Western financial experts have a self-interest to never explain this issue. Instead, they frame the issue as BRICS seeking an alternate currency in the energy markets. However, the currency or petrodollar is not the issue. At least it’s not the core issue.
What Vladimir Putin, and by extension BRICS, do not want is corporatism -corporate financial control over govt systems- determining prices.
To give you an example of Vladimir Putin’s argument, consider orange juice.
Why should orange juice in California or Florida cost $7/gal, when the oranges are in CA or FL?
Shouldn’t the orange juice in FL or CA be cheaper than in, say, Minnesota? Logic would say, yes.
However, that would mean the corporations who have purchased the OJ production couldn’t maximize predatory profiting, through nonmarket forces, ie. “Commodity trading.”
The same organic supply/demand rule applies to strawberries, or [fill in the blank].
What is setting the price, what the west calls the “market price,” is actually the commodity trading issue. That means Minnesota, Florida and California consumers all pay the same price. Within the energy sector Putin views this as unfair and unworkable.
To his credit, under normal supply/demand Putin would be selling oil/gas to Europe at much lower prices than “market prices” because the pipelines are in place, the proximity is near and the delivery is cheap.
However, for Europe that means the financial markets would not control energy prices. Europe wants financial control, not cheap energy.
The need for control is a reaction to fear. The financial system, the bankers and the multinational corporations, fears their loss of control.
So, war!
“Commodity trading”
Why does my mind immediately go to Eddie Murphy in “Trading Places”? And why do I see the two Duke brothers in exactly the same light as all of the clowns in the above picture…and so desperately wish for the same end to come to all of them that it did to the “traders” in the movie?
There is more truth to that movie than most people realize
Eugenics. Nature vs. Nurture. The Bet. $1. Jeffrey Epstein globalist stuff.
Aaron Russo, producer. Figured out a whole lot before an untimely death:
America: Freedom to Fascism (2006)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America:_Freedom_to_Fascism
Come on man,,I’m a duke by the way,,and I don’t think that
Don’t forget, they made it all back in Coming to America.
eddie still demands to know who was dropping the kools on his persian rug
after all, it was from persia
What Pres. Putin is really decrying is the Soros/Carney Model of Vulture Capitalism, aka the Private Equity Pump-and-Dump Model.
They take perfectly good businesses and products, squeeze everything out and pick the bones clean, leaving human carnage in their wake.
The carnage is desired as a path to a Beast Regime One-World Government.
If you don’t like Soros/Carney, you may say “Rothschild/Rockefeller” instead.
If I own a gas station and I fill the storage tanks at $3.00 a gallon and gas goes up to $4.00 the next day do I sell it at $3.00 or $4.00 a gallon?
Gas prices are not set at a barrel of oil price and haven’t been for decades.
It’s all manipulation and greed especially when you know gas station employees who reveal they set the price at the pumps by calling 2 or 3 of the nearest stations to see what they are charging.
It’s all based on greed and fairness never plays into it.
Greed is what makes capitalism work. Fairness is what Communists argue for.
No, fairness is what they say they’re arguing for.
What they’re really arguing for is Tim Walz looting Trillions in Fraud while Chis Wray frames your grandmother for noticing.
What they are really saying is that it isn’t fair that you have made all this money and they didn’t.
What they think is fair is for you to now hand it all to them.
So you made the money for them, this is their idea of fair.
A moral people including the “store keeper” is foundational to America. Free and FAIR trading eliminates greed. Main Street not corporatist Wall Street.
Wall Street is all about “obscene ” profits.
Capitalism has morphed into anything but America First, it is Corporatism in our modern form. To be crude it is screw everyone else, I am out to get mine for me and the company.
Sadly, a moral people escapes far, far too many.
About Wall Street…in the early 80’s, there was a ‘new’ savings product being made available, to the unwashed masses…it was called ‘money market accounts’ which were going to pay much higher interest than the banks, if I recall correctly…that was back in the day when there were ‘stock brokers’…and not on line trading…and one had to buy a huge number of shares of an equity…
The 50 year business plan? Or planning to capture the money of an overpopulated America?
Fairness is the children’s word for justice. It’s the jaded adults that tell children that the world’s unfair and to get used to it, while they themselves riot in the UK against “two-tiered justice system” and in America they rail against the “weaponization of the Department of Justice”. Adults can lazily and easily become great hypocrites.
“Fair’s got nothing to do with it.”
The Unforgiven
Try running a station, or any business for that matter, before judging.
Try justifying your existence knowing that you are screwing everyone.
I’ll take freedom over fairness everyday, everytime.
Then why not force price controls?
If $3/gal was your profit position, then you should sell it at $3/gal.
Why is this complicated?
It’s not complicated.
Yet multiple streaming channels per household is the norm.
$3 gas is cheap.
Within my ‘hood in IL, for a 3 mile radius…every gas station, name brand and cheap gas, prices it the same.
It’s not greed at all . It’s common sense. If you buy gasoline to fill your reserves at $3.00 a gallon and next week the price drops to $2.00 a gallon, you’re scewed, by your own folly. You must charge more when the market allows it because you must charge less when the market requires it.
What do YOU sell that allows you to charge more than market price, anyway? Insulin or something?
You are correct. My ex worked for major oil company. One or two nights per week he would have to drive certain areas to see what competition was charging to determine if the prices should go up or down at the stations in the area he was responsible for. That was back in the 1970’s so nothing much has changed.
If it’s selling higher, the price you paid no longer matters, you need to replace what you’ve sold.
So you need to sell it at a price that you can afford your replacement cost.
Why would I sell OJ locally for $2 when I can sell it somewhere else for $6? Same with oil. Or are we suggesting that Govt set prices?
We tried that before. It didn’t work then either.
No. We are suggesting that London NOT set the price anymore. (BTW, lower shipping costs allow for lower local pricing)
How much is the transportation gonna add on to that cost?
nah, i think the suggestion might be something like, don’t let the corporates either (a) commoditize local economy into global economy or (b) monopolize and buy all the orange groves, cut down all the ones in your country and then sell you the oranges from their remaining orchard in a foreign country where the market is not matured and production is not as regulated as your country and labor has a choice between poverty or working in the orange grove (less poverty) and you’re willing to pay $6 because that’s the way you’re going to get oranges…and that works until your entire middle class is wiped out and can’t afford to buy anything and non-citizens with EBT cards prefer fast-food over oranges so the last orange grove gets cut down and turned into a synthetic meat factory.
While we are on the beloved breakfast staple…orange juice…lets have a moment on the orange groves…thor in hurricanes and freezes…
“The primary disease decimating Florida’s orange groves is citrus greening (also known as huanglongbing or HLB), a bacterial infection spread by the Asian citrus psyllid.
First detected in Florida in 2005, this incurable disease has infected nearly 94% of the state’s citrus trees, causing premature fruit drop, bitter green fruit, and eventual tree death”AI
A long family business in FL, was the Indian River grove. Gone. From what I understand, a good portion of our oranges come from South America.
One article
https://www.wlrn.org/business/2026-03-23/florida-oranges-citrus-industry-disease
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/charts-of-note/109051
War = Death to normal, sensible people.
War – Profits to globalist war pigs that don’t care how many die.
I want cheap energy. That’s really the Golden Age. Everything will follow.
Part of the problem in finding “Florida Orange Juice” or “California Orange Juice” is that so many orchards have been cut down for urban-suburban-exurban sprawl.
“Florida’s Natural Orange Juice” no longer is 100% American: it is now mixed with Mexican or Brazilian or whatever, because there is no longer enough production in Florida.
The manic building now happening in e.g. the Orlando area – which is a nightmare of gridlocked traffic, high prices, degraded environment, failing schools, and a dearth of basics like libraries, parks, etc. – has replaced thousands of acres of orchards and farmland.
This is exactly what the Prometheus ladies have been saying. The city of London controls commodities through insurance, spot pricing and checkpoints. They never take delivery of one orange, barrel of oil or bag of potash, but control the price of each. What the world is realizing is “who needs the middleman”?
Watch the prosperity take off worldwide with cutting out the middle men adding nothing but costs to transactions everywhere.
Frankly, why would Russia sell anything to Europe in this current age atmosphere?
Free market pricing which includes the speculative commodities market does have a natural limit, the consumer. If prices get too high the consumer stops purchasing the products
The one factor that has been consistent over the years is that many consumers buy large gas guzzling vehicles and hope that gas prices stay low. Since the 70’s that has not held. The trend is up yet people still buy large pickup trucks and large SUVs. You can hear them loudly complaining when the gas pump hits the limits on their fueling and they have to restart .
Same goes for those who buy the expensive cuts of beef and complain about the prices not thinking that there are less expensive options.
But with that said I would rather have market pricing vs price controls set by government.
Market price for me is simply… am I willing to pay their asking price?
At the end of the day, I decide on how I spend.
So I buy local as much as possible.
That is it. When I purchased automobiles I wanted one that got 30mpg, not 15. Every dollar saved on fuel is real money regardless of the current price.
People can adapt. Finding cheaper options on food and sundry. Cutting back on non essential spending.
My neighbor has five children. He and his wife would have to take two of your 30mpg cars to get to town.
There are larger automobiles that get 30mpg.
Yes I have a gas-guzzling vehicle, and yes I hope gas prices stay low. And with President Trump, they will: “Drill, baby, drill!”
They must be low where you are?
Every hit a deer with your car?
Larger vehicles are measurably safer in impacts with wildlife in those areas where they frequent.
Heck, you have a fair chance to survive a moose in an SUV at lower speeds. That is not going to be near as likely with a much smaller and lighter vehicle.
There are other situations that may come up for individuals where the trade-off for less fuel efficiency is worth it.
I have been fortunate to avoid the deer and elk in my life of driving.
There is always a situation where a bigger car will be better. Ever had a head on collision with a semi?
Normally you can see the semi coming. Deer crossing between cars going opposite directions on a rural road at night, not so much.
Picture caption:
“Bankers and bafoons”
Any other ideas?
President Trump has just visited Ireland.
Why when gasoline till recently cost $0.83 per liter in Texas
did it cost over $1.83 in Ireland that imports most from the US?
This looks like the public being exploited.
So let me get this straight.
Ranchers don’t set the price of beef.
Slaughter houses/packing plants don’t set the price of beef.
Our grocery stores don’t set the price of beef.
Some greedy jerks on some commodity trading floor, are betting and gambling and we are the suckers at the table. Paying whatever outrageous price they force on us.
Repeat this argument for every thing whose price is going up.
It’s not Milton Freedman too much money chasing too little goods.
It’s not the price of oil driving up every other price.
It’s a bunch of crooks, ripping us off, and coordinating with Democrats who also caused inflation but blame Trump for unaffordability.
To make matters worse, commodities are traded just like stocks. Computers are buying and selling based on algorithms. Throw AI into the equation now. The human trader sees the prices going up or down because the computers have added that artificial margin in the equation. Computers have the advantage because of their speed. They buy and sell in seconds and make money doing it.
More examples of why the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is useless. Get rid of it, less government the better.
Ed McMahon: ‘Oil…Gas…and Orange Juice’
Carnac the Magnificent: ‘How does President Trump maintain his tan in the winter?’ 🙂
I get the orange juice thing. (I can see Putin’s position and agree)
There is risk and good and bad about everything.
Maybe I have allergies now from all these oranges in my state, maybe we all do. There is always the down side, there is risk, maybe the allergies are from all the sprays that go on the oranges, so yeah, the people in the state that grows the oranges should get a lower price, they’ve dealt with the industry, this is common sense.
There is a lot of ‘assumed benefits’ to doing the job.
If you are the bread baker, you are assuming you don’t need to go buy bread every week. The fringe benefit to you baking the bread is that now you yourself get some free bread- this is the incentive.
If you are not going to get any free bread, you may as well not bother.
Many men become a carpenter so they can build their own homes.
People do things because they see a broad range of benefits.. as Sundance explains how they are doing things, the people with the skin in the game are being denied the full range of the benefits they should be getting for doing the jobs, taking the risks, dealing with the negative consequences of the industry.
This is disincentivizing. If the carpenter isn’t allowed to build his own home, then why become one?
If you are the ones that deal with the oil industry and all that entails in your state, yes you should get a better deal on what comes out the ground under you.
And how about China. They are the ones making all the cheap junk, they can’t possibly be paying what we pay for their cheap junk, I assume that since they built the cheap junk they are then getting their own cheap junk cheap and not at the prices we pay- right?
Some of the Chinese stuff I see and buy is very cheap and in reality quite good. It’s a sad reality.
I promised myself to no longer debate with Linear thinking mindsets because all they ever see is a straight line. A causes B, and B then causes C, always looking for a single “Right” answer.
Why people always get it wrong is they never connect the dots. You can’t Blow S**t up around the globe and then claim speculation or manipulation in the markets.
Every market sets the price when certain things occur in that particular market whether currencies, commodities, energies, bonds, equities, futures, etc.
When you focus domestically, you miss the biggest picture of all – GLOBAL Economics!
So If you don’t trade for a living then all you are doing is pure speculation in which 90% of the population follows.
ECB and Bessent are proving their arrogance and very few can see it!!