A explicação jornalística mais comum, pelo menos no Ocidente, das causas da actual crise petrolífera mundial envolve reiteradamente três argumentos:
- a realidade demonstrável do chamado pico petrolífero;
- o extraordinário crescimento económico da China, da Índia e dos demais países emergentes (BRIC);
- a recusa de aumento da produção de crude por parte dos países produtores de petróleo, com destaque para a OPEC, de onde o G7 destaca invariavelmente a Arábia Saudita, na sua qualidade de maior produtor mundial.
Por outro lado, embora todos os quatro argumentos citados tenham o seu peso específico na actual crise energética, a verdade é que há pelo menos mais dois factores de que pouco se fala, mas cuja importância no desenlace a curto prazo da mesma podem ser decisivos:
- a especulação dos mercados financeiros, que após a hecatombe provocada pelo rebentamento da bolha imobiliária associada às hipotecas de alto risco (Subprime), alastrou para o sector bancário, cuja falta de liquidez levou os solícitos bancos centrais a lançarem sobre os vários náufragos banqueiros uma escandalosa chuva de empréstimos de curto prazo, a taxas ridículas, provocando ao mesmo tempo um desvio dos derivative markets e respectivos fundos de investimentos (nomeadamente hedge funds e fundos pensões e reformas) para os contratos de futuros de bens energéticos e alimentares, com especial destaque para o petróleo e os cereais - ou seja, as chamadas commodities. Segundo dados citados por Ni Jianjun, num excelente artigo (1) publicado no China Daily de 11 de Junho (li-o no avião entre Pequim e Paris), antes de 2003 os mercados especulativos representavam menos de 10% do volume total de negócios realizado pelo New York Mercantile Exchange (NYME). William Engdahl, por sua vez, alerta para o facto de 60% do preço actual do barril de petróleo decorrer da especulação nos desregulados mercados de futuros (2);
- o paralelismo impressionante entre a actual crise petrolífera e a actual crise americana e a crise energética, económica e militar de 1973, sobre o qual li recentemente um notável artigo de Jeffrey D. Sachs, na revista Fortune (3).
No entanto, a explosão demográfica e económica da Ásia e da África, já para não falar do Brasil, leva-me a pensar que uma tão selecta estirpe esteja de facto seriamente ameaçada, e deva por isso negociar, em vez de exterminar. A menos que, como fizeram no passado, consigam levar o mundo para nova Guerra Mundial. Por trás da cortina de fumo da luta contra o terrorismo, da luta contra a ameaça nuclear iraniana (que é tão real e próxima quanto fora a das Armas de Destruição Maciça que o Miguel Monjardino jurou a pés juntos existirem no Iraque), e da necessidade de pôr os produtores de petróleo na linha (ladainha em que até o João Soares caiu que nem um patinho viajante), o que realmente existe é uma agenda de guerra. Uma agenda estratégica destinada, uma vez mais, a trocar as voltas ao projecto europeu, liderado actualmente por uma turma de alegres imbecis. O sucesso da agenda Sionista e Anglo-Americana conta aliás com o "Não" da Irlanda ao Tratado de Lisboa e a ambiguidade da República Checa sobre o mesmo documento. Do ponto de vista sociológico, a Irlanda e o Reino Unido são quintais da América, e como tal, presas fáceis dos jogos de sedução desta última. A República Checa, por sua vez, é um dos centros da inteligência Sionista na Europa. Nada melhor pois do que a morte do Tratado de Lisboa para deixar as mãos livres a Israel, aos Estados Unidos, ao Reino Unido e ao garnisé Sionista de Paris para atacarem o Irão e forçarem-no, como forçaram o Iraque, a abandonar o Euro!
Os sinais de que algo nesta missão suicida está em fase adiantada de preparação são cada vez mais aparentes. Os indícios mais próximos foram as manobras da aviação militar israelita na primeira semana deste mês de Junho, e depois a resposta verbal do Irão ao que foi ostensivamente apresentado pela propaganda militar de Washington como um exercício demonstrativo de um possível ataque ao Irão nos tempos mais próximos (4).
Entretanto, o Irão decidiu levantar depósitos no montante de 75 mil milhões de dólares das suas contas em bancos europeus perante a possibilidade de serem aplicadas sanções contra o seu país (5).
Nos Estados Unidos, o sindicato Sionista procura fazer aprovar uma resolução na Câmara dos Representantes cuja finalidade é a imposição de um bloqueio naval ao Irão (6), sob o pretexto de este representar uma ameaça à sobrevivência do Estado de Israel. Basta ler a história das sucessivas mudanças de regime operadas pelos serviços secretos britânicos e americanos no Irão ao longo de todo o século 20 para se perceber que nada do que se tem dito sobre o perigo iraniano corresponde de facto a algo que faça sentido. O Irão percebeu, como outros países permanentemente ameaçados pelas potências dominantes perceberam, que só adquirindo reais poderes de dissuasão militar, conseguirão travar o saqueio sistemático das suas riquezas e a humilhação. O Irão não tem ogivas nucleares, mas deveria tê-las, para compensar o arsenal nuclear israelita, que ninguém investiga, nem põe em causa. Talvez só depois de ascender a este nível de responsabilidade, seja finalmente capaz de resolver os seus gravíssimos problemas internos, provocados nomeadamente pelo cancro da corrupção que domina completamente mais esta desgraçada cleptocracia (7).
Não tenhamos demasiadas ilusões sobre a futura política internacional de Barak Obama, no caso de vir a ser eleito presidente dos Estados Unidos da América. Ele, na realidade, já vendeu a alma ao diabo Sionista, quando afirmou que Jerusalém seria a capital exclusiva de Israel!
Um último e preocupante sinal de que alguns influentes Democratas americanos estão desejosos de atacar o Irão, servindo assim o Sionismo e a Economia Militar dos EEUU, resulta da recente recusa por parte de Nancy Pelosi de fazer depender um tal ataque da autorização prévia do Congresso. Esta conspiração foi entretanto denunciada pelo congressista republicano heterodoxo Ron Paul (8). Mas muitos receiam que a iniciativa do poderoso American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) acabe por passar.
A analogia inteligentemente estabelecida por Jeffrey D. Sachs, entre a crise petrolífera de 1973 e a crise actual precisa, para ser completamente consequente, de ir até ao fim. A tese é esta: se o petróleo chegar aos 200 dólares em Setembro, e depois Israel atacar o Irão, e a América vier em auxílio dos seus mais exigentes aliados (com o apoio da França, do Reino Unido e da República Checa), impondo um bloqueio naval ao Estreito de Ormuz, atirando o preço do barril de crude para os 300 USD, que acontecerá? Acontecerá uma coisa muito feia chamada estagflação mundial, de que os países mais pobres ou com economias debilitadas serão as principais vítimas. O consumo de petróleo diminuirá e baixará de preço. Mas o crescimento mundial entrará em recessão prolongada (20 ou 30 anos são apostas realistas) e o mundo anglo-saxão ensopará as suas monumentais dívidas no suor, na fome e no sangue de milhões de seres humanos. A víbora Cheney crê que se este cenário não ocorrer antes das próximas eleições americanas, poderá tornar-se inviável para sempre. É caso para dizer que os dados estão lançados. Foi mais ou menos isto o que se passou em 1973 (9).
NOTAS
- Futures trading, weak dollar behind oil shock
By Ni Jianjun (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-06-11 07:51
The power to decide oil prices has been taken over by the oil futures market in New York from the OPEC group since the 1980s as futures trading became synonymous with profiteering. Some studies indicate, however, speculative trading accounted for less than 10 percent of the total trading value of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYME) before 2003 and did not dictate the long-term trend of oil prices.
In recent years, by hyping the so-called Chinese demand factor on the world oil market and driving up marketable surplus in an underhand manner, the US has managed to increase the generalized speculative trading volume to more than half of the total on NYME and turned profiteering into the dominant trend of investments.
One of the "symptoms" of this "epidemic" is that huge amounts of US pension funds and investment banks, driven by the need to avoid risks and increase value, have become little different from the traditional experts in speculation - the hedge funds - and frequently dive into the oil and other futures markets.
As the volume of speculative trading grows and the amplifying effect of rumor-mongering adds to it, any geopolitical stirring would cause a tsunami on the oil futures market. The speculative investment mania has reached such "unprecedented" severity that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced not long ago it had begun extensive investigation into the suspected oil price-fixing activities on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Citing Japan's suspension of rice futures trading to prevent profiteering as an example, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi even suggested that international oil futures trading should also be suspended to contain rampant price hikes.
Lastly, the US and the EU acted on a whim to advocate bio-energy resources and misguided international energy investment.
Motivated purely by their own interests, the US and the EU have pushed for the use of biofuel, but it failed to stabilize international oil price predictions and caused grain prices to soar worldwide instead. - More on the real reason behind high oil prices
By F. William Engdahl, 21 May 2008
As detailed in an earlier article, a conservative calculation is that at least 60% of today's $128 per barrel price of crude oil comes from unregulated futures speculation by hedge funds, banks and financial groups using the London ICE Futures and New York NYMEX futures exchanges and uncontrolled inter-bank or Over-The-Counter trading to avoid scrutiny. US margin rules of the government's Commodity Futures Trading Commission allow speculators to buy a crude oil futures contract on the Nymex, by having to pay only 6% of the value of the contract. At today's price of $128 per barrel, that means a futures trader only has to put up about $8 for every barrel. He borrows the other $120. This extreme "leverage" of 16 to 1 helps drive prices to wildly unrealistic levels and offset bank losses in sub-prime and other disasters at the expense of the overall population.
The hoax of Peak Oil--namely the argument that the oil production has hit the point where more than half all reserves have been used and the world is on the downslope of oil at cheap price and abundant quantity--has enabled this costly fraud to continue since the invasion of Iraq in 2003 with the help of key banks, oil traders and big oil majors. Washington is trying to shift blame, as always, to Arab OPEC producers. The problem is not a lack of crude oil supply. In fact the world is in over-supply now. Yet the price climbs relentlessly higher. Why? The answer lies in what are clearly deliberate US government policies that permit the unbridled oil price manipulations. - Stagflation is back. Here's how to beat it.
By Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
(Fortune Magazine) -- "Three decades ago, in a bleak stretch of the 1970s, an economic phenomenon emerged that was as ugly as its name: stagflation. It was the sound of the world hitting a wall, a combination of no growth and inflation. It created an existential crisis for the global economy, leading many to argue that the world had reached its limits of growth and prosperity. That day of reckoning was postponed, but now, after a 30-year hiatus, at least a mild bout of stagflation has returned, and matters could get much worse. We are back to the future, with the question we asked 30 years ago: How can we combine robust economic growth with tight global supplies of such critical commodities as energy, food, and water? It's worth comparing the earlier episode of stagflation with our current travails to help us find our way. In fact, this time the resource constraints will prove even harder to overcome than in the last round, since the world economy is much larger and the constraints are much tighter than before.
The similarities with the first half of the 1970s are eerie. Then as now, the world economy was growing rapidly, around 5% per year, in the lead-up to surging commodities prices. Then as now, the United States was engaged in a costly, unpopular, and unsuccessful war (Vietnam), financed by large budget deficits and foreign borrowing. The Middle East, as now, was racked by turmoil and war, notably the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The dollar was in free fall, pushed off its strong-currency pedestal by overly expansionary U.S. monetary policy. And then as now, the surge in commodity prices was dramatic. Oil markets turned extremely tight in the early 1970s, not mainly because of the Arab oil boycott following the 1973 war, but because mounting global demand hit a limited supply. Oil prices quadrupled. Food prices also soared, fueled by strong world demand, surging fertilizer prices, and massive climate shocks, especially a powerful El Niño in 1972.
Here we go again. Oil prices have roughly quintupled since 2002, once again the result of strong global demand running into limited global supply. World grain prices have doubled in the past year. Just as in 1972, the recent run-up in food prices is aggravated by climate shocks. Australia's drought and Europe's heat waves put a lid on grain production in 2005-06. Even the politics are strangely similar. In both 1974 and 2008, an unpopular Republican President, battling historically low approval ratings, was distracted from serious macroeconomic policymaking. The country was adrift.
Then as now, Dick Cheney was close to the helm."
"(...) Conventional oil supplies will remain tight in the years ahead. New discoveries will not suffice. World crude-oil production nearly tripled in 1960-73 (from 21 million barrels a day to 56 million), but has grown a mere 30% since then, to around 73 million barrels per day in 2006. In fact, Persian Gulf crude-oil production stopped growing entirely after 1974, peaking at around 21 million barrels per day. Discoveries and production increases outside the Middle East rose only modestly and now in many cases are in decline in such fields as Britain's North Sea and Alaska's North Slope." - BBC: Iran has said it considers a military attack on its nuclear facilities by Israel as "impossible".
"Such audacity to embark on an assault against the interests and territorial integrity of our country is impossible", said spokesman Gholam Hoseyn Elham.
The statement follows reports in the US media that Israeli aerial manoeuvres over the eastern Mediterranean were a possible test-run for a strike on Iran.
Iran insists that its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes.
(...) The head of the UN's nuclear watchdog, Mohammed ElBaradei, meanwhile said an attack would put Iran on a "crash course" to building nuclear weapons and would turn the region "into a fireball".
He said he did not believe there was any "imminent risk" of proliferation by Iran given the current status of its nuclear programme.
In an interview with Al Arabiya television, Mr ElBaradei said that if any military action was taken against Iran he would find it impossible to continue as the head of the IAEA. - Iran withdraws $75 billion from Europe.
June 16, 2008. TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has withdrawn around $75 billion from Europe to prevent the assets from being blocked under threatened new sanctions over Tehran's disputed nuclear ambitions, an Iranian weekly said.
Western powers are warning the Islamic Republic of more punitive measures if it rejects an incentives offer and presses on with sensitive nuclear work, but the world's fourth-largest oil exporter is showing no sign of backing down.
"Part of Iran's assets in European banks have been converted to gold and shares and another part has been transferred to Asian banks," Mohsen Talaie, deputy foreign minister in charge of economic affairs, was quoted as saying. - House Resolution Calls for Naval Blockade against Iran
America's powerful pro-Israel lobby pressures the US Congress
June 18, 2008. A US House of Representatives Resolution effectively requiring a naval blockade on Iran seems fast tracked for passage, gaining co-sponsors at a remarkable speed, but experts say the measures called for in the resolutions amount to an act of war.
H.CON.RES 362 calls on the president to stop all shipments of refined petroleum products from reaching Iran. It also "demands" that the President impose "stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains and cargo entering or departing Iran."
Analysts say that this would require a US naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz.
Since its introduction three weeks ago, the resolution has attracted 146 cosponsors. Forty-three members added their names to the bill in the past two days.
In the Senate, a sister resolution S.RES 580 has gained co-sponsors with similar speed. The Senate measure was introduced by Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh on June 2. In little more than a week’s time, it has accrued 19 co-sponsors.
AIPAC's Endorsement
Congressional insiders credit America’s powerful pro-Israel lobby for the rapid endorsement of the bills. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held its annual policy conference June 2-4, in which it sent thousands of members to Capitol Hill to push for tougher measures against Iran. On its website, AIPAC endorses the resolutions as a way to ''Stop Irans Nuclear Proliferation" and tells readers to lobby Congress to pass the bill.
AIPAC has been ramping up the rhetoric against Iran over the last 3 years delivering 9 issue memos to Congress in 2006, 17 in 2007 and in the first five months of 2008 has delivered no less than 11 issue memos to the Congress and Senate predominantly warning of Irans nuclear weapons involvement and support for terrorism. -- Global Research. - Worst of times for Iran
24-06-2008. What happened to the US$35 billion of oil revenues that Iran's Shabab News, in a now notorious account, claims disappeared from official accounting during the year through March 2008? Half the country's oil revenues disappeared from the books. A great deal of it left the country for banks in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and elsewhere; capital flight already was running at a $15 billion annual rate last year, by my estimate.
During the past year, though, conspicuous consumption in the form of a luxury housing boom has absorbed even more of Iran's oil windfall. Luxury apartments in Tehran's better neighborhoods now sell for $15,000 per square meter, Agence France Presse reported May 26, equal to the best neighborhoods in Paris or New York. A 200-square-meter apartment in northern Tehran sells for about $1 million. Real estate prices in outlying suburbs and some provincial cities have doubled over the past year.
Corruption has metastasized, that is to say, for the scale of the property boom implies that tens of thousands of Iranians are taking six-to-seven figure bites out of the oil budget. Rather than a handful of officials siphoning state funds into bank accounts in Dubai, an entire class of hangers-on of the Islamic revolution is spending sums beyond the dreams of the average Iranian, and in brazen public view. -- By Spengler, in Asia Times. - June 18, 2008. Representative Ron Paul says House Speaker Nancy Pelosi removed a section from a bill passed by Congress which would have barred the U.S. from going to war with Iran without a congressional vote, claiming she did so at the behest of the leadership of Israel and AIPAC. -- in Newsmax.
- "In May 1973, with the dramatc fall of the dollar still vivid, a group of 84 of the world's top financial and political insiders met at Saltsjöbaden, Sweden, the secluded island resort of the Swedish Wallenberg banking family. This gathering of Prince Bernhards's Bielderberg group heard an American participant, Walter Levy, outline a 'scenario' for an imminet 400 per cent increase in OPEC petroleum revenues. The purpose of the secret Saltsjöbaden meeting was not to prevent the expected oil price shock, but rather to plan how to manage the about-to-be-created flood of oil dollars, a process U.S. Secretary of State Kissinger later called 'recycling the petrodollar flows'.
(...) "Present at Saltsjöbaden that MAy were Robert O. Anderson of Atlantic Richfield Oil Co.; Lord Greenhill, chairman of British Petroleum; Sir Erik Roll of S.G. Warburg, creator of Eurobonds; George Ball of Lehman Brothers investment bank, and the man who some ten years earlier, as assistant secretary of state, told his banker friend Siegmund Warburg to develop London's Eurodollar market; David Rockefeller of Chase Manhattan Bank; Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man soon to be President Carter's national security adviser; Italy's Gianni Agnelli and Germany's Otto Wolff von Amerongen, among others. Henry Kissinger was a regular participant at the Biderberg gatherings.
(...) "What the powerful men grouped around Bilderberg had evidently decided that May was to launch a colossal assault against industrial growth in the world, in order to tilt the balance of power back to the advantage of Anglo-American financial interests and the dollar. In order to do this, they determined to use their most prized weapon -- control of world's oil flows. Bilderberg policy was to trigger a global oil embargo, in order to force a dramatic increase in world oil prices. Since 1945, world oild had by international custom been priced in dollars, since American oild companies dominated the postwar market. A sudden sharp increase in world demand for U.S. dollars to pay for that necessary oil.
(...) On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria invaded Israel, igniting what became known as the Yom Kippur War. Contrary to popular impression, the 'Yom Kippur' War was not the simple result of miscalculation, blunder or an Arab decision to launch a military strike against the state of Israel. The entire constellation of events surrounding the outbreak of the October War was secretly orchestrated by Washington and London, using the powerful secret diplomatic channels developed by Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger.
(...) " From 1949 until the end of 1970, Middle East crude oild prices had averaged approximately $1.90 per barrel. They had risen to $3.01 in early 1973, at the same time of the fateful Saltsjöbaden meeting of the Bielderberg group, which discussed an imminet 400 per cent future rise in OPEC's price. By January 1974, that 400 per cent increase was a fait accompli." -- William Engdahl, A Century of War.
OAM 378 23-06-2008, 01:19 (última actualização: 23-06-2008, 23:20)
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