Comment Text:
James Hospital
10800 Littleford LN
Kensington, MD 20895-2837
March 25, 2011
David Stawick
Secretary, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Three Lafayette Centre
1155 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20581
Dear Mr. Stawick:
1. the future commodity market - future option used to be restricted to end users of the product and nobody else could buy them. 2. ENRON came to Bush and asked him to change the rules so anybody could buy options - Bush did that. 3. The hedge funds with their billions started buying all the future options for oil. 4. If anybody wanted to buy oil, they had to buy it from the hedge funds and the hedge fund could charge anything they wanted for it. 5. In July of 2008, gas was $4.00 a gallon in most places or closed to it. The cost per barrel was in three digits. The Saudi's said don't blame them they were still only charging $65/70 a barrel. 6.
The hedge funds were buying a barrel at the Saudi price and then selling it to others for something in the hundreds. And there was no added benefit except a large profit for the hedge funds. 7. In August of 2008, congress said the were going to put the old rules back in. 8. The hedge funds started selling their options off and by January 2009 gas was $1.479 at my local gas station (Costco). 9. In March/April 2009 the Wall Street Journal ran an article that the hedge funds were starting to purchase future oil option again - congress did nothing to correct the situation.
10. this is nothing but a transfer of wealth from the poor/middle class to the rich who own the futuTe options. 11. These no benefit added ripe offs are now working their way through our economy raising prices for everything associated with the price of gas, e.g. food prices, etc.
Are you now going to fix this and help our economy?
Sincerely,
James Hospital
3019466025
