"ALGO HICIMOS MAL"

Palabras del presidente Oscar Arias en la Cumbre de las Américas

Trinidad y Tobago (18 de abril del 2009)

Tengo la impresión de que cada vez que los países caribeños y latinoamericanos se reúnen con el presidente de los Estados Unidos de América, es para pedirle cosas o para reclamarle cosas. Casi siempre, es para culpar a Estados Unidos de nuestros males pasados, presentes y futuros. No creo que eso sea del todo justo.

No podemos olvidar que América Latina tuvo universidades antes de que Estados Unidos creara Harvard y William & Mary, que son las primeras universidades de ese país. No podemos olvidar que en este continente, como en el mundo entero, por lo menos hasta 1750 todos los americanos eran más o menos iguales: todos eran pobres.

Cuando aparece la Revolución Industrial en Inglaterra, otros países se montan en ese vagón: Alemania, Francia, Estados Unidos, Canadá, Australia, Nueva Zelanda... y así la Revolución Industrial pasó por América Latina como un cometa, y no nos dimos cuenta. Ciertamente perdimos la oportunidad.

También hay una diferencia muy grande. Leyendo la historia de América Latina, comparada con la historia de Estados Unidos, uno comprende que Latinoamérica no tuvo un John Winthrop español, ni portugués, que viniera con la Biblia en su mano dispuesto a construir "una Ciudad sobre una Colina", una ciudad que brillara, como fue la pretensión de los peregrinos que llegaron a Estados Unidos.

Hace 50 años, México era más rico que Portugal . En 1950, un país como Brasil tenía un ingreso per cápita más elevado que el de Corea del Sur. Hace 60 años, Honduras tenía más riqueza per cápita que Singapur, y hoy Singapur -en cuestión de 35 ó 40 años- es un país con $40.000 de ingreso anual por habitante. Bueno, algo hicimos mal los latinoamericanos.

¿Qué hicimos mal?   No puedo enumerar todas las cosas que hemos hecho mal. Para comenzar, tenemos una escolaridad de 7 años. Esa es la escolaridad promedio de América Latina y no es el caso de la mayoría de los países asiáticos. Ciertamente no es el caso de países como Estados Unidos y Canadá, con la mejor educación del mundo, similar a la de los europeos. De cada 10 estudiantes que ingresan a la secundaria en América Latina, en algunos países solo uno termina esa secundaria. Hay países que tienen una mortalidad infantil de 50 niños por cada mil, cuando el promedio en los países asiáticos más avanzados es de 8, 9 ó 10.

Nosotros tenemos países donde la carga tributaria es del 12% del producto interno bruto, y no es responsabilidad de nadie, excepto la nuestra, que no le cobremos dinero a la gente más rica de nuestros países. Nadie tiene la culpa de eso, excepto nosotros mismos.

En 1950, cada ciudadano norteamericano era cuatro veces más rico que un ciudadano latinoamericano. Hoy en día, un ciudadano norteamericano es 10, 15 ó 20 veces más rico que un latinoamericano. Eso no es culpa de Estados Unidos, es culpa nuestra.

En mi intervención de esta mañana, me referí a un hecho que para mí es grotesco, y que lo único que demuestra es que el sistema de valores del siglo XX, que parece ser el que estamos poniendo en práctica también en el siglo XXI, es un sistema de valores equivocado. Porque no puede ser que el mundo rico dedique 100.000 millones de dólares para aliviar la pobreza del 80% de la población del mundo -en un planeta que tiene 2.500 millones de seres humanos con un ingreso de $2 por día- y que gaste 13 veces más ($1.300.000. 000.000) en armas y soldados.

Como lo dije esta mañana, no puede ser que América Latina se gaste $50.000 millones en armas y soldados. Yo me pregunto: ¿quién es el enemigo nuestro? El enemigo nuestro, presidente Correa, de esa desigualdad que usted apunta con mucha razón, es la falta de educación; es el analfabetismo; es que no gastamos en la salud de nuestro pueblo; que no creamos la infraestructura necesaria, los caminos, las carreteras, los puertos, los aeropuertos; que no estamos dedicando los recursos necesarios para detener la degradación del medio ambiente; es la desigualdad que tenemos, que realmente nos avergüenza; es producto, entre muchas cosas, por supuesto, de que no estamos educando a nuestros hijos y a nuestras hijas.

Uno va a una universidad latinoamericana y todavía parece que estamos en los sesenta, setenta u ochenta. Parece que se nos olvidó que el 9 de noviembre de 1989 pasó algo muy importante, al caer el Muro de Berlín, y que el mundo cambió. Tenemos que aceptar que este es un mundo distinto, y en eso francamente pienso que todos los académicos, que toda la gente de pensamiento, que todos los economistas, que todos los historiadores, casi que coinciden en que el siglo XXI es el siglo de los asiáticos, no de los latinoamericanos. Y yo, lamentablemente, coincido con ellos. Porque mientras nosotros seguimos discutiendo sobre ideologías, seguimos discutiendo sobre todos los "ismos" (¿cuál es el mejor? capitalismo, socialismo, comunismo, liberalismo, neoliberalismo, socialcristianismo. ..), los asiáticos encontraron un "ismo" muy realista para el siglo XXI y el final del siglo XX, que es el pragmatismo .

Para solo citar un ejemplo, recordemos que cuando Deng Xiaoping visitó Singapur y Corea del Sur, después de haberse dado cuenta de que sus propios vecinos se estaban enriqueciendo de una manera muy acelerada, regresó a Pekín y dijo a los viejos camaradas maoístas que lo habían acompañado en la Larga Marcha: "Bueno, la verdad, queridos camaradas, es que mí no me importa si el gato es blanco o negro, lo único que me interesa es que cace ratones" . Y si hubiera estado vivo Mao, se hubiera muerto de nuevo cuando dijo que " la verdad es que enriquecerse es glorioso ". Y mientras los chinos hacen esto, y desde el 79 a hoy crecen a un 11%, 12% o 13%, y han sacado a 300 millones de habitantes de la pobreza, nosotros seguimos discutiendo sobre ideologías que tuvimos que haber enterrado hace mucho tiempo atrás.

La buena noticia es que esto lo logró Deng Xioping cuando tenía 74 años. Viendo alrededor, queridos Presidentes, no veo a nadie que esté cerca de los 74 años. Por eso solo les pido que no esperemos a cumplirlos para hacer los cambios que tenemos que hacer.

Muchas gracias.

The End of Philosophy

By DAVID BROOKS

Socrates talked. The assumption behind his approach to philosophy, and the approaches of millions of people since, is that moral thinking is mostly a matter of reason and deliberation: Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.

One problem with this kind of approach to morality, as Michael Gazzaniga writes in his 2008 book, “Human,” is that “it has been hard to find any correlation between moral reasoning and proactive moral behavior, such as helping other people. In fact, in most studies, none has been found.”

Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous.

As Steven Quartz of the California Institute of Technology said during a recent discussion of ethics sponsored by the John Templeton Foundation, “Our brain is computing value at every fraction of a second. Everything that we look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into our awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... what our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is of value in our environment.”

Think of what happens when you put a new food into your mouth. You don’t have to decide if it’s disgusting. You just know. You don’t have to decide if a landscape is beautiful. You just know.

Moral judgments are like that. They are rapid intuitive decisions and involve the emotion-processing parts of the brain. Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.

In other words, reasoning comes later and is often guided by the emotions that preceded it. Or as Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia memorably wrote, “The emotions are, in fact, in charge of the temple of morality, and ... moral reasoning is really just a servant masquerading as a high priest.”

The question then becomes: What shapes moral emotions in the first place? The answer has long been evolution, but in recent years there’s an increasing appreciation that evolution isn’t just about competition. It’s also about cooperation within groups. Like bees, humans have long lived or died based on their ability to divide labor, help each other and stand together in the face of common threats. Many of our moral emotions and intuitions reflect that history. We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.

The first nice thing about this evolutionary approach to morality is that it emphasizes the social nature of moral intuition. People are not discrete units coolly formulating moral arguments. They link themselves together into communities and networks of mutual influence.

The second nice thing is that it entails a warmer view of human nature. Evolution is always about competition, but for humans, as Darwin speculated, competition among groups has turned us into pretty cooperative, empathetic and altruistic creatures — at least within our families, groups and sometimes nations.

The third nice thing is that it explains the haphazard way most of us lead our lives without destroying dignity and choice. Moral intuitions have primacy, Haidt argues, but they are not dictators. There are times, often the most important moments in our lives, when in fact we do use reason to override moral intuitions, and often those reasons — along with new intuitions — come from our friends.

The rise and now dominance of this emotional approach to morality is an epochal change. It challenges all sorts of traditions. It challenges the bookish way philosophy is conceived by most people. It challenges the Talmudic tradition, with its hyper-rational scrutiny of texts. It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning.

Finally, it should also challenge the very scientists who study morality. They’re good at explaining how people make judgments about harm and fairness, but they still struggle to explain the feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central. The evolutionary approach also leads many scientists to neglect the concept of individual responsibility and makes it hard for them to appreciate that most people struggle toward goodness, not as a means, but as an end in itself.

How the internet got its rules

By STEPHEN D. CROCKER

Bethesda, Md.

TODAY is an important date in the history of the Internet: the 40th anniversary of what is known as the Request for Comments. Outside the technical community, not many people know about the R.F.C.’s, but these humble documents shape the Internet’s inner workings and have played a significant role in its success.

When the R.F.C.’s were born, there wasn’t a World Wide Web. Even by the end of 1969, there was just a rudimentary network linking four computers at four research centers: the University of California, Los Angeles; the Stanford Research Institute; the University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The government financed the network and the hundred or fewer computer scientists who used it. It was such a small community that we all got to know one another.

A great deal of deliberation and planning had gone into the network’s underlying technology, but no one had given a lot of thought to what we would actually do with it. So, in August 1968, a handful of graduate students and staff members from the four sites began meeting intermittently, in person, to try to figure it out. (I was lucky enough to be one of the U.C.L.A. students included in these wide-ranging discussions.) It wasn’t until the next spring that we realized we should start writing down our thoughts. We thought maybe we’d put together a few temporary, informal memos on network protocols, the rules by which computers exchange information. I offered to organize our early notes.

What was supposed to be a simple chore turned out to be a nerve-racking project. Our intent was only to encourage others to chime in, but I worried we might sound as though we were making official decisions or asserting authority. In my mind, I was inciting the wrath of some prestigious professor at some phantom East Coast establishment. I was actually losing sleep over the whole thing, and when I finally tackled my first memo, which dealt with basic communication between two computers, it was in the wee hours of the morning. I had to work in a bathroom so as not to disturb the friends I was staying with, who were all asleep.

Still fearful of sounding presumptuous, I labeled the note a “Request for Comments.” R.F.C. 1, written 40 years ago today, left many questions unanswered, and soon became obsolete. But the R.F.C.’s themselves took root and flourished. They became the formal method of publishing Internet protocol standards, and today there are more than 5,000, all readily available online.

But we started writing these notes before we had e-mail, or even before the network was really working, so we wrote our visions for the future on paper and sent them around via the postal service. We’d mail each research group one printout and they’d have to photocopy more themselves.

The early R.F.C.’s ranged from grand visions to mundane details, although the latter quickly became the most common. Less important than the content of those first documents was that they were available free of charge and anyone could write one. Instead of authority-based decision-making, we relied on a process we called “rough consensus and running code.” Everyone was welcome to propose ideas, and if enough people liked it and used it, the design became a standard.

After all, everyone understood there was a practical value in choosing to do the same task in the same way. For example, if we wanted to move a file from one machine to another, and if you were to design the process one way, and I was to design it another, then anyone who wanted to talk to both of us would have to employ two distinct ways of doing the same thing. So there was plenty of natural pressure to avoid such hassles. It probably helped that in those days we avoided patents and other restrictions; without any financial incentive to control the protocols, it was much easier to reach agreement.

This was the ultimate in openness in technical design and that culture of open processes was essential in enabling the Internet to grow and evolve as spectacularly as it has. In fact, we probably wouldn’t have the Web without it. When CERN physicists wanted to publish a lot of information in a way that people could easily get to it and add to it, they simply built and tested their ideas. Because of the groundwork we’d laid in the R.F.C.’s, they did not have to ask permission, or make any changes to the core operations of the Internet. Others soon copied them — hundreds of thousands of computer users, then hundreds of millions, creating and sharing content and technology. That’s the Web.

Put another way, we always tried to design each new protocol to be both useful in its own right and a building block available to others. We did not think of protocols as finished products, and we deliberately exposed the internal architecture to make it easy for others to gain a foothold. This was the antithesis of the attitude of the old telephone networks, which actively discouraged any additions or uses they had not sanctioned.

Of course, the process for both publishing ideas and for choosing standards eventually became more formal. Our loose, unnamed meetings grew larger and semi-organized into what we called the Network Working Group. In the four decades since, that group evolved and transformed a couple of times and is now the Internet Engineering Task Force. It has some hierarchy and formality but not much, and it remains free and accessible to anyone.

The R.F.C.’s have grown up, too. They really aren’t requests for comments anymore because they are published only after a lot of vetting. But the culture that was built up in the beginning has continued to play a strong role in keeping things more open than they might have been. Ideas are accepted and sorted on their merits, with as many ideas rejected by peers as are accepted.

As we rebuild our economy, I do hope we keep in mind the value of openness, especially in industries that have rarely had it. Whether it’s in health care reform or energy innovation, the largest payoffs will come not from what the stimulus package pays for directly, but from the huge vistas we open up for others to explore.

I was reminded of the power and vitality of the R.F.C.’s when I made my first trip to Bangalore, India, 15 years ago. I was invited to give a talk at the Indian Institute of Science, and as part of the visit I was introduced to a student who had built a fairly complex software system. Impressed, I asked where he had learned to do so much. He simply said, “I downloaded the R.F.C.’s and read them.” 

"What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"

A 7-year old boy stands on his grandmother's balcony with the Mexican flag across his chest while he imagines he the president delivering a speech to millions of people. For the rest of his life he wants to have:

Courage to stand up to those who prefer the dinosaur than to undertake the pains of democracy,

Fortitude to be an honest public servant and not listen to Socrates who once said "too honest to be a politician and live,"

Humility to learn from people without a Harvard MBA,

Passion for his job as his abuelo and mother had for pulling out teeth,

Curiosity to ask the same questions the Labyrinth of Solitude once tried to answer,

Maturity and discipline to run an ultramarathon like the Tarahumara Indians,

Wind to sail the oceans that his grandfather and father once sailed,

Luck to capture the perfect photo as his father once did,

Gallantry as his father showed when he fought in World War II,

Energy to wake up at six o'clock to care for his baby girl, so his wife can go to the gym,

Inspiration for his daughter so she can find her little girl on the balcony,

Acceptance of his daughter's own speech and choice of balcony,

Hope that one day the children of Mexico's lost cities and forgotten towns can also find their own boy on the balcony,

Leisure to read Le Petit Prince to teach his daughter that the "eyes are blind and that one must look with the heart,"

Everyday I want to remember that I am that boy as I stand on the balcony regardless of the weather outside.

– Jorge S. Roberts
http://www.hbs.edu/mba/profiles/PortraitProject/2007portrait/RobertsJorge.html

Financial Institution Scam / Fraude con Institucion Financiera

[Este comentario esta escrito en ingles y en español. Abajo en español]

[This note is written in both spanish and english]

Incredible enough I received last week a letter that promise me some compensation if I contacted a person at a financial institution. The promise is pretty simple. The scammer says that he has an account under my same last name. That the accountholder died and nobody has moved the money so the scammer wants to work with me to get the account close and the money out. I believe how this scam works is that the scammer promises different things and then asks you to send some money back for his 'share' of the pie. In my case the institution that the scammer used was the Chesterfield Group in the United Kingdom and the name of the person is Christopher Moran.

[Attached the letter that you received in the mail that is a scam]

Interestantemente la semana pasada recibi una carta de un señor que me promete un dinero si lo contacto. Este señor supuestamente trabaja en una institucion financiera. El señor me dice que tiene una cuenta en su institucion bajo el nombre de una persona con mi mismo apellido. Que el dueño de la cuenta se murio y el dinero quedo abandonado. Que si lo contacto podemos hacer algo para sacar ese dinero. Creo que el fraude funciona de la siguiente manera. El señor dice que hace todos los tramites. Luego le pide a uno que le envie dinero directamente de mi cuenta para pagar por los tramites. En mi caso la institucion financiera que utilizaron fue el Chesterfield Group en el Reino Unido y el nombre del supuesto señor es Christopher Moran.

[Adjunto la carta que me llego]

Se derrumba la confianza

Una de las caracteristicas fundamentales del exito estado unidense en terminos economicos ha sido la confianza. Un tema que fue explicado muy ampliamente por Francis Fukuyama en su libro 'Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity' (Confianza). La confianza es algo que disminuye costos de transaccion y permite que el dinero y las inversiones se muevan mas rapido.

La confianza en Wall Street fue una de las causas de su colapso esta semana que paso. La confianza de corredoras y banqueros de aceptar papeles de dudosa reputacion. Algunas excusas que salen a la luz es que los paquetes hipotecarios que fueron comprados por estos bancos eras una mezcla de papeles buenos y malos. Otra excusa es que eran papeles (derivadas de creditos) muy complejos para ser valorados perfectamente.

Aun asumiendo que estas excusas son veridicas para todos los casos (que no lo creo), uno puede decir que la confianza jugo un papel supremamente importante al aceptar este riesgo sin ningun tipo de precaucion. Los banqueros en Wall Street (y el mundo) comenzaron a tranzar y disectar papeles que no conocian a la perfeccion. Se basaron en una cadena de confianza para librarse de la responsabilidad de indagar mas a fondo.

Bancos como Goldman Sachs y Morgan Stanley lideraron una nueva era donde utilizando su audacidad y tecnologia comenzaron a disectar papeles pero al final se dieron cuenta que el metodo de valoracion no era tan simple. Es dificil valorar algo al cual uno no conoce bien. EStos papeles tan complejos dependen mucho de la volatilidad, algo parecido a una opcion (calls/puts). Lo dificil de estos papeles es que no tienen la informacion necesaria de varios años para valorar que tipo de volatilidad tiene el activo que respalda el papel.

En el caso de las opciones sobre acciones, uno piensa que conoce el tipo de volatilidad del activo sujeto simplemente porque conoce el precio de las acciones por años de años. En el caso de estos papeles de renta fija es un poco mas complejo. Cada papel es diferente a otro por lo que uno no conoce el riesgo intrinsico. Adicionalmente ciertos tipos de papel no han sido tranzados en bolsa nunca (solo "Over the counter"), otro solo por unos años.

Obviamente que este es solo un factor del derrumbe de las bolsas y la economia estadounidense. Primero se derrumbaron los precios de los bienes raices. Con la ayuda de los CDOs derrumban las acciones de instituciones financieras. Luego los problemas de la capitalizacion de muchas compañias. Luego se derrumban las calificaciones de riesgo. Luego los papeles de renta fija de las instituciones financieras. El sistema se vuelve iliquido afectando el resto de la economia. Todo el mercado se ve afectado y el resto de las acciones se derrumban. Se pierden millones de dolares en pensiones e inversiones del resto de personas no involucradas en Wall Street. Con esto se pierde la confianza del consumido comun. Sin confianza (sin consumo) el resto de la economia se desbarata.

Ahora estamos en un dilema. Por un lado la gente no consume porque ve que el proximo año va a ser tenaz. Por el otro lado se necesita de consumo para que las compañias sobrevivan. Sin consumo las compañias no fabrican. Sin fabrica no hay necesidad del empleado. Con desempleo se genera mas recesion y mas desconfianza. La gente ahorra mas y no consume y comienza nuevamente el ciclo vicioso.

Ahora si que nos salve Mandrake.

Don't blame the oil 'speculators'

[Interesantemente despues del ultimo articulo que les mostre quede mas intrigado con el movimiento del congreso estadounidense por tratar de controlar la especulacion en el mercado de derivados del petroleo. Hoy me cruze con este articulo que aqui les comparto]

A campaign in Congress to punish traders for record oil prices reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how futures markets work.

By Jon Birger, senior writer
Last Updated: June 27, 2008: 9:11 AM EDT

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- "Make no mistake about it," U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said Monday while chairing a meeting of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. "Excessive speculation in commodity markets is having a devastating effect at the gas pump that is rippling through our entire economy."
Here's a suggestion: The next time a Congressional committee wants to hold a hearing on how "speculators" are driving up oil prices, each committee member should first be required to demonstrate - preferably in their opening remarks - a basic understanding of the mechanics of futures trading.

Even better, they should be required to explain in detail how it is that investors who never take delivery of a single barrel of crude - and thus never remove a drop of oil from the open market - are causing record high oil prices.

If there were such a requirement, I guarantee we'd never again see a circus like the one Stupak presided over Monday.

"Do I think [Washington politicans] understand the role of futures markets - how they facilitate price discovery and the transference of risk?" asks former U.S. Commodities Futures Trade Commission chief economist Gerald Gay. "No, they're clueless - at least most of them."
Bad public policy

If our representatives did understand the oil markets, they'd know that the true telltale sign of a speculative bubble is not rising trading volumes but rising oil inventories. Speculators would be hoarding oil - building up inventories either in anticipation of higher prices or as part of a scheme to drive prices there. Yet according to the Department of Energy, U.S. oil inventories are now at below-average levels. U.S. oil stocks stand at 309 million barrels, versus 330 million in June 2005.

So far, lawmakers have introduced nine different bills targeting oil speculators, though for the most part their prescriptions have been milder than their over-the-top rhetoric .
Bashing futures traders may well be good politics, but it's stupid public policy. By providing a mechanism for locking in prices, the futures market makes it easier for oil companies to make costly investments in new production - which is the key to lowering prices at the pump.
Futures trading also discourages hoarding in an otherwise tight market. Without speculators willing to take the other side of so many futures contracts, oil refiners and other end-users might be inclined to ramp up their spot-market purchases and store more oil as a hedge against further price increases.

And, of course, any increased draw on current supplies would lead to even higher oil and gasoline prices. Indeed, without a futures market, I believe we'd be decrying oil at $200 a barrel oil instead of oil at $135.

A more basic misconception in Washington involves what these so-called speculators are really buying. They're not buying oil, they're buying futures, and this is a crucial distinction. A futures contract is an agreement between a buyer and a seller to deliver a set amount of oil - typically 1,000 barrels - at a specific price on a specific date. The value of that contract rises and falls, depending upon market conditions, right up until the date of delivery.

Thing is, the pension funds, index funds, hedge funds and other so-called speculators almost never take delivery of any oil. The typical investment fund will buy, say, the August oil future and then sell it days before it comes due - typically rolling over the proceeds into the next month's contract.

"For speculators to be propping up the price of oil, they somehow have to be taking physical oil off the market," says energy markets expert Craig Pirrong, a finance professor at the University of Houston's Bauer College of Business.

Pirrong points out that when the federal government decided to bolster cheese prices in the 1970s, it did so by purchasing warehouses full of cheese and keeping it off the market. "Well, where's the cheese now?" Pirrong asks. "Where's all the oil that the speculators have held off the market?"

Even if you believe there's no way that oil trading volumes could be soaring without influencing oil prices, remember that influence then has to run two ways.

If an index fund is indirectly driving up spot oil prices every time it buys a future, then the converse must be true, too - there must be an equal and opposite downward push on spot prices every time that future is sold. In other words, futures market critics can't have it both ways.
There's something else politicians conveniently overlook: futures trading requires two to tango. For every investor who is betting oil prices will go up, there also needs to be an investor willing to take the opposite side of that bet.

In the past, there have been times when the overwhelming majority of speculators were "longs" betting on higher prices, while their commercial-trader counterparts - i.e. traders working for oil refiners, airlines, and other end-users of oil - were the "shorts" betting prices would fall.
But as New York Mercantile Exchange Chairman James Newsome explained to Stupak's Congressional committee, today's speculators are evenly split between shorts and longs. Moreover, the percentage of futures contracts held by speculators (as opposed to commercial traders) "actually decreased over the last year," Newsome told the subcommittee, "even at the same time that [oil] prices were increasing."

It's time to find a new scapegoat. My own nominee: Congress. But that's another column.
Your voice: Is Birger right? Tell us what you think.

First Published: June 27, 2008: 8:30 AM EDT

Oil Bubble

[Recientemente he pensado mucho sobre lo que se discute en el mercado respecto al 'oil/commodity bubble'. Es un tema relativamente interesante y probablemente un poco complejo. Por esa razon me encanto cuando un amigo me envio el siguiente articulo que explica un poco la interaccion entre derivados y spot prices]

Econbrowser: Oil bubble (May 17, 2008)

How speculation may be contributing to the most recent moves in oil prices.
An important recent trend in management of pension and hedge funds is the increasing allocation of investment dollars to commodity speculation. There are lots of ways you can do this. Perhaps the simplest is to purchase, say, the July NYMEX oil futures contract. If you'd bought that contract Friday, it would enable you to take delivery of oil in Cushing, Oklahoma some time in July for $126/barrel. As a pension fund, you don't actually want to receive that oil, so in early June you'd plan on selling that contract to someone else and using the proceeds to buy the August contract. If oil prices go up and you can sell the contract for more than $126/barrel next month, you will have made a profit. By rolling over near-term futures contracts in this way, your "investment" will earn a return that follows the path of oil prices.

For the rest go to: http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2008/05/oil_bubble.html