When fighting for the issues you believe in passionately, your message needs to be understood before it can be heard.
It is not enough to be the most informed, or the loudest, or even just right. If your audience can’t connect with your message, they won’t rally to your cause. No one ever said it would be easy. In the financial services industry, most issues are complex. Really complex. But for those who can overcome complexity with creativity, simplicity always trumps hypocrisy.
Another Inconvenient Truth
Successful blogger, entrepreneur, and publisher Jed Morey recently posted an eye-opening video I highly recommend to our subscribers.
Working with friends Doug Wood and Rob Bellon, Morey (publisher of Long Island Press, an alternative weekly newspaper in the New York area) co-produced an eight-minute video called “The Book of Morgan,” which “tells how investment banking giant Morgan Stanley came to rule the oil world.” In his blog, Morey writes:
The purpose of presenting it this way is to open more eyes as to how rotten our system truly is and to elevate the dialogue about one of the most crucial economic elements of our daily lives. In the next several months we will be bombarded with finger pointing and accusations with respect to gasoline prices as the presidential campaign heats up. But few of the arguments you will hear will resemble the truth. For the truth, my friends, can only be found in the gospel according to Wall Street−and “The Book of Morgan.”
View the Full Video “The Book of Morgan.”
Morey’s treatment is as fascinating as it is functioning. Much of the information Morey presents is not necessarily new. Unfortunately, it is not readily available. Morey’s work is exceptional for its ability to break down a complex issue in a way that is digestible and accessible.
In entertaining video format, with an engaging script interspersed with easy-to-follow animation, Morey explains the stunning manipulations and machinations responsible for the artificial rise in oil pricing victimizing the American consumer. Morey dissects the issue with concise, straight-forward language, identifying key players, pivotal legislation and political maneuvers, major milestones, cause and ultimately, tragic consequences.
Morey also couches his production with more explanatory materials and links for site visitors to check out additional sources to learn more about this critical issue.
Issues should stand on their merits, not be clouded in complexities.
If your issue is similarly complex, don’t just develop a paper or write a blog you throw over the fence and hope the masses respond. Take a webpage from Morey’s playbook and develop content that connects with your target audience.
We’ll be following Morey on his mission moving forward. If you’d like to join us, I encourage you to read more of what Morey has to say on this issue and others on his blog: http://jedmorey.com/.
The Book of Morgan
To contact Craig McGuire directly, please email Craig.McGuire@TheShareholderActivist.com.
Christopher Bayer, Ph.D. says:
Jed Morey’s “The Book of Morgan” is an astounding video document. It is the gospel according to Wall Street. The word play on “The Book of Mormon” is intriguing and meaningful. The original book of the Latter Day Saints recounts the spiritual journey of God’s people who traveled to the Americas.
America is indeed the Promised Land. And New York is “The Financial Capital of the World.” Fittingly, the world headquarters of Morgan Stanley is in Manhattan, in the heart of the theatre district. Everything happens for a reason. Founded in 1935, Morgan Stanley employees 60,000 people working in 42 countries. The Morgan Stanley Building at 1585 Broadway in America is a magnificent, majestic structure and its people are masters of high theatre, and the black gold universe of Big Oil.
New York is where the money is! Morgan Stanley is at the epicenter. It all makes perfect sense. And it’s “The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Oil is the lubricant of civilization, and progress. Morgan Stanley is indeed the master of this universe. They have the most impact and influence on the complex pricing system behind oil than any other American corporation. Make no mistake about it.
The following facts dazzle and bombard the viewer of Jed Morey’s video:
1. The price of oil is determined by Wall Street and “K” Street (“Lobby Central,” Washington, DC).
2. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 repealed the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933. Glass-Steagall had created the FDIC and other banking reforms needed to control speculation. In 2000, President Clinton signed into law the Gramm bill which heralded deregulation and the breakdown of the separation of commercial banks and investment banks (securities firms). The net result led to a flood of available money for banks! Commercial and investment banks. Money became available for high risk speculation in commodities (especially oil), and other markets. Bank assets could be leveraged like never before.
3. In 1999, the Intercontinental Trading Exchange (ICE) was created specifically to trade energy futures. This was the first electronic trading platform. It grew from a 10 billion dollar business to a 450 billion enterprise in approximately 10 years.
4. The Gramm bill was also known as the “Enron Loophole.” The “beauty” of it all was that energy futures could be traded with no federal oversight or control. A penultimate unregulated market.
5. The coup de grace came when the Bush administration granted ICE status as a foreign exchange making it exempt from all US Federal regulations. Transparency was gracefully eliminated. Today ICE accounts for half of the world’s oil trades.
6. Morgan Stanley has major equity positions in oil shipping (Heidmar), storage (TransMontagne), and trading (ICE). They essentially own, or co-own, the whole show.
We are gearing up for a firestorm beyond imagination based on Jed Morey’s powerful document. The world equity market is a 36 trillion dollar venture. The world debt market is an 82 trillion dollar enterprise, and the world derivatives market is a 790 trillion dollar cartel. Derivatives will rule and dwarf all equity, debt, and markets combined till kingdom come!
In our infinite wisdom are we creating the bubble of all bubbles? A world financial market hyper-bubble fueled by greed, money lust, and severe psychopathological financial myopia that will make Tulip Mania syndrome (Holland, 1637) look like child’s play. At the peak, 12 acres of land in Holland had the equivalent value of one “rare” tulip bulb.
As McGuire cogently points out: “…..a message needs to be understood before it can be heard.” Morey gives us several messages. Morgan Stanley has a lock on this rig. It’s not just their shop; it’s an entire department store: tankers, storage depots, trading platforms. Oil is pulled from the ground or the ocean floor, refined, transported, stored and then sold to known brands like Exxon-Mobil and Chevron for consumer purchase. Morgan Stanley is indeed the master of ceremonies in this theatre of operations. Its Broadway tentacles have global reach. I think we are beginning to understand. Left to their own devices, and the capacity to exploit any loophole available, the really “smart” players know how to play the game to the max.
We’ve been brought up, trained, and conditioned to believe in the law of supply and demand. Oil was heretofore a reactive commodity in the sense that world events (revolution, war, weather) impacted oil pricing. Today there is a surplus of oil on the market. The world as a whole is relatively stable, yet prices continue to soar. This is the new reality that the “Book of Morgan” so joyfully preaches. Bottom-line: it’s just all about the trade. And the “innovative” round trip trade at that where Morgan takes the same position on the buy and the sell side, and the only winner is the exchange (ICE). Abundant fees are generated. Remember, Morgan Stanley is a major ICE owner. Yes they do have the lock on this rig, and their gospel is quite eloquent.
Trelayne says:
After bailing Morgan Stanley, JP Mprgan Chase and the other crooks, Morgan Stanley got tight with Stevie Chu and bought the NE Area Emergency Home Heating Oil supply, Feb. 2011, for far far less than home owners were paying for the same, and, before one could say “S thru a goose,” had it on the way to China for big $$$$$, now, they have manipulated gasoline prices, via ICE. to bring the US Economy to a screaming halt.
I am truly surprised that Americans have not gone to the HQ’s of these crooks and simply started pulling the bricks down. Mexico and China either control or subsidize the cost of gasoline. The US Gov continues to subsidize US Big oil and turns a blind eye to the crooked banker involvement……so, tell me again……Who’s the 3rd world country?
OF THE CORPORATION, BY THE CORPORATION AND FOR THE CORPORATION…..until we wake up and everything’s just…..gone.