Put the Blame for Gas Prices where it Belongs-The Koch Brothers! $7.5 billion to $50 billion in 7 yr

[RepublicansRZombies]

Oil derivatives market started by Koch, then used by Koch to steal billions from Americans. This is the reason they have so much money now for buying our elections.


Forbes: Koch Brothers Now Worth $50 Billion | Forbes estimates that Tea Party petrochemical scions Charles and David Koch have a fortune of $25 billion each, making them the fourth richest Americans, behind only Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and Larry Ellison. Their combined wealth of $50 billion is exceeded only by the Microsoft founder’s $59 billion fortune. Buoyed by aggressive speculative trading on volatile energy markets, the Koch brothers accumulated $15 billion in wealth since March 2010, a 43 percent increase.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/09/21/324969/forbes-koch-brothers-now-worth-50-billion/?mobile=nc


– October 6, 1986: First oil derivative is introduced to Wall Street by traders at Koch. Koch Industries executive Lawrence Kitchen devised the “first ever oil-indexed price swap between Koch Industries and Chase Manhattan Bank.” At the time, such derivatives had been limited to currency markets, and the shift of creating a synthetic financial instrument based on the value of crude oil was revolutionary. For an agreed-upon period, an oil swap is a contract where one party makes payments based on a fixed oil price, and the other party makes payments back based on the changing spot price of oil. In July of 2009, EnergyRisk magazine, a publication for commodity traders, posted a piece exploring the very first oil derivatives and Koch’s role in developing them.

– 1990-1992: Koch, along with several oil companies and Wall Street speculators, form a coalition lobbying group to deregulate oil speculation. A coalition called “The Energy Group” is organized to press the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to allow oil derivatives to be traded off the NYMEX or any other regulated exchange. Participants in the coalition include Koch, Enron, Phibro (a powerful commodity speculator firm recently sold from Citigroup to Occidental Petroleum), J. Aron & Co (a commodity trading division of Goldman Sachs), BP, and other companies.

– January 21, 1993. Wendy Gramm makes first major move to deregulate oil speculation. “On the final day of the Bush administration, January 21, 1993, Wendy Gramm … approved the rule exempting key energy futures contracts from government regulation and returned a great chunk of the energy market to the grand old days of unregulated futures trading,” writes author Antonia Juhasz in the book Tyranny of Oil. The move mirrored the demands made by Koch’s lobbying coalition, The Energy Group. Gramm, the wife of then-Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), leaves the Commodity Futues Trading Commission and a month later joins the board of directors of Enron.

– December 12, 2000: Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX), after being lobbied by Koch and Enron, creates the infamous “Enron Loophole” vastly deregulating the oil speculation market. On the night of December 12, 2000, Gramm attaches a 262-page amendment to the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, which is then attached to an omnibus spending bill that is signed into law by President Clinton before leaving office. The Gramm amendment, which received absolutely no public scrutiny or committee hearings, radically expands and codifies the energy deregulation agenda began by Gramm’s wife during the first Bush administration.

http://thinkprogress.org/report/koch-oil-speculation/?mobile=nc



And the 1%ers media is blaming Obama? Perhaps because they are bought and paid for by Koch with our money they have been pilfering?

[RepublicansRZombies]

1. so everyone here thinks it's Obama's fault?

The 1%ers media gets a lot of money from the Koch Brothers, way more than from US little people. Who are they going to answer to?

It we don't spread the truth about what is really going on, who will?

[Silver Swan]

2. Thank you for this.

My spouse just asked me why gasoline prices had gone up after falling for a couple of weeks.

I jokingly replied, that's the Koch brothers' October surprise.

But that might be the truth.

[jsr]

3. Great article

[RepublicansRZombies]

4. Can we pull an October Surprise on the Koch Brothers?

What is our October Surprise?