“They need to regulate the Intercontinental Exchange.”
You sure you are on the right website?
This is a free market, conservative, website for people who undestand basic economics.
MORE regulations are NEVER the answer.
All increased US regulations would do will move the trade to China, Hong Kong, London -— somewhere where we’d have LESS oversight and be subject to MORE manipulation by foreign powers.
So you think the Hunts trying to corner the silver market and driving the price to $48/oz was a good free market thing?
Well, LESS regulation did such a wonderful job in the mortage market, eh?
Did you read the article?
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“What’s been happening since 2004 is very high prices without record-low [oil] stocks. The relationship between U.S. [oil] inventory levels and prices has been shredded and become irrelevant.”
— Jan Stuart, Global Oil Economist, UBS Securities
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“What you have on the financial side is a bunch of money being thrown at the energy futures market. It’s just pulling in more and more cash. That’s the side of the market where we have runaway demand, not on the physical side.”
— Tim Evans, Senior Oil Analyst, IFR Energy Services [From testimony: U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report, “The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices,” June 27, 2006]
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“In the past, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission acted as the cop on the beat, ensuring that buyers in the market were not distorting or manipulating prices beyond what supply and demand normally dictate. Certainly, if a hard frost hit Florida and cost growers an orange crop, then bidding up the price of the remaining oranges was both a wise investment and allowed under the trading rules. Right now investors know that if they borrow and invest huge amounts in commodities futures, they can create a shortage on paper – which drives prices up just like an actual shortage of any given product would. What kept traders from cornering the market that way in the past were the government’s anti-manipulation rules.”
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Read the article then we’ll talk.
This is a conservative web site, not a libertarian web site. I have to constantly remind myself of that since I am a conservative-libertarian. Libertarians are for minimal laws and would be against over regulation. Conservatives are for sensible conservative regulations and laws. As others have pointed out, the problem right now is that speculative fund managers are basically gaming the system and trying to make money being speculative about commodities. Late last week after oil had dropped some, they doubled down on oil. You simply cannot see oil rising as much as it did on Thursday and Friday without speculative collusion. Yes the Israelis did state that they would attack Iran, but everyone knows that is coming. The price in oil began rising before their statement anyway.