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To: SaxxonWoods
Speculators inhibit price volatility over time.

How you can say that with a straight face, given the extreme price volatility of oil over the last three years, is beyond rational comprehension.

Oh, and those capitalists you are praising? Add the word 'crony' to them and get back to me. I greatly appreciate real capitalists who make things (or actually produce oil or copper or other products) and get rich doing it. But the investment banks have turned into parasites, driving up the costs of living for everyone and then turning to the government for a bailout when they guess wrong.

25 posted on 03/07/2011 12:27:05 PM PST by dirtboy
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To: dirtboy

If the price of oil has been artificially driven up by speculators (your thesis) what then is preventing someone from selling futures at the artificially high price and delivering against the futures contract with physical product that is not worth the price you claim has been distorted by speculators? (and thus making a killing)?


26 posted on 03/07/2011 12:39:05 PM PST by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten (Welcome to the USA - where every day is Backwards Day!)
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To: dirtboy
Under ordinary conditions, specs DO tend to lower price volatility over time, and did so for upwards of 150 years in the US.

The problem has been, recently, that goobermint changed the rules in 2000 to allow certain big specs, specifically investment banks and certain "hedge" funds, to be CLASSIFIED AS HEDGERS instead of specs. This is arrant nonsense, and by definition has created markets that are by no means operating under ordinary ('normal', if you like) conditions. Comparing post-2000 physical futures mkts to pre-1997 mkts is identical with comparing apples to crosscut saws.

32 posted on 03/07/2011 2:34:21 PM PST by SAJ (Zerobama -- a phony and a prick, therefore a dildo)
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