promised to increase production by.

Finally, the US has projected that the net increase in oil consumption during 2008 will increase by one million barrels per day, which is about 1.1 per cent. How can such a small increase in demand increase oil prices by 100 per cent between July 2007 and July 2008?

What is happening with the supply of oil?

The supply of crude oil has been remarkably stagnant over the last three years. According to official US statistics, the production of crude worldwide was 84.63 million barrels per day in 2005, and it was 84.55 million barrels per day in 2007. Thus, even small increases in demand over the last three years have put upward pressures on prices.

The near-term supply situation, according to the International Energy Agency, is not all that bad. Saudi Arabia will be adding to their capacity, deepwater Nigerian production will start in 2008, and Iraqi production will see an increase. If one added up the growth in all forms of energy, namely crude oil, natural gas, and biofuels, according to IEA there should be an increase in supply capacity of 1.5 million barrels during 2008.

Notice that amount of increase in supply is greater than the projected increase in demand for 2008 amounting to 1 million barrels per day. The supply projection for 2009 is even better. The supply capacity is expected to increase by 2.5 million barrels, which will outstrip the growth in demand comfortably.

It is the very short-term supply disruptions which seem to be more important for an increase in oil prices. Real disruptions may come from labour strikes in Venezuela, hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico, and rebel attacks in Nigeria. Given that the demand and supply situation is so tight, even the slightest of bad news can increase the price of oil in the futures and spot markets noticeably.

Can the weak dollar be blamed for high oil prices?

Asserting that the "weak dollar" is a significant reason behind the rise in oil prices has become as ritualistic as asserting that "China and India" are the cause. And yet, the forces which determine the foreign exchange value of the dollar against the euro, the yen, or the pound are distinctively different from those that determine the price of oil.

There is, however, one logical argument which can sometimes provide a sufficient explanation as to why a depreciating dollar and increasing oil prices are inversely related - If the dollar weakens against the euro, the ability of the oil-exporting countries to buy European goods will decline because their oil exports are denominated in dollars.

The Europeans, at the same time, will be able to pay the higher dollar prices of oil because the euro has appreciated. Clearly, to keep their purchasing power over European goods constant, the oil-exporting countries need an increase in oil price approximately equal to the depreciation of the dollar.

However, for the first six months of 2008 the dollar has depreciated against the euro by only 7.5 per cent, while oil prices have gone up by about 50 per cent.

Surely, both Americans and Europeans are paying much higher prices for oil than can be explained by a "weak dollar".

Is speculation, then, a major factor?

The energy ministers of Saudi Arabia and Qatar asserted for the first time in public at the recent Jeddah meeting of major oil producing and consuming nations, that speculation in the oil futures markets was the most important reason why current oil prices are going up.

The United States Senate has been holding hearings in front of several committees since 2006 on the lack of regulation and oversight by the official Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) one of the two locations for oil futures.

In a recent testimony to the Senate, a hedge fund trader presented data to show that outstanding speculative positions in all commodities futures has reached $250 billion by March 2008, as compared to only $13 billion at the end of 2003.

As far as speculation specifically in oil futures is concerned, representative Bart Stupak (Democrat-Michigan), the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, announced recently that 71 per cent of all oil futures were owned by institutional investors.

The institutional investors, which consist of but is not confined to state
pension funds and university endowments from the United States, have been pouring funds into indexed commodity funds as part of a strategy of portfolio diversification.

The traditional assets, in which they would have otherwise invested in, namely stocks and bonds, have been yielding negative returns after inflation.

These investors can buy futures contracts with only a 5 per cent margin down payment. In addition the regulatory environment is very slack, filled with loopholes which bypass whatever few regulations that are on the books.

While there are dollar limits to positions that the institutional investors might take in the NYMEX, they are allowed to conduct "swaps" with the investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, and thereby manage to roll over their "buy" positions. This way they never have to take physical possession of the oil that they put in "buy" orders for.

If speculation is what is driving oil prices up, then it stands to reason that such high prices should lead to an excess supply of crude in the world. There are signs that such an excess supply is indeed building up, albeit slowly, much like the way the excess supply of housing emerged in the United States.

Fuel consumption has declined in the US sharply. We have already noted that oil consumption in Japan and Germany are actually decreasing.

Consumers in China and India have been insulated from the high world prices of oil until very recently with domestic subsidies. However, China has raised the prices of various petroleum products amounting to an average increase of 18 per cent, and so has India, by 13 per cent. The decrease in the demand for oil will start strengthening soon.

The biggest argument for speculation to be the single-most important cause for oil price increases in 2008 is: What else could have doubled the price of oil in one year?

The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Al Jazeera.


CNN Money
August 13, 2008

Financials sell off

"The financials [are] really what sold off," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jefferies & Co. Merrill Lynch's (MER) downgrades of several investment banks put the sector under selling pressure, Hogan said.

Merrill Lynch analyst Guy Moszkowski downgraded on Wednesday Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group (GS) and Lehman Brothers Holdings to underperform, according to media reports. Moszkowski also lowered Morgan Stanley's (MS) rating to neutral.


SAM NELSON
Reuters
August 20, 2008 at 11:51 AM EDT

Grains and soy also found support from firm crude oil markets following an optimistic forecast for crude oil prices from big index fund Goldman Sachs.

“The weather was supportive, plus Goldman reiterated their forecast for $149 dollar a barrel crude oil by the end of the year,” Mr. Sernatinger said.

The outlook from Goldman was well above Wednesday's price for New York crude oil futures prices of around $115 per barrel.


A Goldman Puff Piece

Goldman Sachs provides full service commodity risk management to commercial, sovereign and investor customers worldwide. Our commodities teams have extensive physical and financial experience in power, weather, natural gas, liquefied natural gas, natural gas liquids, crude oil and refined products as well as coal, emissions and precious and base metals. Our capabilities include:

Delivering the experience of over 220 professionals around the world, with offices in New York, Calgary, Houston, London, Sydney (via Goldman Sachs JBWere venture), Singapore and Tokyo.

Offering innovative risk management to our corporate clients and financial investors, from hedge funds to institutions to private equity.

etc., etc.

Isn't it ironic that of all the articles mentioned the closest one to the truth is the Al Jeerza, the Arab news service interview which is the only media to zero in on the impact of financial manipulation in the price of oil?