Something must be done to limit the influence of speculators on important commodities, like oil and corn, to name only two.  The influences of normal supply and demand would not have caused the wildly absurd “upswing” in oil, from around $20/bbl, to a seven-fold $127 higher.  Corn was going up, as using ethanol as fuel increased in popularity, but then corn initiated a hike in grocery prices that has “stuck”, and added to the inflation initially caused by oil and the minimum wage increase. 

As you know, oil was priced in the $20′s for a long time, then in 2003 started moving upward out of that range fairly quickly to the $40′s, double its normal range, by ’04.  Oil prices then made their way up to vacillate in the $70′s by Sept 07.  Oil’s price doubled again in less than a year!  In my view, it helped to promote and intensify an economic-damage domino effect from losses created by unethical lending on a massive scale to obviously unqualified and/or speculative house-buyers.  This economic-damage domino effect also dealt a punishing blow to the world economy and shook the world’s confidence in America as a disciplined world market leader. 

An interesting anecdote is that oil/gasoline prices have spiked downward while heading into the Christmas buying season, in ’03, ’04, ’05 and ‘06. The exception was ‘07, as oil moved from $60/bbl to nearly $100/bbl, while gasoline prices also increased.  This year alone, from July to the last part of November, oil prices have gone down as much as $100/bbl!  Here is an often-used link that provides graphing for up to six years of fuel price history in Chicago, but potentially any locale:

http://www.chicagogasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx

So, it is clear that speculators have helped drain the economy as the prices went up, and the profits from $147/bbl oil as prices fell.  This is rather disconcerting, since no one seems to be able to quite pin down who these people are, or how they could have been allowed to make such a mockery of free markets, especially America‘s. 

Now, oil’s price (per barrel) is somehow returning to around twice its inflation-adjusted $20-30 range!  Measures must be taken to reign in commodity speculators and whomever their helpers are, before they sap the world economy again.  And drilling vast American fuel resources must take place soon, to further America‘s independence and economic stability.

We need leaders with the guts to at least expose the reasons why speculators were allowed to drain the world economy with impunity.  We need leaders who will focus their energies on changing the laws allowing unethical lending to the unqualified, and unethical commodity manipulation, that really amount to price-gouging, which most people see as just another type of theft. 

Now that everyone under the sun wants part of the TARP, who is going to make certain it is held in trust for only mortgage-backed securities?  Who will put their collective foot down to use Americans’ every tax dollar for their original intended use alone?  After all, it’s our money, not the governments’.  Another major question remains:  Whatever happened to Chapters 11 and 13 for bankrupt companies?  The airlines have repeatedly reorganized, and we all know how crucial they are to the economy.  Why can’t “the big three” reorganize, just like the airlines did, even while fuel prices kept rising far beyond any reason?