No pain, no pair gain?

Yeah, speaking of that - the FTC just released their determination that the big 5 (or however many US oil companies there are) are NOT conspiring to artificially jack up prices.

I guess they don't want to bite the hand that bribes them.

Thanks, Rich

Yeah, good ol' government funding. When I was in the USAF, every year about audit time, we had to throw away thousands, maybe tens or hundreds of thousands, of dollars worth of spare parts and stuff and order new so we could spend our budget.

It was kinda handy for stocking the Junque Box, however. I once got a guy a 4-400A out of "Bench Stock" to build his kilowatt linear with. The rest was made of surplus - there was a lot of military surplus gear for sale cheap in Okinawa. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

raised

Rampant Unionism doesn't help the situation any. >:-(

Thanks, Rich

If it's so crappy, why waste your time on it?

Enron was a test case for market manipulation. They stepped over the line. The oil companies took the lessons learned and put together a crude oil and refined products market that stays just on the right side of that line.

The two cases look remarkably similar: Fewer large refiners are allowed to consolidate their market. They can take production off line at their convenience. The spot market drives prices and the major players are allowed to be on both sides of market bidding (both as producers and wholesale buyers). The benchmark for futures contracts is based on a very lightly traded segment of the market (easier to manipulate).