This was never conceived to be a "white paper", but somehow morphed into one. A friend of mine asked me back in February to explain what caused the subprime mortgage meltdown. This was originally an e-mail reply to that question. When another friend asked the same question, I put a title on the top line and called it a white paper.

I was so outraged by the baseless allegations and fear mongering tactics of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) and King World News (KWN) that I felt compelled to speak out. As the article makes clear, GATA's charter (as a watchdog for market manipulation in precious metals) is noble, but the organization's performance has been abysmal and warrants harsh criticism. The article was published on FinancialSense.com, iTulip.com, and ChrisMartenson.com. GATA issued a rebuttal on their website, www.GATA.org.

The last article, Why Peak Oil will never lead to $500/bbl Crude Oil set forth my views on peak oil. In the last paragraph I made a few brief comments about how a trading strategy might be formed. I got a huge amount of favorable feedback on the article, but everyone wanted more detail on the trading strategy. This follow-on article details my own peak cheap oil trade, and explains why I believe it makes more sense to speculate on contango than absolute price.

This article explores some commonly held views about the potential for extraordinary upside in crude oil prices as a result of Peak Oil, and why I believe they are misplaced. I concur that Peak Oil will cause a big run-up in crude oil prices, but government intervention will occur long before the numbers some pundits have predicted are reached.