The show on NPR I was listening to driving home was about the umpteenth broadcast I've heard on the high price of fuel. It's a sad situation which has affected all aspects of society. (obviously Europeans will not have much sympathy for us here, but the mass transit options aren't as good as in Europe so please allow me a bit of grousing.)
The blame gets tossed back and forth--too many dollars chasing too little gas, the rise of petrol use in China and India and so forth. The one part of this story that irks me the most is the development of rampant oil speculation--Wall Street and the hedge fund crowd have taken advantage of the deregulation of futures trading and have tied up vast amounts of oil commodities using only about 5 percent margins. And please realize many of these speculators have no use for storing or managing the barrels of oil they buy. They are just "holding" them on paper in hopes that the price will be driven up. Does this smack of what happened in the Enron Scandals a few years back to someone besides me?
Even if it has only a marginal effect, I think people should demand that this vital resource is re-regulated as it was before lax Reagan-Era decontrolling took place. Some experts testified this semi-racketeering was adding 30-40 dollars to a barrel of oil!!!
Obviously, we need to get ourselves off such dependence on oil, period. But its going to take years. Requiring higher margins and getting some of the most predatory speculators out of this vital market would at least ensure some measure of protection for consumers in the short run.
For more info, here's a recent article:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/23/national/main4203863.shtml
