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RE :” Enter the futures market, which consists of a worldwide group of millions upon millions of traders, often called speculators. Speculators, betting on a future shortage, buy up wheat, corn and rice today in the hopes of making money selling it for a higher price when the bad harvest hits. As speculators buy more and more wheat, corn and rice, they drive up today's prices. As today's price gets higher, people consume less, but more importantly, people do the intelligent thing without bureaucratic edicts. The vital role of the futures trader, or speculator, is to allocate goods over different time periods. And, it's not just wheat, corn and rice that must be allocated over time but all commodities including oil. ..... If we don't like commodity speculation, we could easily outlaw it. That way, for example, even though there might be every indication of a reduced fall wheat harvest, today's price of wheat wouldn't rise. We could consume wheat today and not fret about fall. President Obama has asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate whether Wall Street speculators could be manipulating oil markets. If Obama could convince other nations to put an end to worldwide oil speculation, we might be able enjoy $2 per gallon gas and ignore Middle East conflicts that might impact heavily on future oil supplies.”

Walter Williams is really good at this.

The speculator is portrayed as 'the ant' buying up food and energy planning for the future when it will be more expensive.

The angry consumer/voter is 'the grasshopper'. He wants low gas prices NOW and doesn't care about the future, if he needs those things in the future then he will just blame who-ever is president at that time. I know many of them. Peggy the Moocher who said Obama would pay for her gasoline is one.

I have heard some more reasonable sounding proposals of limiting speculation that involve how much money a speculator can leverage (borrow) to buy the commodity , not outlawing it all-together.