Oil and Finance: The Epic Corruption Continues 2010-2012

by Raymond J Learsy

Overview

There is a pervasion of misinformation clouding the public's understanding of how oil prices are really determined and the policies in place that have rigged the game to benefit the house dealers: the oil industry. In this book, Raymond Learsy discusses how the rich and powerful have gamed a system to the detriment of the vast majority, documenting with cunning commentary and savvy wit how we've ended up with $4+ gasoline.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781962587402
Publisher:	Raymond J. Learsy
Publication date:	04/30/2024
Pages:	262
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.59(d)

About the Author

Raymond J. Learsy a graduate of Wharton School of Business, launched into the fast-paced, risk-filled world of commodities trading beginning five decades ago. In 1963, he started his own firm and over the course of 20 years expanded from the United States into Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia, trading in bulk raw materials and commodities. Learsy's analysis of the international oil trade, OPEC, and its impact on the American and world economies has been featured in the National Review Online, The New York Times, the Pipeline and Gas Journal, CNBC and NPR, and as a regular contributor to The Huffington Post.

Editorial Reviews

An unholy alliance of Wall Street bankers, energy traders, OPEC pooh-bahs and complaisant government regulators are pillaging the American economy, according to these savvy, feisty polemics. Learsy, a commodities trader, updates his previous entry in this series with a new collection of his Huffington Post blogs. His pieces circle around two great swindles: First, the government bailout of select financial institutions, especially its rescue of insurance giant AIG; he alleges that Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein cooked up the bailout during secret phone calls so that Goldman's and other banks' holdings of AIG derivatives could be paid off with taxpayer money. Second, the run-up in oil prices was in a market the author believes to have been glutted by stored oil and manipulated refinery capacities. (Learsy thinks petroleum should be trading for around $30 per barrel, not $100.) Here Learsy targets many culprits: banks that speculate in oil using virtually free loans from the Fed and FDIC-insured deposits; Saudi officials who restrict oil output; President Obama, who could burst the price bubble by selling oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; and newspapers that peddle peak-oil alarmism, which Learsy smartly debunks. Other selections support a high-speed rail system, warn of looming global food shortages, and cheerlead for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Learsy's writing has a blunt, plainspoken style--sample headline: "The Oil Market Plays Casino While the Obama Administration Acts as Croupier"--that sits well with his populist indictment of Wall Street and its patsies in Washington. He has an insider's knowledge of the intricacies within the global financial web, which he explains with clarity and biting wit; yet he's not afraid to take bold, iconoclastic positions. (Among his anti-market heresies are calls for nationalizing the oil industry and establishing an American grain cartel.) At times, though, Learsy's prescriptions trip over themselves; economists and environmentalists will choke at his suggestion that we step up off-shore drilling to bring down oil prices--and then impose gasoline rationing to force Americans to conserve. But that's just one questionable pitch among better cases to be made in this take-no-prisoners savaging of the global economy's oily underbelly. Punchy prose and canny muckraking make for an informative, entertaining challenge to economic orthodoxy.

Kirkus Reviews