CRISE FINANCEIRA MUNDIAL: Fraude afeta preços do petróleo

O que já se sabia veio à luz de forma trágica nesse final de tarde: a elevação dos preços nos mercados de commodities faz parte de uma fraude orquestrada por empresas interessadas em manipular os preços. Essas empresas, inclusive chinesas, se aproveitam do dinheiro barato dos governos para lançarem novas "bolhas' nos mercados emergentes e nos mercados de commodities. Essas bolhas estourarão brevemenet, trazendo mais perdas aos overnos que não poderão deixar de socorrer as "Goldman Sachs da vida", sistemicamente importantes demais para quebrarem...

Um exemplo foi a recente alta dos preços do petróleo na terça-feira, obra de um especulador. Vale a pena ler a reportagem do Financial Times sobre essa operação específica. Interessante notar que a PVM é amaior empresa de contratos futros de balcão nomercado de petróleo. Para variar, a culpa recai sobre um "operador não-identificado" que teria atuado à revelia da companhia. A empresa perdeu mais de 7 milhões de euros na operação.

Segundo o FT:

London-based PVM said it had informed the Financial Services Authority, the UK regulator. But officials at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the US regulator, claimed they had been kept in the dark for several hours in spite of an agreement between the watchdogs last year to exchange such market-sensitive information spontaneously.

Oil traders in London and New York said the “unauthorised trading” explained the exceptional spike in business activity and prices in the early hours of Tuesday that some initially thought must have been caused by a geopolitical event. “Trading volumes rose overnight and prices jumped more than $2 a barrel without apparent justification,” a senior oil trader in New York said.

Prices rose in one hour from $71 to $73.5, the highest level for the year, according to Reuters data. In total, futures contracts for more than 16m barrels of oil changed hands in that hour – equivalent to double the daily production of Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer, and far more than the traditional 500,000 barrels for that time of the day.

Traders said the broker implicated had allegedly accounted for at least half of the unusual activity, with the rest the result of others chasing the rally. Oil prices on Thursday fell to $66.5 a barrel, down almost 10 per cent from Tuesday’s peak.

Link relacionado:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e0ae2b2a-66f7-11de-925f-00144feabdc0.html