SemGroup just filled bankruptcy after a $3.2bn trading loss in commodities. Interestingly, they were short oil, meaning they expected prices to drop. But a wildly flucuating oil market combined with other traders smelling SemGroup blood in the water forced them to liquidate their positions at a huge loss. Thus, speculation may have been directly responsible for a drop in oil prices.

From the comments to the post on Naked Capitalism.

Sorry to be dense, but why would covering a short position cause prices to fall? Seems like they would instead rise as the position was bought in.

Other market participants will be aware of their predicament and deliberately move the market against the hapless trapped firm in order to force a liquidation. Once they succeed, they can take off their own positions.

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The Unrepentant Marxist reviews Savage Mules, which shows how Democrats can playact at the role of “change” without actually doing much to foster real change. In fact, they often actively block and co-opt change, rendering it harmless.

In the words of Peter Camejo in his Avocado Declaration.

When social justice, peace, or civil rights movements become massive in scale, threaten to become uncontrollable and begin to win over large numbers of people, the Democratic Party begins to shift and presents itself as a supposed ally, always seeking to co-opt the movement, demobilize its forces, and block its development into an alternative, independent political force.

In effect, the Democratic Party too often runs interference for the Republican Party, channeling dissent from the Left into itself where it becomes diffused and thus non-threatening to the status quo.

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Our federal government rode to the rescue recently to protect us from those nasty short sellers who were driving prices down. So far, so noble, right?

Except the government banned a specific type of short selling called naked shorting, which was already against the rules. I guess they’d must have forgotten to enforce the rules previously or something. Oh, the rule only applies to certain financial companies. The Fed apparently wants to save our poor, put-upon investment banks and the like. Pass me a hanky.

Except the rule is meaningless. Any trader can still easily short the stocks using puts, regular shorting, or single stock futures.

However, the rule has had the desired effect. Financials are going up. Which amounts to free money for traders, knowing the government will be doing whatever it can to prop up stock prices of ailing financials.

And here you thought all those conservatives really were capitalists who believed the government should leave business alone and let the weak fail.

Only when the weak aren’t their companies, apparently.

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So they’re lowering the price to $5,000. It sold for $110,000 in 2005. This is in Flint, Michigan, where the foreclosure rate has soared.

Speculators and long-term investors don’t want a three bedroom house for $6,900? Yikes.

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While adding lime to ocean waters would theoretically cut down on co2, how much co2 would be added by mining and trucking the estimated 30 billion tons to the ocean? And what would this dumping do to the oceans?

Would it just be simpler to cut down on co2 emissions than do insane things like dumping billions of tons of a mineral into the oceans with apparent little thought given to unintended consequences.

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