Comment Text:
Greg Barlow
305 Pinto Road
Greeneville, TN 37745-1949
March 31, 2011
David Stawick
Secretary, Commodity Futures Trading Commission Three Lafayette Centre
1155 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20581
Dear Mr. Stawick:
The time has come and gone for sensibility to take over in the speculation on oil and other commodities. The way futures are traded driving up prices on oil without any sensible reason to do so other than fear and greed has to stop. There has not been an interruption in the availability of supply so supply and demand are not part of the picture. It is greed. Why, tell me, should a hand full of people get rich on profit taking at a time like this at the expense of the masses. Time after time incidents happen and the speculators panic for no reason because they think something might affect the supply of oil. And over and over again, in spite of prices being driven up, what speculators predicted and panicked over never happened. This is insanity. People are struggling to make ends meet and now because your organization has not taken a responsible position on how to price and purchase oil, you are making things much worse to the point people are not able to even afford gas to go looking for work. It doesn't take any intelligence to figure out what is really taking place, it is simply another set of excuses to take billions more in profits. There is always an excuse to drive up futures prices, a different story almost every day. America must have a system that is reasonable and responsible in the purchase of a commodity that drives the nation. What we have now through your organization is driving up prices of food and every other necessity. That is immoral and without justification. It must stop! Form a committee of persons without a vested interest in oil profits and let them handle the price of oil making the process honest, fair, reasonable, and for the good of the nation, not just a handful of greedy money grabbers!
Oil should not be speculated on to begin with, it should be purchased at a set price per barrel that benefits all parties. We do not owe it to any Arab nations to support them, we do not owe it to any oil companies to see them make tens of billions in profits each quarter, and we do not owe it to a bunch of greedy people without morals who have no feelings for what their actions do to billions of people bilking them out of billions of dollars just to satisfy their lust for money! It is time for serious meaningful action and revision of the commodity futures trading commission!
Sincerely,
Greg Barlow
423 470-3368
