Wall Street, Deregulation and the Price of Gas

greenbastard

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Tuesday March 08, 2011 · 8:35 AM PST

2011/03/08 · 08:35

Remember back in the 70′s when gas prices shot up due to speculation on Wall Street? Of course you don’t, that was a supply disruption. Your basic supply and demand action. Oil and Gas prices are regulated to keep speculation and the whims of Wall Street and the Rich Elite from screwing up the price on gas, and thereby the economy, and the lives of people. Well, that was then. For the last 3 or 4 decades, as many of us know, Wall Street and the Rich Elite have been stacking the deck in their favor and against everyday people.

Enter The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA), which brought us deregulation of commodity markets. Regulations that had been in place since the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, which kept the price of oil stable through govt regulation and policing. According to Business Week, “Besides opening the door for unregulated, off-exchange trading, the CFMA excluded what are known as “swaps” from regulation.” And let’s note, this was brought to us by a democratic President, Bill Clinton, which underscores how we can no longer rely on mere labels, as the DLC and many democrats are not on the side of the people, but on the side of Wall Street and the plutocracy.

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