Comment Text:
I, and the public that I serve in a great variety of ways, medically, policy, legislatively, etc all suffer from unstable energy and food prices, driven by speculation in these commodities markets, particularly the derivatives created around these commodities. While I would like to see many of the unnecessary financial intermediaries removed from these derivatives and commodities markets, since that seems to be improbable, I want to see them carefully monitored and regulated by the CFTC. The previous financial crisis, and the degree of it, that we are trying to slowly work our way out of, was, to a large extent, created by the lack of parameters and restraints on these derivatives and commodities markets. And, its worth note that the instability and continued inflation in food and energy prices isn't used to create a comprehensive picture of the real inflation in our overall economy appropriately, which has implications for other policy decisions. So, I am encouraging the CFTC to do as much as possible in implementation and enforcement to provide detailed oversight and regulation of the wild speculation ongoing in these derivative and commodity market processes. I've watched access to medical care become a commodity because of private financial intermediary intrusions into that delivery system, and watched that human service price escalate/inflate at two to three times the rate of the rest of the economy for many decades now. Lets don't allow that same inflation to happen with commodities as critical as food and energy, simply because of a lack of oversight and regulation of the financial intermediaries, at least anymore than it already has. We can't make food and energy unaffordable for large segments of the American population, as medicine has become, simply because of speculation. The CFTC was created to prevent this from happening and return a more reasonable, stable market dynamic to these commodities.
