Gotcha....again

I filled up my car yesterday with Super Unleaded, paying $4.349 a gallon.  What a rip off!  Shades of 2008!


Do they even teach "supply and demand" in high school economics anymore?  (Do they even teach high school economics anymore?)    What we're paying for gasoline today has little to do with supply and demand.  Talk about an antiquated concept!  Nope, today it's all about "speculation".  


It's one thing, entirely legitimate, for heavy fuel users....airlines, trucking companies, utilities, etc....to want to know what they'll be paying for fuel 6 months in the future.  How can you sell your product or service if you don't know what it's going to cost you to produce it?  Their "hedging" is understandable.  I get it.  But what I don't get is why the government that's supposed to protect us from the unscrupulous allows this virtually wide-open speculation to take place?  


The Commodities Futures Trading Commission could put strong "position limits" in place which would bring things back more closely in line with true supply and demand, but they don't.  Why?  Who's holding the regulators back?  I think it's fair to say the Republican position will always be "hands off".  So what's the Democrat's excuse?


Former Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) accurately described what's happening now as paper trading "by people....who will never buy oil and never sell oil.  They are actually buying and selling things they will never have from people who never had it."  They never take possession of the fuel they're buying and selling, unlike the airlines, truckers, etc.  It's all just a mouse click to them.  They're getting rich(er), and we're getting screwed.  A senior energy analyst at Oppenheimer says speculators are adding "at a minimum" $20 per barrel of oil.  The St. Louis Federal Reserve says that over the past five years speculation drove the price of oil up by 15 percent.  The CEO of ExxonMobil believes speculation could today be driving up oil prices by as much as 40 percent. 


I'm sure it's a very complex issue, but to simply throw up our hands and say, "We give up.  Let 'em do with us whatever they want" is just wrong.  Why even have regulators if they don't regulate?  Another example of government dysfunction.


S