I have moved my blog to http://rogerbell.blogspot.com/. Please visit me there.

I am moving my blog over to Blogger at http://rogerbell.blogspot.com/. So this is moving day. I will keep this blog in place until Vox offers us a backup feature. Then I can import my posts over to the new blog. Thanks to all my friends here. Hope you will come visit me. It's just the Internet, you know. <big grin>

Most people with half a brain already instinctively knew this, but for those who want just the facts, here ya go. Trading futures is a risky business on a huge scale. Instead of all the fun you might have going to Las Vegas or Atlantic City, you could just lose your money sitting at your desk.

Of course betting on commodities strikes me as perverse, since peoples' lives depend on food and energy.

Study links oil prices to investor speculation

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer Wed Sep 10, 1:03 PM ET

Speculation by large investors — and not supply and demand for oil — were a primary reason for the surge in oil prices during the first half of the year and the more recent price declines, an independent study concluded Wednesday.

The report by Masters Capital Management said investors poured $60 billion into oil futures markets during the first five months of the year as oil prices soared from $95 a barrel in January to $145 a barrel by July.

Since then, these investors have withdrawn $39 billion from those markets as prices have retreated dramatically, the report said. Oil traded at about $102 a barrel Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"We have clear evidence the fund flow pushed prices up and the fund flow pushed prices down," said Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management, calling the amount of money moving into oil futures markets by large institutional investors in the early part of the year "way off the scale."

Masters said its analysis shows investors "began a massive stampede for the exits" on July 15 and that this caused the price decline.

"These large financial players have become the primary source of the dramatic and damaging volatility seen in oil prices," concluded the report.

The report was released Wednesday by House and Senate sponsors of bills to put additional curbs on oil market speculation and comes in advance of a report on oil market speculation expected possibly this week by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. The commission regulates commodity markets.

Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., a sponsor of an anti-speculation bill, said the Masters report challenges CFTC claims to date that supply and demand forces — and not excessive speculation — has driven up oil prices.

"This analysis illustrates that when oil speculators poured large amounts of speculative money into oil markets, prices skyrocketed just as they were hoping ... And when the speculative money got pulled out, prices tumbled," she said.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he wants to know "how oil speculators were able to drive prices up and down while the CFTC was asleep at the switch."

An interagency task force, led by the CFTC, concluded in an interim report last July that "fundamental supply and demand factors" influence the oil markets and that the data "does not support the proposition that speculative activity has systematically driven changes in oil prices."

Senate critics of the regulatory agency charged that report was based in flawed evidence.

"The CFTC has its head in the sand," said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., chairman of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee.

Stupak said the Masters report shows that that oil prices soared when speculators poured money into future markets even as the federal Energy Information Administration was forecasting supply would exceed demand.

Congress for months has been considering various measures aimed at curbing oil market speculation, but those efforts have been thwarted amid disputes over other energy issues from taxing oil companies to new offshore drilling.

Legislation before the Senate would put limits on the amount of oil certain traders, interested only in speculation, would be allowed to purchase in futures markets and give new authorities and staff to the CFTC to regulate oil markets.

(This version CORRECTS SUBS 3rd graf to correct price, $102 sted $1.02. Moving on general news and financial services.)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080910/ap_on_go_co/oil_speculation

In case you missed this. From Media Matters:

As the cable news channels began filling up valuable airtime Monday with discussions of the appropriateness of a New Yorker cover depicting Barack Obama burning an American flag in the Oval Office, under a portrait of Osama bin Laden, another important story was largely ignored by the mainstream media - that of a veteran media personality injecting racially divisive stereotypes into a discussion of Sen. Obama.

This weekend on The McLaughlin Group, the program's host, John McLaughlin, asserted that Obama "fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside."

McLaughlin: "Question: Does it frost Jackson, Jesse Jackson, that someone like Obama, who fits the stereotype blacks once labeled as an Oreo -- a black on the outside, a white on the inside -- that an Oreo should be the beneficiary of the long civil rights struggle which Jesse Jackson spent his lifetime fighting for?"

Call John McLaughlin and demand he apologize on-air during next week's broadcast.

McLaughlin's statement was so obviously out of touch and inappropriate that two members of the McLaughlin panel refuted the basic premise. Panelist and Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow Peter Beinart said: "Who knows what Jesse Jackson is thinking? But that's a completely unfair depiction of Barack Obama."

Later in the discussion, Michelle Bernard, president of the Independent Women's Forum, said: "I want to go back to the point you made about whether or not Obama is an Oreo, because if Barack Obama is an Oreo, then every member of this generation of African-Americans is an Oreo, because we stand on the shoulders of the people who fought for our rights."

Call John McLaughlin and demand he apologize on-air during next week's broadcast.

The all-important weekend political talk shows set the agenda for our nation's newsrooms and the acceptable terms of our public discourse -- McLaughlin's comments weren't just offensive, they were a relic of politics past.

I hope you will take a moment and make your voice heard on this important issue.

This from the Assoicated Press:

Another tactic Obama employs is to use McCain's words against him. He reads them aloud, pauses dramatically and chuckles with the crowd before making his point.

"Sen. McCain said, 'Our dangerous dependence on foreign oil has been 30 years in the making, and was caused by the failure of politicians in Washington to think long-term about the future of the country,'" Obama said Friday in Dayton, Ohio.

"I couldn't agree more," Obama said. Then, smiling and in an incredulous tone, he added: "The only problem is that out of those 30 years, Sen. McCain was in Washington for 26 of them!" The crowd whooped and hollered.

Obama also is taking full advantage of the openings McCain presents.

Shortly after a McCain economic adviser dubbed the United States "a nation of whiners" in a "mental recession," Obama took to the stage in Fairfax, Va., on Thursday and used Phil Gramm's comments to portray McCain as out of touch.

"Let's be clear. This economic downturn is not in your head. It isn't whining to ask government to step in and give families some relief!" Obama said. Mixing humor with an attack, Obama added: "America already has one Dr. Phil. We don't need another one when it comes to the economy!"

This audience ate up Obama's criticism of McCain — just like his crowds do every day.

In an interview with the Washington Times, McCain's top economic adviser Phil Gramm tells America to suck it up and stop complaining about the economy:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

Are all of you whinning when you buy groceries and gas for your family? Well, stop it. McCain doesn't like it.

• In 2004 41.4% of Georgia voters voted for Obama John Kerry. Those voters will go Obama.

• Most of the newly registered will vote Obama. The state Democrats are working hard to register new voters and get them to the polls.
  

• Most independents will vote Obama.

• At least 5% of the GOP will vote for Georgian (Libertarian Party Candidate) Bob Barr or stay home.

• Then there are the Obamacans...Republicans for Obama.
  

It’ll be close. We have our right wingnuts here who want you to believe it can't happen. Who are they trying to fool? Themselves maybe.

There Bush and those Republicans go again. Go after seniors on fixed incomes. Smart move guys. Say goodbye soon.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat, accused Republicans of putting seniors and military families at risk by siding with President Bush against a measure to prevent Medicare cuts.

Durbin, D-Ill., used a Saturday national radio address to call on Republicans to back the bill to stave off a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors.

It passed the House overwhelmingly last week in defiance of Bush's threat to veto it, but it fell just one vote short of the 60 it needed to advance in the Senate, with most Republicans voting "no."

"It's time for the Republican senators who are filibustering this measure to put our seniors and our military families ahead of private insurance companies and let the Senate pass this bill as soon as possible," Durbin said.

Bush and Senate Republicans don't like the bill because it includes offsetting cuts to insurance companies that use Medicare money to offer private health care coverage to about 20 percent of seniors. [AP]