Comment Text:
Stop speculation!
In 2011, a report from the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) found that a large reason for the high gas prices that summer was that oil speculators were dominating 80 percent of the market; they controlled just 30 percent of the market in the late 1990s, when gas was a little over a dolar a gallon. ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson and Goldman Sachs both admitted that speculation on Wall Street caused oil prices to rise by as much as 40 percent. During the record-high oil spike of 2008, Saudi Arabia told the Bush administration that roughly $40 of every barrel of oil was the result of speculators driving up the price. Speculation liek this is a crime and should be treated as such.
But what I think we need to do, as Commissioner Chilton said, ' is what Congress told us to do, was to put caps on speculation, to limit the speculation to 10 percent of a market."
Speculators don’t actually contribute to the economy, as they don’t use a drop of the oil they bet on – they’re just out to make lots of money in a short amount of time. Their jobs don’t need to exist and are hurtful to our economy.
Stop their ability to, again as noted in the In 2011, report from the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to not be able to dominate any more than 10% of the market.
Actually 5% would be better.
Thank-you
Kirk Atton
