For around 5 years now, I have been reading stories and telling folks about these NYMEX traitors and how they falsely drive prices.  A few listened and believed.  A few even got it after I started talking about it on the radio.  OK, summer driving, 4th of July, gas in plentiful demand, it goes up…no other reason but the summer driving season, and they couldn’t figure out why they didn’t sell a ton.  Lemme see, they drove truckers out of business, contributed singularly to the economy’s decline, and forced people to stop traveling or buy more fuel efficient vehicles.  Now they’re beating this economic situation as a reason that they’re losing money instead of taking profits on the NYMEX.  While you read this post from Bloomberg, think about this.  Our illustrious Congress is contemplating a GPS system in new cars to tax you per mile because they can’t get enough revenue from you because you’re not buying gas.  Excuse me, isn’t that what they said they wanted?  Now that the US is using less gas, they’re crying in their Wheaties.  Do you think those highly paid idiots in New York and Washington get the gist of this statement – If you pee against the wind, it causes yellow shoe strings….

Oil Caps the Biggest Weekly Fall Since January on Demand Drop

By Mark Shenk

July 10 (Bloomberg) — Crude oil fell, capping its biggest weekly decline since January, on concern the global recession will curb energy consumption and as a stronger dollar reduced demand for commodities.

Oil has plunged 10 percent this week on speculation fuel use in the U.S., the biggest energy-using nation, will drop. The greenback has risen 0.7 percent against most major currencies since the beginning of the month.

“Prices surged higher on green shoots of an economic revival, but a deeper look shows that the situation is still poor,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, a vice president for energy at MF Global Ltd. in New York. “It’s hard to make a case for a revival of demand anytime soon.”

Crude oil for August delivery fell 52 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $59.89 a barrel at 2:55 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest settlement since May 19. Oil has dropped 59 percent from a record $147.27 a barrel reached on July 11, 2008.

Gasoline for August delivery slipped 1.33 cents, or 0.8 percent, to end the session at $1.6505 a gallon in New York. The contract declined to $1.6241 yesterday, the lowest intraday price since May 7.

“I think we are heading for $55,” said Daniel Flynn, a broker at PFGBest, a Chicago-based brokerage. “There’s evidence that the economy will be slow to recover. There’s nothing out there now to propel the market higher.”

Confidence among U.S. consumers fell more than forecast this month. The Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment decreased to 64.6, the lowest since March, from 70.8 in June. The index averaged 89.2 during the expansion that began in late 2001 and ended in December 2007.

Global Consumption

Worldwide consumption of crude oil will increase by 1.4 million barrels, or 1.7 percent, to 85.2 million barrels a day next year, the International Energy Agency said today in its first monthly report to include a forecast for 2010.

The International Monetary Fund, in an outlook released this week, estimated that the world economy will expand by 2.5 percent in 2010. The IEA said its 2010 view may remain “broadly unchanged” once it includes the latest IMF forecast. The IEA used the fund’s April projection of 1.9 percent growth when preparing today’s report.

“The IEA has made a pretty brave forecast,” said Adam Sieminski, the chief energy economist at Deutsche Bank AG in Washington. “There are doubts about how realistic these demand projections are given the rate of economic growth. Global growth has averaged 3.5 percent in the recent decades, so 2.5 percent growth is nothing to write home about.”

Rising Stockpiles

Crude oil and fuel stockpiles in the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rose to 2.77 billion barrels in May, about 7 percent more than last year’s level, according to the IEA. The Paris-based OECD is composed of 30 industrialized countries.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced on July 7 that it may clamp down on oil and natural-gas price speculators by limiting the holdings of energy futures traders, including index and exchange-traded funds.

“Oil is getting it from all fronts,” said James Cordier, portfolio manager at OptionSellers.com in Tampa, Florida. “The economy is not rebounding anytime soon, the CFTC is nosing around in energy trading and possibly limiting contract sizes and the dollar is no longer the whipping boy.” Aww Shucks!

Dollar Climbs

The dollar advanced 0.5 percent to $1.3946 per euro from 1.402 yesterday. The U.S. currency also gained against the pound, Swiss franc and Swedish kronor.

Brent crude for August settlement declined 58 cents, or 0.9 percent, to end the session at $60.52 a barrel on London’s ICE Futures Europe exchange.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries increased production for a second month in June, straying further from its official quotas, the IEA report showed.

The 11 OPEC members bound by targets raised output to 26.2 million barrels a day. That lowers the group’s compliance rate with record supply cuts announced last year to 68 percent, compared with an estimate of 74 percent in last month’s report. The 11 members have a ceiling of 24.845 million barrels a day.

OPEC ministers are scheduled to discuss production targets at a Sept. 9 meeting in Vienna.

Oil may fall next week on speculation the global recession and payroll cuts will constrain demand, a Bloomberg News survey of analysts showed. Nineteen of 41 analysts surveyed, or 46 percent, said futures will decline. Nine expect the market will be little changed and 13 forecast that oil prices will rise.

Crude oil volume in electronic trading on the Nymex was 432,333 contracts as of 3:03 p.m. in New York. Volume totaled 568,577 contracts yesterday, 14 percent higher than the average over the past three months. Open interest was 1.16 million contracts yesterday. The exchange has a one-business-day delay in reporting open interest and full volume data.

Medvedev Shows Off Sample Coin of New ‘World Currency’ at G-8

By Lyubov Pronina

July 10 (Bloomberg) — Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a “united future world currency.”

“Here it is,” Medvedev told reporters today in L’Aquila, Italy, after a summit of the Group of Eight nations. “You can see it and touch it.”

The coin, which bears the words “unity in diversity,” was minted in Belgium and presented to the heads of G-8 delegations, Medvedev said.

The question of a supranational currency “concerns everyone now, even the mints,” Medvedev said. The test coin “means they’re getting ready. I think it’s a good sign that we understand how interdependent we are.”

Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the U.S. dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the G-20 meeting in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.

Bloomberg.com

Just as I thought of how bad Obamby is getting, this little dumpling from across the Pond comes in from the Independent.  It seems Prince Charles has gotten a few too many cockle burs in his plaid skirt again:

Just 96 months to save world, says Prince Charles

By Robert Verkaik

The price of capitalism and consumerism is just too high, he tells industrialists

Capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse, the Prince of Wales has warned in a grandstand speech which set out his concerns for the future of the planet.

The heir to the throne told an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James’s Palace last night that he had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world.

And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the “age of convenience” was over.

The Prince, who has spoken passionately about the environment before, said that if the world failed to heed his warnings then we all faced the “nightmare that for so many of us now looms on the horizon”.

Charles’s speech was described as his first attempt to present a coherent philosophy in which he placed the threat to the environment in the context of a failing economic system.

The Prince, who is advised by the leading environmentalists Jonathon Porritt and Tony Juniper, said that even the economist Adam Smith, father of modern capitalism, had been aware of the short-comings of unfettered materialism.

Delivering the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture, Charles said that without “coherent financial incentives and disincentives” we have just 96 months to avert “irretrievable climate and ecosystem collapse, and all that goes with it.”

Charles has recently courted controversy by intervening in planning disputes, most notably the battle over the Chelsea Barracks design in London. It is also known that he writes privately to ministers when he wishes to put his concerns on record.

Now, he seems more willing to embrace much wider political issues in a much more public forum.

He confided last night: “We face the dual challenges of a world view and an economic system that seem to have enormous shortcomings, together with an environmental crisis – including that of climate change – which threatens to engulf us all.”

Despite his attack on the materialism of the modern age, the Prince has been criticised for his own indulgences, including dozens of staff to run his homes and hundreds of thousands of pounds spent travelling around the world. While his private estates on the Duchy of Cornwall generate record profits his tax bill was lower than the year before.

Last night the Prince said: “But for all its achievements, our consumerist society comes at an enormous cost to the Earth and we must face up to the fact that the Earth cannot afford to support it. Just as our banking sector is struggling with its debts – and paradoxically also facing calls for a return to so-called ‘old-fashioned’, traditional banking – so Nature’s life-support systems are failing to cope with the debts we have built up there too.

“If we don’t face up to this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust. And no amount of quantitative easing will revive it.”

THE AGE OF DESPOTISM

July 10, 2009

Another great article and video from Chuck Baldwin. His guest and friend he references, Lt. Commander Cunningham was the author of the famous 29 Palms Survey in 1995 that asked Marines if they would serve under U.N. Command and also if they would fire on American citizens who resisted attempts to disarm them.

THE AGE OF      DESPOTISM
This past Independence Day weekend, my friend, LCDR (Retired) Guy Cunningham, delivered an outstanding address here in Pensacola, Florida, in which he said that America is now in “The Age of Perfidy.” He went on to say that our country is soon to enter “The Age of Despotism.” I candidly confess that I believe the retired Naval officer could be more right than we might want to admit.

Speaking of the UN, Commander Cunningham rightly assessed the international body to be a sinister organization that threatened the sovereignty and independence of the United States, and from which the US needed to withdraw. He also boldly stated that any and all treaties made with the UN should be immediately annulled.

It was Commander Cunningham’s statement that the United States is on the verge of despotism, however, that really grabbed my attention. If anyone should know the ins and outs of the science of freedom and oppression, it is Commander Cunningham. His research and analysis of history, both American and military, gives him a keen insight into the subject.

In supporting his ominous conclusion, Cunningham noted former President Bill Clinton’s introduction of PDD 25 (a Presidential Directive that is still in place), which reportedly authorizes the President to use and declare martial law at any time, for any reason. He reminded us of how the US military has been used several times for action on US soil.

The US military was used directly in the government attack against the Branch Davidians at the private residence of Mount Carmel outside Waco, Texas. The military was stationed outside Los Angeles, California, during the LA riots. The military was used in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. The military even patrolled the streets of the tiny town of Geneva, Alabama, after a man went on a short, albeit bloody, shooting spree.

Commander Cunningham also reminded us of how President George W. Bush virtually expunged Posse Comitatus and set the table for despotism and martial law by signing the USA Patriot Act into existence. As a result, we now have an entire Army division assigned to the American homeland, a first in US history. He noted that even FEMA has the authority to declare martial law.

The commander said further that his intelligence tells him that there are Muslim terrorists already in the United States who are planning to stage multi-city attacks, perhaps as early as this summer. He also expressed incredulity at the fact that our federal government certainly knows that these Muslim terrorists have been slipping across the southern border of the US for some time and there has been almost no attempt by any Presidential administration to stop them.

Commander Cunningham also expressed the fear that, should another attack occur within our country, the current administration would not hesitate to declare martial law, which would almost certainly include the confiscation of firearms. At that point, he said, America will have entered “The Age of Despotism.”

I think it prudent, at this point, to make note of the fact that it was the attempted confiscation of firearms by the British Crown that precipitated the “shot heard ’round the world” and the advent of America’s War for Independence. Until then, America’s founders were content to use peaceful means to petition British injuries and injustices. But when the Crown moved against their guns, the colonists resisted with violence, and there was no remedy but complete and permanent separation.

ChuckBaldwinLive.com