Posted on 07/24/2008 3:25:44 PM PDT by kellynla
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The government charged an oil trading firm Thursday with manipulating oil prices in the first complaint to be announced since the regulators began a new investigation into wrongdoings in the energy markets.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission accused Optiver Holding, two of its subsidiaries and three employees with manipulation and attempted manipulation of crude oil, heating oil and gasoline futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
"Optiver traders amassed large trading positions, then conducted trades in such a way to bully and hammer the markets," CFTC Acting Chairman Walt Lukken said at a press conference. "These charges go to the heart of the CFTC's core mission of detecting and rooting out illegal manipulation of the markets."
In May, under the backdrop of record oil prices and calls from legislators to crack down on speculative oil trading and market manipulation, the CFTC announced a wide-ranging probe into oil price manipulation. The agency says it has dozens of investigations ongoing.
The complaint filed Thursday names Bastiaan van Kempen, chief executive; Christopher Dowson, a head trader; and Randal Meijer, head of trading at an Optiver subsidiary.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
and what happens in that little space between the day session and the night session is meaningless.
It will be interesting to see what kind of a case the government can make here. I’m not convinced they’ve got what they think they do. I’m willing to listen.
Too bad they were not this quick to do their job when all those no doc loans devestated everything in its path.
I take that back.
They will screw this up anyway. It seems they just bring gasoline and matches to every problem anyway.
Get them bastards. They are evil.
Where’s Waldo? I mean Sorros. Is his furry hand in this?
Why? The Hunt Brothers were attempting to ‘corner’ the silver market. The price dropped rapidly thereafter and the Hunts lost a bundle.
Of course, there was the case of one man in particular who shorted the stock market prior to the ‘Great Crash’ in ‘29.
President Roosevelt felt he needed to have the stock markets regulated (to remove manipulation) and knew he needed to appoint a ‘dirty’ insider who knew the ropes (and the cheats): ‘Get me Kennedy,” he said. Good ‘ol Joe Kennedy, the man who shorted the stock market into a huge fortune.
Food for thought.
Exactly - nobody can corner the market on oil. This is a political witch hunt.
Let’s drill!
The cops need to call in the commodities desk at Goldman Sachs - they’ll find something there for sure.
Hunts, Silver $2.09 to $54 in 7 years.
GOt caught
Silver from $54 to just a tad over $10 /oz overnight.
CAn’t happen with oil they say.....
In essense, the Feds themselves are manipulating markets themselves by intimidating firms who trade.
He said that, due to B's signals that he would continue to lower interest rates, the speculators recognized that it would devalue the dollar. Therefore, they piled their money into oil and other commodities, as a hedge against the falling dollar.
All that money pushed the price of commodities up, as low interest rates expanded the housing bubble.
Now, due to high prices, demand for both oil and housing is falling, so prices are backing off.
He made sense to me. (And now some Freeper is going to beat me about the head and shoulders for thinking this made sense.):P
“I take that back.
They will screw this up anyway. It seems they just bring gasoline and matches to every problem anyway.”
Does that affect the price at the pump?
Yes, they will screw this up with gasoline and matches.
“It is impossible for one firm which is not GS to “bully” the market. The Feds know this. But they are too clever by half, and know that moves like this will scare many firms out of trading oil futures, and help push to price down.
In essense, the Feds themselves are manipulating markets themselves by intimidating firms who trade.”
Yes. Would this intimidation by the Feds come back and bite us on some other commodity or commodities in the future?
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