How does Southwest Airlines make you and "everyone else in America pay" when they try to hedge their future fuel costs?
Hedge vs. speculation - BIG difference.
Like you said, Southwest is hedging.
That’s not speculating - Southwest genuinely intends to buy, and use, fuel in the future (unlike speculators); hedging is a type of price protection. That’s what the futures market was designed for.
You’re missing my point - Southwest Airlines actually needs oil. It uses oil. It employs oil in a productive pursuit, namely as jet fuel. I’m talking about some trust fund daytrading douchebag who is simply speculating, and the only oil he knows is what he puts in his hair. We don’t gain anything by these fools interfering in this kind of commerce - they add nothing. They do not restore equilibrium prices, they exacerbate the imbalances. They don’t want stability, they want instability, because it’s when you’re off of equilibrium that you make the big profits. The bigger the differential, the bigger the profit. They have an interest in gaming the system, in disseminating misinformation, in creating panics, shortages, and gluts. Why? So they can be rich for the sake of being rich? That period of business is over. It’s time to get back to the basics - provide a service or product for a profit. Let’s be real businessmen, not pushers of vapor and phantoms.