Comment Text:
Commissioners;
Many Americans are wondering whether the CFTC works for them, or if the Commission is protecting oil speculators. I, for one, want to believe that the Commission is using their authority to protect Americans from the deleterious effects of unfettered speculation artificially driving up prices in the market. However, I see no evidence that this is the case. Is it not true that Dodd-Frank mandated that the CFTC promulgate a rule on position limits by Jan. 17,2011? It seems to me that had the Commission fulfilled its obligation under the law that Americans would now be protected from rampant speculation, and that U.S. drivers would be saving billions of dollars at gas pumps across the country. Of course, no one expects complex rules to be written overnight. Perhaps to reduce such complexity the Commission could promulgate a single simple rule for oil and leave other commodities for other rules. Why don’t you go ahead and make a good rule immediately and then let the objections from the speculators be considered later? If you fail to take such an action you may be inviting the President to act unilaterally via an Executive Order declaring oil to be a “strategic resource” in a time of war and restricting supplies to end-users only. Sure, he’d catch hell from Wall Street—but the American people would love him for it!
Yours very truly,
Richard Cray
[email protected]
