[Ludi]

I agree Carbon Trading and the "Green Economy" will be the next bubble, or one of them.

[mos6507]

How many peakers buy this particular argument in the essay:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')And what caused the huge spike in oil prices? Take a wild guess. Obviously Goldman had help — there were other players in the physical-commodities market — but the root cause had almost everything to do with the behavior of a few powerful actors determined to turn the once-solid market into a speculative casino. Goldman did it by persuading pension funds and other large institutional investors to invest in oil futures — agreeing to buy oil at a certain price on a fixed date. The push transformed oil from a physical commodity, rigidly subject to supply and demand, into something to bet on, like a stock. Between 2003 and 2008, the amount of speculative money in commodities grew from $13 billion to $317 billion, an increase of 2,300 percent. By 2008, a barrel of oil was traded 27 times, on average, before it was actually delivered and consumed.

[Homesteader]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')
Part of our failure as species is not only that we don't understand the exponential function, but that we try to always attribute cause and effect in large complex systems to some single all-powerful actor, and fail to see the many interlocking gears that make the world run.

[deMolay]

The article actually starts here, and tells quite a tale about GoldmanSachs. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/st ... _machine/1

[deMolay]

I like this quote about the Banksters. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

[sittinguy]

this is the latest vid from the people who made Hyperinflation nation a while back.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZA0qNsf ... &kw=dollar

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('deMolay', 'I') like this quote about the Banksters. $this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Homesteader', '
')
Agreed, and I would add that as a species we expect there to be one "silver bullet" solution to complex problems. .