Investors' Growing Appetite for Oil Evades Market Limits

Washington Post ^ | June 6, 2008 | David Cho

[Entrepreneur]

Jeffrey Harris, the chief economist at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, who was speaking before another Senate committee last month, said he saw no evidence of a speculative bubble in the commodity market.

You gotta be kidding me!

[liberallarry]

If you thought that demand would continue to hopelessly outstrip supply for the foreseeable future as nations tried desperately to keep their economies both growing and functioning wouldn't you try to get a piece of the action?

"Speculators" are not storing oil to artificially increase price. They're inserting themselves in the marketing chain in a quite normal way...which drives up prices faster than would be the case if they weren't participants. That's all.

[Niteflyr]

HERESY! You BARBARIAN! How DARE you question the pure and innocent intentions of the speculator market! Speculators are GOOD for the economy! Why if we didn’t have speculators driving up the price of oil, corn, wheat, soybeans and other necessary commodities we might all still be driving around and paying $2/gal for gas. And we can’t be having THAT, now can we?

Exactly....word to the wise....take what these traders here say with a grain of salt and your fingers holding your nose...they have their own agenda...not a good source for commodities market information in our current situation...

[Niteflyr]

Kind of like the fox sitting there with feathers all around his mouth, saying: "I had nothing to do with that hen house incident"...

Is that a good source for information?...best to go to those with no conflict of interest....analysts from outside...

[Blood of Tyrants]

One of the most specious arguments they come up with is that the speculators provide “liquidity”. Yes, liquidity is a good thing, but where speculators are actually needed is where you have a product that has a limited market and it is difficult for the seller and the buyer to get together or where the seller needs an infusion of cash before they deliver the product. However, there is no difficulty in getting the seller and buyers of crude oil together nor do the oil producers need an infusion of cash. In fact the oil producers are swimming in an ocean of cash due to speculators.