The two single biggest reasons the prices at the pump are rising: speculation and a weakening dollar. That's it.
"There have been 30 or more such investigations, including the one the Obama Injustice Dept launched last month, and none of them have ever turned up price manipulation.
That's just not true.
Why not have a geologist skeptical of Saudi reserves / production claims on the team?
Why? Because he’ll say DRILL. DRILL DESPERATELY. There is no other hope.
Wasn’t Obama caught stating they had to use price signals, i.e. artificially inflating prices?
Yes, it is true. No Congressional investigation has ever turned out evidence of oil company price manipulation. Sorry. And yes, when you have demand going up but supply remaining stagnant, prices will go up. And demand has been rising with supply remaining stagnant. Speculators wouldn’t make a dime off oil if they couldn’t bet that demand would increase and supplies would tighten. By the way, the psychological impact of unrest in the Middle East also is enough to drive up the price of oil even if supply doesn’t change.
I would also add, there is money to be made in many other commodities as well as in the equity markets. The incentive to speculate on oil isn’t as readily present as it was back in 2006-08. This is a small part of the current problem. The real cause is a recoverying world economy squeezing demand and unrest in the Middle East. If the US had more of its own supply, those factors wouldn’t be having such an impact here in the US.
Still waiting for someone to get on Bumma’s face, IN PUBLIC and call him what he is, A LYING SACK OF $H-T!
The trading tactics described in your linked article could only affect prices by a fairly small amount for a few days at most. Long term oil pries are determined by current supply and demand, trends in supply and demand growth expected for the next few years, and perceived geopolitical risks to oil supplies. Right now total excess oil production capacity is at most only about 6% of current consumption. In my view, that’s the tightest supply/demand balance of any major consumer product in the world.
The main reason for that tight balance is simply that it’s so technically challenging and costly to increase oil production in the large quantities that the world needs. In the long term, it’s probably going to be much easier to increase the fuel efficiency of motor vehicles and expand production of biofuels than to increase the production of crude oil.
Speculation: Risking your money on your judgement of the future.
The crime? For democrats: having the money to risk.