From the archive, originally posted by: [ spectre ]
http://www.nysun.com/article/51555
Iran Crisis Renews Interest in Energy Stocks
By DAN DORFMAN / March 30, 2007
“The latest Mideast crisis is just another good reason to … own energy
stocks,” one of the country’s sharpest oil minds, Alan Gaines, tells me.
The former crack institutional energy analyst and current CEO of
Houston-based Dune Energy was reacting to Iran’s capture last Friday
of 15 British sailors and marines while they were on routine patrol
off the waters of southern Iraq.
He’s hardly alone in his view of the tense situation, which, over the
past week, drove the price of oil to as much as $68 a barrel from the
high $50s before backing down to the low $60s and closing yesterday
about $66. Not unexpectedly, oil stocks spurted after the detention of
the hostages, with a number rising a fast 3% to 7%.
“It’s as though investors have rediscovered Exxon Mobil and Chevron,”
money manager Selwyn Ortz, a principal of Hong Kong-based HK
Investments Ltd., tells me.
While most Middle East watchers say they believe it’s only a matter of
time before the British hostages are released, the view of some market
pros, such as D.A. Davidson & Co.’s chief investment strategist, Fred
Dickson, is that this incident should not be ignored. It’s a reminder,
he says, that the Middle East remains a tinderbox; it has raised
international tensions a few notches, and it’s yet another sign that
the oil market is vulnerable to an immediate disruption at any time.
The end result, he says, adds up to both higher oil and higher energy
stock prices. “You still have to own the energy sector,” he says.
Describing Iran’s anti-West leader, President Ahmadinejad, as “a loose
cannon,” Mr. Gaines says he believes any new sanctions imposed on the
country could make it even more hawkish on oil prices. Iran is the
world’s fourth-largest oil exporter and provides 5% of the world’s oil
needs.
Noting that “a whole bunch of crazies control the world’s oil,” Mr.
Gaines says he thinks the prospective price for petroleum should now
be revised upward. He sees oil trading the rest of the year between a
low of $55 a barrel and a high of $100, and says 2007 will wrap up at
around the $70 level. “I doubt that we’ll see sub-$40 in our
lifetime,” he says.
His three favorite energy stocks – each of which he owns personally –
are Chesapeake Energy, ConocoPhillips, and Allis-Chalmers Energy. He
says he believes Chesapeake and Conoco offer potential 20% gains
during the next 12 months; Allis-Chalmers between 50% and 100%.
Mr. Ortz maintains that you can’t rule out the possibility that an
emboldened and hawkish Iran might seek to block the Strait of Hormuz,
through which a third of the world’s oil passes. It’s also the only
sea route through which oil can be transported from Kuwait, Iraq,
Iran, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Such
an action by Iran, he says, would push the price of oil to between
$100 and $150 a barrel in speedy fashion.
The British- Iran crisis, Mr. Ortz believes, has given energy stocks a
shot in the arm. As such, his firm, which has been taking profits on
some energy shares that have racked up sizable gains, among them Exxon
Mobil, Schlumberger, and Chevron, has stopped, theorizing they could
now head somewhat higher. It has also been fattening its stake in
ConocoPhillips.
Taking note of the Middle East crisis, veteran market adviser Martin
Weiss contends that chances of a conflict with Iran have risen
sharply. It could drive oil prices, he says, to new all-time highs and
set the stage for an upsurge in inflation the likes of which have not
been seen since (the double-digit numbers of ) the late 1970s. As
such, Mr. Weiss, editor of the Safe Money Report newsletter out of
Jupiter, Fla., urges a more cautious investment stance and suggests
the following actions:
· Avoid long-term bonds and any investment that locks you into a fixed
yield.
· Stay short term and liquid, favoring Treasury bills or a Treasury-
only money-market fund.
· Diversify internationally by spreading money among countries with
strong growth prospects, such as Brazil, Singapore, Malaysia, and
China.
· Fight inflationary dangers with precious metal, energy, and
alterative energy investments.
· Hedge by buying exchangetraded funds, such as Ultra-Short Financial
Pro-Shares, that are designed to go up when financial stocks go down.
An obvious question: What happens to oil if the hostages are released?
As Mr. Ortz sees it, the price of oil and energy stocks will drop, but
probably only modestly and temporarily because of renewed investor
awareness of both the threat of new supply disruptions and another
Middle East crisis. “The big premium in the price of oil is not about
to evaporate,” he says.
{dandordan [at] aol [dot] com}
–
http://www.shark.com/sharkwatch/3f1g/031005h.php
“The most recent ex-president (Clinton) joked Wednesday that, unlike
his first attempt at playing the Medalist, this time he would be going
to the hospital after he played golf. The last time he tried it, in
1997, he slipped and injured his knee while visiting professional
golfer Greg Norman’s estate on nearby Jupiter Island hours before tee
time…
…Bush (41), whose late parents once lived on Jupiter Island, said
Wednesday was the first time he returned to the area since 2001, when
Norman hosted a fund-raising event for Bush’s son, Florida Gov. Jeb
Bush.”
–
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/12/29/151113.shtml
Tiger Woods Buys $40 Million Florida Estate
Golf superstar Tiger Woods has agreed to pay around $40 million for a
10-acre oceanfront estate in exclusive Jupiter Island, Florida.
It’s a record sale for the enclave Forbes magazine calls America’s
“Most Expensive ZIP Code,” the Palm Beach Post reports.
But the top-earning athlete in the U.S. – who raked in $89.4 million
last year – plans to tear down the 13-year-old main house and build a
new one, Palm Beach County real estate insiders say.
“The main house is in very good condition, but I’d think that someone
who paid that much would want to put their own stamp on it,” Dolly
Peters, a real estate agent in the area, told the Post.
“I’d be surprised if he didn’t tear it down.”
In addition to the 16,000-square-foot main house, the property – which
runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Intracoastal Waterway – includes
two guest houses, a beach house and two boat docks.
Woods owns a 155-foot yacht, Privacy.
Records show that the estate went under contract in December.
Woods also owns property near Orlando, Fla., and in Jackson, Wyo.
The top money-winner on the PGA Tour this year, Woods earned $6.4
million playing golf last year and the rest of his income from
endorsements, including $25 million from Nike.
The Jupiter Island estate is not far from the beachfront home that
singer Celine Dion bought this year, or fellow golfer Greg Norman’s
home, where then-President Clinton injured his ankle in a fall.
–
http://www.tarpley.net/bush4.htm
Jupiter Island
“The reorganization of the American government after World War II–the
creation of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency along British lines,
for example–had devastating consequences. We are concerned here with
only certain aspects of that overall transformation, those matters of
policy and family which gave shape to the life and mind of George
Bush, and gave him access to power.
It was in these postwar years that George Bush attended Yale
University, and was inducted into the Skull and Bones society. The
Bush family’s home at that time was in Greenwich, Connecticut. But it
was just then that George’s parents, Prescott and Dorothy Walker Bush,
were wintering in a peculiar spot in Florida, a place that is excluded
from mention in literature originating from Bush circles.
Certain national news accounts early in 1991 featured the observations
on President Bush’s childhood by his elderly mother Dorothy. She was
said to be a resident of Hobe Sound, Florida. More precisely, the
President’s mother lived in a hyper-security arrangement created a
half-century earlier by Averell Harriman, adjacent to Hobe Sound. Its
correct name is Jupiter Island.
During his political career, George Bush has claimed many different “
home ” states, including Texas, Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut.
It has not been expedient for him to claim Florida, though that state
has a vital link to his role in the world, as we shall see. And George
Bush’s home base in Florida, throughout his adult life, has been
Jupiter Island.
The unique, bizarre setup on Jupiter Island began in 1931, following
the merger of W.A. Harriman & Co. with the British-American firm Brown
Brothers.
The reader will recall Mr. Samuel Pryor, the “ Merchant of Death. ”
A partner with the Harrimans, Prescott Bush, George Walker and Nazi
boss Fritz Thyssen in banking and shipping enterprises, Sam Pryor
remained executive committee chairman of Remington Arms. In this
period, the Nazi private armies (S.A. and S.S.) were supplied with
American arms–most likely by Pryor and his company–as they moved to
overthrow the German republic. Such gun-running as an instrument of
national policy would later become notorious in the “ Iran-Contra ”
affair.
Samuel Pryor’s daughter Permelia married Yale graduate Joseph V. Reed
on the last day of 1927. Reed immediately went to work for Prescott
Bush and George Walker as an apprentice at W.A. Harriman & Co.
During World War II, Joseph V. Reed had served in the “ special
services ” section of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. A specialist in
security, codes and espionage, Reed later wrote a book entitled Fun
with Cryptograms.
Now, Sam Pryor had had property around Hobe Sound, Florida, for some
time. In 1931, Joseph and Permelia Pryor Reed bought the entirety of
Jupiter Island.
This is a typically beautiful Atlantic coast “ barrier island, ” a
half-mile wide and nine miles long. The middle of Jupiter Island lies
just off Hobe Sound. The south bridge connects the island with the
town of Jupiter, to the north of Palm Beach. It is about 90 minutes by
auto from Miami–today, a few minutes by helicopter.
Early in 1991, a newspaper reporter asked a friend of the Bush family
about security arrangements on Jupiter Island. He responded, “ If you
called up the White House, would they tell you how many security
people they had? It’s not that Jupiter Island is the White House,
although he [George Bush] does come down frequently. ”
But for several decades before Bush was President, Jupiter Island had
an ordinance requiring the registration and fingerprinting of all
housekeepers, gardeners and other non-residents working on the island.
The Jupiter Island police department says that there are sensors in
the two main roads that can track every automobile on the island. If a
car stops in the street, the police will be there within one or two
minutes. Surveillance is a duty of all employees of the town of
Jupiter Island. News reporters are to be prevented from visiting the
island.
To create this astonishing private club, Joseph and Permelia Pryor
Reed sold land only to those who would fit in. Permelia Reed was still
the grande dame of the island when George Bush was inaugurated
President in 1989. In recognition of the fact that the Reeds know
where all the bodies are buried, President Bush appointed Permelia’s
son, Joseph V. Reed, Jr., chief of protocol for the U.S. State
Department, in charge of private arrangements with foreign
dignitaries.
Averell Harriman made Jupiter Island a staging ground for his 1940s
takeover of the U.S. national security apparatus. It was in that
connection that the island became possibly the most secretive private
place in America.
Let us briefly survey the neighborhood, back then in 1946-48, to see
some of the uses various of the residents had for the Harriman clique.
Residents on Jupiter Island
Jupiter Islander Robert A. Lovett, Prescott Bush’s partner at Brown
Brothers Harriman, had been Assistant Secretary of War for Air from
1941 to 1945. Lovett was the leading American advocate of the policy
of terror-bombing of civilians. He organized the Strategic Bombing
Survey, carried out for the American and British governments by the
staff of the Prudential Insurance Company, guided by London’s
Tavistock Psychiatric Clinic.
In the postwar period, Prescott Bush was associated with Prudential
Insurance, one of Lovett’s intelligence channels to the British secret
services. Prescott was listed by Prudential as a director of the
company for about two years in the early 1950s.
Their Strategic Bombing Survey failed to demonstrate any real military
advantage accruing from such outrages as the fire-bombing of Dresden,
Germany. But the Harrimanites nevertheless persisted in the advocacy
of terror from the air. They glorified this as “ psychological
warfare, ” a part of the utopian military doctrine opposed to the
views of military traditionalists such as Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Robert Lovett later advised President Lyndon Johnson to terror-bomb
Vietnam. President George Bush revived the doctrine with the bombing
of civilian areas in Panama, and the destruction of Baghdad.
On Oct. 22, 1945, Secretary of War Robert Patterson created the Lovett
Committee, chaired by Robert A. Lovett, to advise the government on
the post-World War II organization of U.S. intelligence activities.
The existence of this committee was unknown to the public until an
official CIA history was released from secrecy in 1989. But the CIA’s
author (who was President Bush’s prep school history teacher; see
chapter 5) gives no real details of the Lovett Committee’s
functioning, claiming: “ The record of the testimony of the Lovett
Committee, unfortunately, was not in the archives of the agency when
this account was written. ”
The CIA’s self-history does inform us of the advice that Lovett
provided to the Truman cabinet, as the official War Department
intelligence proposal.
Lovett decided that there should be a separate Central Intelligence
Agency. The new agency would “ consult ” with the armed forces, but
it must be the sole collecting agency in the field of foreign
espionage and counterespionage. The new agency should have an
independent budget, and its appropriations should be granted by
Congress without public hearings.
Lovett appeared before the Secretaries of State, War and Navy on
November 14, 1945. He spoke highly of the FBI’s work because it had “
the best personality file in the world. ” Lovett said the FBI was
expert at producing false documents, an art “ which we developed so
successfully during the war and at which we became outstandingly
adept. ” Lovett pressed for a virtual resumption of the wartime
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in a new CIA.
U.S. military traditionalists centered around Gen. Douglas MacArthur
opposed Lovett’s proposal.
The continuation of the OSS had been attacked at the end of the war on
the grounds that the OSS was entirely under British control, and that
it would constitute an American Gestapo.
But the CIA was established in 1947 according to the prescription of
Robert Lovett, of Jupiter Island.
Charles Payson and his wife, Joan Whitney Payson, were extended family
members of Harriman’s and business associates of the Bush family.
Joan’s aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, was a relative of the
Harrimans. Gertrude’s son, Cornelius Vanderbilt (“ Sonny ”) Whitney,
long-time chairman of Pan American Airways (Prescott was a Pan Am
director), became Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.
Sonny’s wife Marie had divorced him and married Averell Harriman in
1930. Joan and Sonny’s uncle, Air Marshall Sir Thomas Elmhirst, was
director of intelligence for the British Air Force from 1945 to 1947.
Joan’s brother, John Hay (“ Jock ”) Whitney, was to be ambassador to
Great Britain from 1955 to 1961–when it would be vital for Prescott
and George Bush to have such a friend. Joan’s father, grandfather and
uncle were members of the Skull and Bones secret society.
Charles Payson organized a uranium refinery in 1948. Later he was
chairman of Vitro Corp., makers of parts for submarine-launched
ballistic missiles, equipment for frequency surveillance and torpedo
guidance, and other subsurface weaponry.
Naval warfare has long been a preoccupation of the British Empire.
British penetration of the U.S. Naval Intelligence service has been
particularly heavy since the tenure of Joan’s Anglophile grandfather,
William C. Whitney, as Secretary of the Navy for President Grover
Cleveland. This traditional covert British orientation in the U.S.
Navy, Naval Intelligence and the Navy’s included service, the Marine
Corps, forms a backdrop to the career of George Bush–and to the whole
neighborhood on Jupiter Island. Naval Intelligence maintained direct
relations with gangster boss Meyer Lansky for Anglo-American political
operations in Cuba during World War II, well before the establishment
of the CIA. Lansky officially moved to Florida in 1953.
George Herbert Walker, Jr. (Skull and Bones 1927), was extremely close
to his nephew George Bush, helping to sponsor his entry into the oil
business in the 1950s. “ Uncle Herbie ” was also a partner of Joan
Whitney Payson when they co-founded the New York Mets baseball team in
1960. His son, G.H. Walker III, was a Yale classmate of Nicholas Brady
and Moreau D. Brown (Thatcher Brown’s grandson), forming what was
called the “ Yale Mafia ” on Wall Street.
Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. had been chairman of the finance committee of
the Du Pont Corporation (1930-40). In 1933, Carpenter oversaw Du
Pont’s purchase of Remington Arms from Sam Pryor and the Rockefellers,
and led Du Pont into partnership with the Nazi I.G. Farben Company for
the manufacture of explosives. Carpenter became Du Pont’s president in
1940. His cartel with the Nazis was broken up by the U.S. government.
Nevertheless, Carpenter remained Du Pont’s president as the company’s
technicians participated massively in the Manhattan Project to produce
the first atomic bomb. He was chairman of Du Pont from 1948 to 1962,
retaining high-level access to U.S. strategic activities.
Walter Carpenter and Prescott Bush were fellow activists in the Mental
Hygiene Society. Originating at Yale University in 1908, the movement
had been organized into the World Federation of Mental Health by
Montagu Norman, himself a frequent mental patient, former Brown
Brothers partner and Bank of England Governor. Norman had appointed as
the federation’s chairman, Brigadier John Rawlings Rees, director of
the Tavistock Psychiatric Clinic, chief psychiatrist and psychological
warfare expert for the British intelligence services. Prescott was a
director of the society in Connecticut; Carpenter was a director in
Delaware.
Paul Mellon was the leading heir to the Mellon fortune, and a long-
time neighbor of Averell Harriman’s in Middleburg, Virginia, as well
as Jupiter Island, Florida. Paul’s father, Andrew Mellon, U.S.
Treasury Secretary 1921-32, had approved the transactions of Harriman,
Pryor and Bush with the Warburgs and the Nazis. Paul Mellon’s son-in-
law, David K.E. Bruce, worked in Prescott Bush’s W.A. Harriman & Co.
during the late 1920s; was head of the London branch of U.S.
intelligence during World War II; and was Averell Harriman’s Assistant
Secretary of Commerce in 1947-48. Mellon family money and
participation would be instrumental in many domestic U.S. projects of
the new Central Intelligence Agency.
Carl Tucker manufactured electronic guidance equipment for the Navy.
With the Mellons, Tucker was an owner of South American oil
properties. Mrs. Tucker was the great aunt of Nicholas Brady, later
George Bush’s Iran-Contra partner and U.S. Treasury Secretary. Their
son Carll Tucker, Jr. (Skull and Bones 1947), was among the 15
Bonesmen who selected George Bush for induction in the class of 1948.
C.Douglas Dillon was the boss of William H. Draper, Jr. in the Draper-
Prescott Bush-Fritz Thyssen Nazi banking scheme of the 1930s and 40s.
His father, Clarence Dillon, created the Vereinigte Stahlwerke
(Thyssen’s German Steel Trust) in 1926. C. Douglas Dillon made
Nicholas Brady the chairman of the Dillon Read firm in 1971 and
himself continued as chairman of the executive committee. C. Douglas
Dillon would be a vital ally of his neighbor Prescott Bush during the
Eisenhower administration.
Publisher Nelson Doubleday headed his family’s publishing firm,
founded under the auspices of J.P. Morgan and other British Empire
representatives. When George Bush’s “ Uncle Herbie ” died, Doubleday
took over as majority owner and chief executive of the New York Mets
baseball team.
George W. Merck, chairman of Merck & Co., drug and chemical
manufacturers, was director of the War Research Service: Merck was the
official chief of all U.S. research into biological warfare from 1942
until at least the end of World War II. After 1944, Merck’s
organization was placed under the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service. His
family firm in Germany and the U.S. was famous for its manufacture of
morphine.
A.L. Cole was useful to the Jupiter Islanders as an executive of
Readers Digest. In 1965, just after performing a rather dirty favor
for George Bush (see Chapter 9), Cole became chairman of the executive
committee of the Digest, the world’s largest-circulation periodical.
From the late 1940s, Jupiter Island has served as a center for the
direction of covert action by the U.S. government and, indeed, for the
covert management of the government. Jupiter Island will reappear
later on, in our account of George Bush in the Iran-Contra affair.”