Well glad to see folks are catching on.. been trying to tell people for at least 6 months that energy futures traders are raping em... but the "market is god" types just kept shouting me down.
It's not so much the hedge funds. A speculator who buys futures because he thinks prices are going to rise is not doing anything wrong... if he turns out to have been wrong, and prices did not go up, then he is going to lose money.
The problem is that the run up in commodity prices caused by real demand has resulted in Wall Street introducing all sorts of commodity index products that people are pouring money into. These funds have to buy futures, because that is there mandate... it is in essence a bubble just like the internet in 1999.
Yeah, we should just give up. Shouting will never cure a terminal case of economic ignorance.
I've tried it on Democrats and it doesn't work on them either.