Anyone ever wonder how it is that the big oil monopolies like Shell, Exxon and BP are able to report ever-escalating record profits - even as the world economy is crashing and burning around them?
Here's a hint -- it's not all that different from how the banks are able to do the very same magic profit act and continue shelling out big bonuses to their CEO's and execs at the same time they were begging hat in hand for taxpayers to bail them out.
Observe:
Oil markets fall under the suspicion of price-fixing on a global scale
|From the print edition
IT IS a lesson of the past five years that benchmarks in unregulated markets can fall victim to the incentives they create. Subprime mortgages bundled into securities often won high scores from ratings agencies that stood to profit in a busy market. The London Interbank Offered Rate, LIBOR, was sometimes underestimated by banks which were cast in a healthier light by lower interest rates. Has something similar been going on in energy?
That is the suspicion after a series of raids on May 14th by the European Commission’s competition authorities. The commission declared that it feared oil companies had “colluded” to distort benchmark prices for crude, oil products and biofuels.
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21578108-oil-markets-fall-under-suspicion-price-fixing-global-scale-libor
It truly makes The Gadfly contemplate the question of whether there are any honest business people left in this fucking world any more.
Also - The Gadfly is not holding his breath that the GOP Congress might find time on their Obama ratfucking itinerary to investigate a valid scandal like this.
----TFG
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