The London offices of Shell, BP, Statoil and Platts, the world’s leading oil price reporting agency, were raided yesterday by European Commission inspectors, investigating allegations of collusion in price-fixing over the past 11 years.

After last year’s Libor scandal, these new allegations of price-fixing look set to be a further damning indictment (if ever that were needed) of capitalism and the unfettered greed of its corporations.

If the allegations are true, then it again shows how prices are based NOT on true cost, but on an arbitrary figure dreamed-up to give as much money to a selfish, spineless, avaricious few.

The price people pay for oil is based on a “benchmark” which is calculated by price reporting agencies based on data received from firms such as oil companies, banks and hedge funds, which all trade oil on a daily basis. It is these submissions which the EC suspect are possibly fraudulent.

A spokesman for the European Commission said:

“The commission has concerns that companies may have colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price reporting agency to manipulate the published prices for a number of oil and biofuel products.

Officials carried out unannounced inspections at the premises of several companies active in and providing services to crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels sectors.

Even small distortions of assessed prices may have a huge impact on the prices of crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels purchases purchases and sales, potentially harming final consumers.”

The price fixing of fuel just doesn’t hit drivers—everything that is dependent on road haulage is directly affected by such underhand collusion—food prices, heating, public transport costs—all are increased and the costs will always hit the poorest worst.

According to the Guardian, Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said:

the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

He demanded to know why the UK authorities had not taken action earlier and said he would ask questions of the British regulator in Parliament. “Why have we had to wait for Brussels to find out if British oil giants are ripping off British consumers?” he said. “The price of energy ripples right through our economy and really matters to every business and families.”

As yet, there is no fixed date for the conclusion of the EC investigation. Read the full story here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Why the Libor Scandal is the most important story in the world

 
Please spread far and wide, the sooner the public catches on to this story, the more likely it is that these bastards will do hard jail time instead of collecting $30 million dollar bonuses.

This is a make or break moment for the human race, it really is. Time for some heads to be put on sticks and paraded around lower Manhattan and the Hamptons.

There’s a larger version at Accounting Degree.net.

 
This is a guest editorial from Dangerous Minds reader Em, expanding on some pointed commentary he’s made elsewhere on this blog. Em—who’ll keep his last name to himself, thank you very much—works in the financial industry:

One day you’re going to arise from your habitual feast

To find yourself staring down the throat of the beast they call The Revolution

“They Call It Democracy”—Bruce Cockburn

When Bruce Cockburn sings these lines during a performance, his largely left-leaning audience will often cheer, apparently not comprehending that this is intended to be a cautionary tale. In They Call It Democracy, Bruce is informing the international 1% that time is running out, and that if they don’t use their disproportionately vast resources to reform and truly democratize access to goods and services and capital, then the 99% are going to lose faith in the system itself and eventually overthrow it. And Bruce is fully aware of the fact that The Beast isn’t well represented by romantic notions and Che Guevara T shirts. The Beast is often ugly and brutal and doesn’t always bring in something better. But by the time it comes to that, the 99% will be fully aware of the risks but just won’t give a shit anymore.

That’s why the LIBOR issue is so damned dangerous.

Back in 2009 I was working at a “Too Big To Fail Bank” on Canary Wharf in London, and during my lunch hour walked over to where LIBOR is set and took the above photo. (LIBOR is housed in that building on the left.) Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine, however, that the setting of this key rate upon which the price of mutual funds and derivative securities are indexed, could be easily manipulated by a tiny number of coked-up traders. Although I worked on the retail half of that TBTF Bank, for one summer, I did actually utilize the famous Ho-Lee model to analyze derivative securities for volatility risk. So I knew enough about LIBOR to understand that it is in some ways as important as the prime interest rate, set by the Fed. But I naively assumed that the US and UK governments, along with the Big Banks, would tightly control the LIBOR process because a loss-of-faith in LIBOR could set international markets into chaos.

And that’s the last thing we anyone really wants right now. Right?

But I was wrong. And who knew? Who knew LIBOR could be impacted by such a slipshod and unregulated process? What the hell? Conflicts of interest seem to be practically built into the system, but it only hands out benefits to those in special positions of power. And if I, a banker, can begin to view the system as this deeply corrupt, how will rank-and-file investors feel? Will they put their money into real estate? Hide it in mattresses? That can only accelerate a possible collapse or, worse yet, a revolution.

Revolution? Hah. No one in the US would seriously consider a socialist much less a communist revolution. But those aren’t the only kinds of revolution. The Islamic revolution in Iran in 1979 proves to us that even moderate and reasonably urbane and clever people will sometimes simply choose the devil they don’t know when the Devil they do know (in that case the Shah) has proven beyond all doubt that his system won’t work for most people by design. On purpose. Like the American version of capitalism.

And is that what we really want? OK, maybe in the US we won’t have an Islamic revolution. But who knows what our idiotic science-denying masses might come up with? Maybe the Tea Party was just a first try and all that’s needed now is some less idiotic reformulation that appeals to a wider audience. And remember, it doesn’t have to work in reality, it just has to be able to convince enough people that it might or could be better than the corrupt and closed system most people believe operates today. All it has to do is make a few promises while providing a sort of “purity code” that allows the rank-and-file to throw off outside influence. And for all of its bloodshed and hostages, the Iranian revolution at least returned Iran’s destiny back into the hands of the Iranians, rather than the US and UK-backed torturous regime that was impoverishing practically everybody outside a tiny cabal of the well-connected. And if the Iranians can do it (ie, create a populist strain of Politcal Islam that freezes out external meddling influences), there’s no reason to believe the Americans can’t come up with something of their own in order to lock out and dismantle predatory economics and access structures.

Back in the late 1990s and during the Bush II era, The Fed continued to lower interest rates in order to boost the housing sector. They did this precisely because it worked, and because the traditional industries that provided wealth and capital to the working classes had been strip-mined of value by not only upper-level managers but by Private Equity firms (such as Bain Capital) that searched for value and then capitalized it into their own pockets by moving jobs and manufacturing overseas. As the “Mighty Trucks of Midnight” (another lefty Bruce Cockburn ref there) moved whole industries overseas and Labor imploded, there were fewer and fewer investment opportunities for fund managers. So the steroidally pumped-up housing sector took up the slack while the level of personal indebtedness (to the banks, of course) skyrocketed. We were, in effect, borrowing chunks of our future in order to pay the bankers that colluded with an unregulated system to enrich a very few but without the creation of real new wealth.

When the Great Recession hit, we had to pay the piper for all that debt we had amassed but, Lo! We had no money left. A lot of the money we had been spending had come from debt but now we couldn’t borrow anymore, because the banks were failing and couldn’t make any more loans. And yet, no one really wanted to change anything because it looked like the system was essentially fair so we just had to let it recover a bit so we could all continue on our merry way.

But now, perhaps, we know that wasn’t the real story. And that the system was rigged. We are slowly becoming aware of the fact that only a tiny minority benefit from it while the rest of us work our asses off and still suck shit and struggle every day to feed our families and keep a roof over our heads. As awareness of what LIBOR-fixing really means begins to penetrate popular consciousness, more and more people will begin to question whether the system is even reformable at all. What the 1% and their Walking Dead-like minions do not comprehend, however, is that even if there is a way to reform the system and keep this party rolling a little longer, we are rapidly passing the time where anyone will still believe the system can be reformed. In other words, the window of reform and long-term survival of a system that resembles our current one is closing, and closing rapidly. It will have to be the 1% who choose to utilize their resources in order to give themselves (and their privileged families) a shot at longer-term survival.

That is the only chance the 1% has of keeping the 99% from invoking The Beast, in some form or another.

About the author: After living in China in the late 80s, Em worked in the physics and electrical engineering space until 2002, at which time he moved into the financial world. In July of 2010, Em returned to the US after living in London for several years.
 

 
“The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea” by William Blake

 
American banks are about to be engulfed by the biggest scandal in financial history. Or maybe not, it will largely depend on how closely the public pays attention. If they are paying attention, the game, as it is currently being played, is finished.

The Libor scandal reveals capitalism’s vaunted Free Market is a con trick, which has been fraudulently controlled by international banks for their own and select cartels and speculators’ interest. The cost of this fraudulent activity has been paid for by the public - the savers, mortgage owners and pensioners. There is now proof positive that the financial elite have been playing us all for fools.

The bankers at the tip top of the food chain (literally) have been caught red-handed with their collective hands in our collective cookie jars, to put it another way.

Last week, Barclays’ Bank was fined $450-million for manipulating Libor (the London Inter Banking Offered Rate). This is the rate through which banks lend. The rate is agreed upon every day by a select group of banks, and is considered a “global benchmark worth hundreds of trillions of pounds.” The slightest deviation in the rate can cost a bank billions.

Libor along with Euribor are the central mechanisms for setting global interest rates for a vast array of financial services and products.

Libor is the largest, operating over 10 currencies, which includes determining the rate of US dollars in the form of Eurodollars.

Traders in the main financial markets in London, New York and Japan colluded to set inter bank rate, thus making either huge profits or covering-up their losses.

Traders like low interest rates so they can buy cheap bonds and make quick speculative profits. The retails side prefers high interest rates, which can help savers make higher return on their savings. Between the two positions is a “sacrosanct” wall which prevents either side from fraudulent collusion. At least that’s the idea…

Last week, Barclays’ Bank admitted their bankers broke through this so-called “sacrosanct” wall, and that there was collusion in the “fixing” of inter bank rates. (Translation: The bankers are behaving like the mafia)

The US watchdog the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) said it wasn’t just Barclays’ traders who were involved in the market manipulation but the bank’s top bosses.

‘...as a result of instructions from Barclays’ senior managemnet, the Bank routinely made artificially low LIBOR submissions to protect Barclays’ reputation from negative market and media perceptions concerning Barclays’ financial condition.’

Leaked e-mails between traders revealed the staggering level of collusion between traders and bank staff.

‘Dude. I owe you big time! Come over one day after work and I’m opening a bottle of Bollinger.’

While the bankers bashed the Bolly, the public picked up the tab.

That investment bankers are corrupt, psychopathic thieves of the lowest order is nothing new, but the Libor scandal shows that the whole process of rate fixing is not dependent on the realities of market values, but on the arbitrary say so of investment bankers!!!

In other words, the whole of Capitalism is based on a house of cards, which are, at last, about to come tumbling down.

A friend, with ties to the financial industry, recently said that the public’s relationship with the banks was similar to a put-upon wife with an abusive and violent husband. The worse the husband behaves, the more the wife forgives. Until one day, something snaps, and the wife realizes her husband is a brutal bully, a monster, a low and despicable human, and there has been no real love in their relationship on his side. ‘One day, the public will similarly wake-up and realize the banks have been brutalizing them for centuries.’

If not NOW, when? It’s now of never with this one. It’s off the scale of scandal. This is a real “lock them up and throw away the key” moment.

This is what must be kept in focus as the Libor scandal begins to expose the scale of the other banks involved in similar fraudulent activity. At present, sixteen other banks are suspected of involvement. Already, a blame-game has commenced with the current Conservative government attempting to lay the blame for the Libor scandal at the previous Labour government’s door. All of this is of secondary importance.

Here’s the take-away: Governments have colluded with banks to keep the public imprisoned with debt. Cheap loans, credit cards, mortgages, and unemployment, are the core values of Western-Liberal-Capitalist society, which is based on keeping its citizens impoverished and debt-ridden. We can only hope that the Libor scandal will lead to the irrevocable damage of the banking and finacial industry’s reputation, which will in turn lead to the nationalization of banks and strict regulation of the financial industry.

Below, Matt Taibbi tells Eliot Spitzer: “This is like finding the whole world is built on quicksand”