“The highly leveraged Hunt Borthers were unable to meet their margin calls, and were forced to sell.
... because regulations were changed, requiring margin requirements to be raised, which is what you’re objecting to in regards to investment banks.”
COMPLETLY WRONG.
By January 1980, the Commodity Futures Trading Corporation (the regulatory body supervising the commodities markets) became alarmed, estimating that the Hunts and their allies controlled contracts for 77% of all the privately held silver in the world. The regulators increased margin requirements, BUT THIS MADE MATTERS WORSE; the shorts were forced to come up with tens of millions of dollars to meet their obligations under the new rules. Silver prices spurted higher, incredibly breaking through $50 per ounce on January 21, 1980, up from about $9 per ounce only six months earlier.
Finally the regulators and the commodities exchanges took draconian action to forestall disaster. Rules were imposed arbitrarily to prevent further buying of silver by the Hunts or anyone other than industrial users and shorts who were buying back silver they had previously sold. The Hunts were trapped; they could not buy, and there was no one to sell to.
Point granted, but the fact remains that you find the above acceptable, but do not find a similar regulatory remedy acceptable in oil.