If any one follows the US senate, late last year an enquiry...

If any one follows the US senate, late last year an enquiry released a 396 page report (on 20 Nov) dealing with US Bank ownerships of commodities and commodity infrastructure. The banks over there have historically been banned from directly competing with commerce through ownership of commodities and infrastructure and the like. Like everything to do with banks they managed to change some laws around bank structures and have circumvented this important principle to take a foot hold in most major commodities and a lot of commodity infrastructure. They now compete with commerce and in so doing have many advantages, in that their cost of capital is cheaper, their exposures to the physical markets improves their trading in corresponding financial markets, they use their physical commodity activities to gain access to commercially valuable non-public information that could be used to benefit their financial trading activities (what's more US commodities law doesn't bar this behaviour in the same way as securities laws have barred its use in securities trades).

Just in case you missed it, and I would necessarily believe them but Bank of America came out a few days ago saying oil could fall to US$35/barrel. Some of these banks now have privileged no-public information regarding oil so I doubt they would come out and say what they know when they could better use the information swindling people on the futures and other markets.  In any case thought you might be interested.

http://business.financialpost.com/2...-as-u-s-heating-demand-fades/?__lsa=4304-3731

Very hard to find a good news story where oil is involved at the moment. Maybe that's a good thing as the tide normally turns when peoples heads are underwater.

Eshmun