Thursday, June 19, 2008

For the Record with Michael Greenberger

Many say that Goldman Sachs & Co. and Morgan Stanley are primary traders on the principal market outside of direct U.S. supervision, the Intercontinental Exchange, otherwise known as ICE....Economists and industrial energy consumers suggest that the price of a barrel of crude oil could be anywhere from 25 percent to 100 percent in excess of what supply-demand market fundamentals would dictate. For example, OPEC has recently said that a barrel of crude should not be in excess of $70....Thirty percent of the U.S. futures trading in United States-delivered West Texas Intermediate crude oil contracts is conducted by the Intercontinental Exchange. Despite the fact that that exchange is owned by an Atlanta-based corporation with trade-matching engines in Chicago, the CFTC [Commodity Futures Trading Commission] insists that it (ICE) should be regulated by the United Kingdom....To the extent that the Intercontinental Exchange operates outside of U.S. limits and controls on speculation, there is very substantial evidence suggesting that United States futures trading on that exchange is akin to the unregulated trading in U.S. stocks in the 1920s. That comparison is aided by the fact that huge positions in these markets can be obtained by speculators with less than 10 percent margin--Former Director of CFTC Division of Trading, interviewed by McClatchy News 6/17/08