| > Another related study.[2] Thanks. JFC, that one was mind blowing: > Last year, production increased to 30.2 billion barrels, but these futures markets alone swelled to 541.6 billion barrels, becoming eighteen times bigger than the global physical output. So, to put it clear: on average, before reaching a refinery, each barrel of oil that ends up there changed hands eighteen times, with each step extracting wealth (in the form of buy/sell price spread) along the way - for zero gain for both the producers and the consumers of the oil. And yet, everyone seems happy with it. > but there is no agreement on what to do about it. If you ask me personally, the answer is easy: burn the entire thing down and restrict the rebuilt one to actually legitimate market participants (producers, wholesalers and consumers of commodities). The current system serves no real purpose other than to enrich a very few people at the expense of everyone else, which is also the reason why this won't ever happen - the financial incentives and thus the amount of money flowing into corruption and its legal friend lobbying is just too much. The problem is, you won't get that kind of clear-cut answer from any academic studies or even most political parties outside of the far-left (like me) who criticize it on the very real effort this looting has on poor people and the far-right who tends to focus more on the conspiratorial part. It's in the end a question of political ideology and of how independent science, journalism and politics can actually be when faced with billions if not trillions of dollars of financial interests. |
There's history here going back to at least 1870 or so.