Speculators are raking in profits by gambling in the loosely regulated commodity markets for gas and oil.
A decade ago, speculators controlled only about 30 percent of the oil futures market. Today, Wall Street speculators control more than 80 percent of this market. Many of those people buying and selling oil in the commodity markets will never use a drop of this oil. They are not airlines or trucking companies who will use the fuel in the future. The only function of the speculators in this process is to make as much money as they can, as quickly as they can.
I've seen the raw documents that prove the role of speculators. Commodity Futures Trading Commission records showed that in the summer of 2008, when gas prices spiked to more than $4 a gallon, speculators overwhelmingly controlled the crude oil futures market. The commission, which supposedly represents the interests of the American people, had kept the information hidden from the public for nearly three years. That alone is an outrage. The American people had a right to know exactly who caused gas prices to skyrocket in 2008 and who is causing them to spike today.
Even those inside the oil industry have admitted that speculation is driving up the price of gasoline. The CEO of Exxon-Mobil, Rex Tillerson, told a Senate hearing last year that speculation was driving up the price of a barrel of oil by as much as 40%. The general counsel of Delta Airlines, Ben Hirst, and the experts at Goldman Sachs also said excessive speculation is causing oil prices to spike by up to 40%. Even Saudi Arabia, the largest exporter of oil in the world, told the Bush administration back in 2008, during the last major spike in oil prices, that speculation was responsible for about $40 of a barrel of oil.
http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/28/opinion/sanders-gas-speculation/index.html
WHAT: A bill on the House floor that will slash next year’s funding for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission — the federal regulator that oversees speculators in oil and other commodities — by a whopping 44 percent below what the president requested. This is also 15 percent less than what the agency got this year, even as the CFTC is preparing to take on the enhanced powers and responsibilities granted to it in under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform bill.
WHEN: The House started considering the Agriculture Appropriations bill (which includes funding for the CFTC) this afternoon and is expected to finish voting on amendments and move to final passage sometime tomorrow. This will be the third time this year, following earlier votes in February and April, that House Republicans will vote to effectively cripple the CFTC by denying it the funds it needs to do its job.
WHY IT MATTERS: Instead of addressing the rampant oil speculation that everyone from oil companies (Exxon) to commodities traders (Goldman Sachs) to the head of the CFTC (Gary Gensler) agrees is driving up prices, Republicans are
slashing the budget for the only agency that can crack down on excessive speculation. In essence, by voting to take the cap off the oil speculation beat, the
GOP is guaranteeing that speculators will have free rein to keep driving up prices.
Republicans also continue to vote to maintain billions of dollars in wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer-funded subsidies for oil companies, even as the GOP refuses to drop its plan to end Medicare and its presidential contenders call for trillions of dollars more in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.
http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/how-the-gop-will-let-speculators-keep-your-gas-prices-high/
Republicans want speculators to game the system for huge profits at America's expense. If Americans are hurting at election time maybe their mormon moron will have a chance. Deregulation and Greedy Oil Party ideology is dragging this country down to the gutter, just where Teapublicans want us.
