Business must be slow and circulation down at Barron's. What better way to stimulate newsprint distribution than a blazoned scaremonger front page headline as in this past weekend's edition, "Get Ready For $150 Oil". And then, not to shatter our faith in the free market system, it goes on to provide us with a dissertation on oil prices, parading a market oriented argumentation basing its projections on a lexicon of pure market driven presumptions, thereby anointing the oil market universe as being fully responsive to supply and demand.
Conveniently overlooked are such comments by ExxonMobil Chairman Rex Tillerson that the current price of oil should be no higher than $60 to $70 a barrel, attributing the difference to speculation and trading on the commodity exchanges (please see "Are our leaders Hearing ExxonMobil CEO Ttllerson?"). The words 'speculation' or 'manipulation' play no role in Barron's exercise of beneficent 'innocence', beneficent to the oil interests who want this to be exactly what they want us to hear and believe. Thereby they prepare us to accept unquestioningly the coming of $150/bbl oil as being a normal evolution of the oil market so that they, the oiligopoly, can enrich themselves unchallenged on the backs of the world's masses, rich and poor alike. Preparing us to accept the mantra that if prices do reach $150/bbl, well you see its all about rising demand and limited supply -- so relax and don't pick on the speculators, nor a casino system that encourages speculators. As to manipulation, well not to worry, the CFTC continues to be asleep at the switch.
Embedded in the article is the canard that world oil has or is reaching its maximum oil production capability. Praising Saudi Arabia for claiming it raised their production to 10 million barrels a day with oil prices ranging around $100/bbl. No mention is made that Saudi production capacity is now some 12.5 million barrels/day and overlooking the constant inconsistencies between what they say and do.
The article goes on to belittle the impact of releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve without any cognizance of the immediate impact it has had on speculators and the casino betting strategies of the Bank Holding Companies such as Morgan Stanly, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs -- by loading up 200,000 ton oil tankers with millions of barrels of oil with monies of their depositors insured by government agencies such as the F.D.I.C., and funds accessed virtually without cost at the Fed Discount window; then keeping these fully loaded tankers at sea for months at a time in confident knowledge that the price would only go higher... yet now, giving them at least a moment of hesitation before putting their next bets on the roulette wheel.
Most depressing is that the article could not have been crafted better by the best flaks in the oil industry to make us impervious to the willful distortion of oil prices orchestrated by oil interests, including of course OPEC, the speculators and those with the volition to manipulate the oil market, all in collusion to rape the consuming public.
We hope Barron's has sold a few extra papers.