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WASHINGTON, July 25 (Reuters) - U.S. legislation to rein in excessive energy speculation failed a key procedural vote on Friday to move forward in the Senate, and now lawmakers will set aside the bill to consider other legislation. The House of Representatives may take up its own anti-speculation bill next week, and then lawmakers will get ready to leave for their month-long recess in August. Sixty "yes" votes were required in the 100-member Senate for the bill to move forward, but the measure received only 50 "yes" votes and 43 lawmakers were opposed.

In 15 years the Clintons have never been this far removed from the limelight. Im guessing that Denver will be something special to watch. Here's betting the notorious Michelle tape appears or a super delegate fight breaks out. I don't trust them a one bit! Your thoughts.

WASHINGTON -(Dow Jones)- Expecting to lose an estimated $10 billion this year because of skyrocketing fuel costs, chief executives of the country's biggest airlines Wednesday resorted to begging their customers to press Congress for tougher regulation of energy markets.

Without a doubt, crude oil is the most important commodity on our planet. Hypothetically if it vanished overnight, our entire modern world would collapse. No goods could move without the oil-derived transportation fuels, so virtually all trade would implode. Unlike nearly every other major commodity, there is just no economically-viable substitute for oil. And the fundamentals driving oil’s secular bull are unparalleled in their strength. As Asia awakens and enters the modern era, global demand for oil is rising relentlessly. Despite today’s unprecedented prices, demand remains strong all over the world. And of course once oil is burned, it is...

Sen. Obama's plan to attack the "oil speculators" who are "driving" up the price of oil by regulating futures contracts on American oil may not be pandering (America certainly cannot, for example, regulate oil futures on Nigerian crude in Switzerland), but it is sure close, and here is why, and I'm sure all those people who helped him draw up this plan know it.

Limiting speculation would push prices to fundamental level, lawmakers told. WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The price of retail gasoline could fall by half, to around $2 a gallon, within 30 days of passage of a law to limit speculation in energy-futures markets, four energy analysts told Congress on Monday. Testifying to the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Michael Masters of Masters Capital Management said that the price of oil would quickly drop closer to its marginal cost of around $65 to See full story. There are two kinds of speculators in the futures ma$75 a barrel, about half the current $135....

Every dogma has its day, and so it is with the posturing that blames the run-up in oil prices on "speculators." The new political consensus is that further "common-sense regulation" of the energy futures market is necessary. Let's grant that the sentiment is common, but the sense – like the evidence – is nonexistent. On Sunday, Barack Obama rolled out a proposal that will supposedly thwart market manipulation by "a few energy lobbyists and speculators." John McCain chimed in that Mr. Obama was merely following his lead; The futures market may be a convenient scapegoat, but it's simply a price...

WASHINGTON -- Speculative traders' interest in crude oil has grown to the point that they now account for roughly 70% of all trading in West Texas Intermediate crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange, compared with 37% in 2000, according to an investigation by a congressional subcommittee that forms part of an escalating political assault on Wall Street's role in the run-up in oil prices. The subcommittee's findings, based on data obtained from federal commodity-futures regulators, are the latest sign that Washington is gearing up to try to limit the role of hedge funds, investment banks and other speculative traders...

The chart above shows that open interest (volume) for crude oil futures contracts declined by more than 16% since last November, and yet oil prices kept going up. Less oil futures trading, less speculation, but higher oil prices? Isn't is supposed to be the other way around?

This week, the Associated Press reported that a recent Israeli military exercise may have been intended to show the nation's abilities to attack Iranian nuclear facilities.The International Herald Tribune called it a "major military exercise" that "appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran's nuclear facilities," with more than 100 F-16 and F-15 fighters joining the maneuvers over the eastern Mediterranean earlier this month.The reason for this training mission is Israel's belief that Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons that could be used against it. Iran – whose president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has vowed to wipe...

ollowing up on previous posts in the past couple of days about Barack Obama’s “birth certificate,” here and here, I became more curious about Barack’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham (known as “Ann”), and spent several hours reading about her. In particular, I was searching for information about the circumstances surrounding Barack’s birth. It seems reasonable to ask at this point: Is it possible that Barack Obama, Ann’s son, was born someplace besides Honolulu? Here’s a rough sketch of what I’ve pieced together so far based on information available on the Internet, but I could use some help filling in the...

One of the biggest factors in high oil prices, according to many experts, is that investors, such as hedge funds and investment bankers, can use loopholes in commodities law to manipulate the market and drive crude oil, heating oil, gasoline and diesel fuel prices to new heights. Congress is aware of the problem and lawmakers recently passed legislation to address the “Enron Loophole,” one of the major loopholes that opens the door to abusive trading practices, but the law didn’t go far enough.

Buying into 'the petroleum for the next century' ROB CARRICK Friday, June 13, 2008 Looking to jump into an investment in a scarce resource with lots of upside potential? There's a clear case to be made for water. Oil and gas, metals and fertilizers and food are still going strong, while investors have only recently started to talk about water. And yet, water has much the same imbalance between supply and demand as traditional resources. The investment dealer Goldman Sachs recently described water as the “the petroleum for the next century.” Mutual funds and exchange-traded funds focusing on water have...

Why Can’t Our Media and Politicians Get The Oil Story Right? Of course the answer is quite simple! Our pathetic media and politicians can’t get it right because they don’t know how to analyze a market. After all, how many of them have actual experience in managing a client’s portfolio or traded a futures market? The problem is that their ignorance is having an outlandish impact on our lives as their ineptitude to understand and present the facts might very well lead to policies that will substantially hurt this country’s economy for a long time to come. We have precedence...

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- High-flying tech stocks crashed. The roaring housing market crumbled. And oil, rest assured, will follow the same path down. Not everyone agrees. In an echo of our most recent market frenzies, some experts pronounce that the "world has changed," and that the demand spikes, supply disruptions, and government bungling we face now will saddle us with a future of $4, $5 or even $10 a gallon gasoline. But if you stick to basic economics, it's clear that the only question is when - not if - prices will succumb.

More on the possible contribution of index fund investment to recent commodity price moves. We and many others have been discussing whether the surge in investment fund purchases of long positions in commodity futures contracts may have been a factor contributing to the spot prices of those commodities beyond what would be warranted by considerations of physical supply and demand. John Mauldin shares an interesting graphic from Deutsche Bank researchers, showing that the prices of a number of commodities in which no futures market exists have increased even more dramatically than those traded on major exchanges.

Bursting the Speculative Bubble - May 30, 2008 The Bubble may be ready to burst. The CFTC pushed by Congress may be sharpening the point on the pin that bursts the price balloon. Futures, Institutional Investors and Oil Prices. The volume of email commenting on the Michael Masters testimony before the Senate was surprising to say the least. While we disagree with some of his comments comparing the number of futures contracts to physical barrels, we do agree with the basic analysis and believe it helps explain some of the oil price increase over the last few ears. Since all...

Ready for the Oil Bubble? Source: http://www.star-telegram.com/104/story/651928.html ------------------------------------------------------------ One law is causing prices to go through the roof By Ed Wallace Special to the Star-Telegram "There’s a few hedge fund managers out there who are masters at knowing how to exploit the peak [oil] theories and hot buttons of supply and demand and by making bold predictions of shocking price advancements to come, they only add more fuel to the bullish fire in a sort of self fulfilling prophecy." — National Gas Week, Sept. 5, 2005 as reprinted in the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ report, "The Role of...

I’ve long been a bear on oil and energy as an investment thesis — Simply put, the end product of all energy is totally commoditized and every player in the business is totally beholden to the vagaries of the market to set the price of that end product. Intel gets to choose how much to price their processors for. And they’ve kept gross margins far above 50, 60% regardless of the cycles playing out in the broader economy. I like to invest in businesses that have lots of defend-able proprietary technologies and/or strategies in their business model. Google’s another great...

WASHINGTON - Market speculation on energy prices may have added as much as 10 percent to crude oil costs and the peak may be yet to come, a top Energy Department official said Tuesday. Guy Caruso, head of the department's Energy Information Administration, told a Senate hearing that supply and demand would suggest a price of about $90 a barrel. Prices fluctuated around $102 a barrel Tuesday — although futures prices later dropped below $100 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange — on word that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are likely to keep production as is...