Wall Street players oil up rigged game

…You’ll recall the great oil price rise of 2008, which not only doubled gas prices across the border, but led to worldwide food riots in poorer countries. In retrospect, what made this price hike truly weird was that oil production had actually increased during this period, while global demand had dropped. The price hike was apparently in defiance of the laws of supply and demand.

Was this Econ-101 nightmare the result of “peak oil,” or what? Or could Wall Street have had a hand in this, along with similar episodes in the past?

In a recent article in Rolling Stone magazine, journalist Matt Taibbi implicates the New York investment bank Goldman Sachs in “every major bubble since the depression,” including the late ’90s tech stock mania, the subprime real estate craze, and the bipolar commodities market of 2008.

“The bank’s unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump and dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere–high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts.”

Good times. For the alleged perps.

Vancouver Courier