Posted by
Logical Party on Saturday, June 28, 2008 9:00:00 AM
The biggest beneficiaries of energy speculation are pension funds who are holding the American economy hostage to arbitrarily set rising oil prices by claiming reversal of the Senate’s decision to allow this unregulated practice will be detrimental to American’s pension portfolios.
This is the purest form of extortion by giving portfolio managers the ability to artificially inflate the value of crude oil under the theory that the high prices will give Americans a larger retirement nest egg, and it pits two segments of our population against one another: retirees and the ones nearing retirement, versus working class Americans in the beginning or middle of their careers that still have to make ends meet.
It is also Un-American and anti business. Stock trading is built upon the premise that one invests in the better good of a company, believing in their product or service, and predicting its positive growth in value as a going concern. If IBM increases in value, it is good for the stockholder, the firm, its employees and consumers. No one gets hurt as we do with commodities speculation, especially energy which currently has no rules to follow thanks to the Enron Loophole, and inflates the value of the cost of products both people and businesses rely on to conduct their lives.
We are hypnotically reinforced into thinking we need more and more for retirement, that pension funds have resorted to the “whatever works” mentality, rather than relying on altruistic investing on positive growth. They are the news drug dealers of this country leaving a wake of victims in their path, namely the working class.
Thus we have Pension interests pitted against working Americans, who now have to decrease the amount they send to their 401K or IRA because they can’t afford the higher cost of oil and all its collateral price increases in daily staples such as food that carries higher transportation costs. So the only people benefitting from higher crude oil prices are those who are retired or nearing retirement and have enough of a nest egg to absorb our new inflation, while working class Americans, who have seen their wages stagnate during the past eight years of global competition with third world countries, fall further behind in their quest to get by today.
This is the most perverse form of trading in that fund managers are betting not on their horse to finish win, place or show, but to come in last – the one with the highest costs. It’s about time Congress steps in and demands a return to trading in positive growth which is in Americans best interests as a whole.
David DiBello