In March of 2005, Goldman Sachs kicked off the oil speculation boom by releasing a report that "
Oil Could Spike to $105."
At the time oil was around $55 a barrel, already up considerably from $25 a barrel before the Iraq war (the second one)
surprisingly caused oil prices to spike.
[Interesting note: The first Iraq war is what made our current President his first millions as he sold his stock the same month his dad invaded Iraq and spiked oil
from $18 a barrel in July 1990 to $27 in August. After bankrupting his first company (aptly called Arbusto Energy),
in which he was partners with Salem Bin Laden (Osama’s Father) through James Bath (who also worked with BCCI who conducted the largest bank fraud in US history while laundering gun money for George I in the 80s), Junior merged Arbusto with Spectrum 7, became the CEO and bankrupted them. Spectrum 7 was then sold to Harken with the financial help of BCCI’s Kalid bin Mahfouz, who took over for Bin Laden on his death and bought 17% of Harken in exchange for the Bush bail-out
which ended up giving him 400,000 shares of Harken stock (Bush was investigated by the SEC but was cleared - how would he know his dad was going to invade Iraq?!?)...]
Anyway, so there was no way our President could have foreseen the impact that invading Iraq (again) would have on the American economy (or his family’s extensive oil holdings) but Goldman Sachs was on top of the situation as they were the largest trader of energy derivatives. Goldman’s 2005 report cited " Thin spare capacity in the energy supply chain, and long response times for bringing on supply additions, as well as robust demand in the United States and in developing heavyweights China and India, despite the recent rapid increase in energy costs."
Now that the mission has been accomplished at $105, Goldman (who has made record income on the massive increase in energy prices and energy trading even while losing their shirts on the other bubble, housing) has now upped the anti and is boosting their low-end range to $80 and says: "$200 a barrel could be a reality in the not-too-distant future in the case of a "major disruption"."
This report, released Monday morning by the same guy who was right about $105 (even though he said that would be a super-spike, not the norm)
, drove oil to $108 a barrel in Monday’s trading and knocked the markets right off their early morning recovery and sent them back towards the 1/22 lows.
What Goldman doesn’t explain though, is who is going to pay for this $200 a barrel oil? I pointed out to members of my site Monday afternoon that today’s $2 rise in oil prices will cost US consumers $280M next week. At 20M barrels a day of consumption, $200 a barrel oil would be $4Bn a day spent just on oil! That’s about $1Bn a day more than we’re paying now, $365Bn a year or double what Bush is dumping into the economy in order to shut us all up while oil goes over $105 a barrel while the dollar "super spikes" below 73.
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploa..._us_dollar.gif
That’s right, our own US dollar finished the day today at an all-time low of 72.96, down 40% since Jan 2002 so the joke is on OPEC, who is only getting $60 worth of our 2002 currency for their $100 barrels of oil. Unfortunately, the joke is also on us as that dollar you have in your pocket is worth just 60 cents while the average American is making LESS money than he did in 2002.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/6801..._editors_picks