Posted on 07/08/2009 2:19:34 PM PDT by Lorianne
The New York Times reports that the Obama administration plans to take a more proactive position toward speculation in the oil market:
In a big departure from the hands-off approach to market regulation of the last two decades, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Gary Gensler, said his agency would consider new limits on the volume of energy futures contracts that purely financial investors would be allowed to hold.
The agency also announced that it would pull back part of the veil on the oil and gas markets, publishing more detailed information about the aggregate activity of hedge funds and traders who arbitrage between domestic and foreign energy prices.
....Oil prices have swung wildly in the last year, hitting about $145 a barrel last summer, then plunging to $33 in December before rising to about $70.
....A growing number of critics have blamed some of the extreme volatility on the role of purely financial investors — those who are simply betting on the direction of energy prices, as opposed to those who actually use such products, like airlines....Non-commercial traders accounted for almost a fifth of the activity in several major oil and gas products for the week that ended June 30, according to data compiled by the commodities agency.
One of the interesting aspects of this is that it demonstrates the genuine difficulty in identifying asset bubbles. The housing bubble was relatively easy to spot: it took place over a long period of time and prices shot up way, way past their historical trendline. But oil? That's harder.
(Excerpt) Read more at motherjones.com ...
Let’s sell GM and buy some oil wells.
I got some and I want oil/natural gas to get back to where they were
the first of many such attempts at populist grandstanding as O’s polls continue to sink
He won’t do it. He is in their pocket.
And it is not only oil, but most commodities traded as futures.
someone tell obama that speculation is legal but manipulation is not. anyone who buys stock specualtes that it will go higher so is every investor a speculator? just lock up the manipulators aka goldman sachs!!
Is there anything the great and all powerful Ozbama can’t fix???? I think this jerk has ADD. Every day a new focus. Yesterday Nukes, today the wall street oil brokers, tomorrow healthcare, Friday Crap and Raid....
Geez?????????????????????????
Gosh, it’s almost as if there’s an orchestrated media campaign or something’.
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