From The Daily Finance
Have you ever wondered why when you go to the gas station to fill up the family car, the price of gas at the pump has just jumped 25 cents a gallon over the past three days? Perhaps you thought the oil companies were just being greedy. Or you believed the nightly news pundit who said that gas prices went up because the crisis in Libya was affecting supplies of oil. One professional oil trader says that you'd be wrong on both counts.
Most Kossacks do not need to be told that unregulated speculation is why our gas prices rise and rise even when demand does not merit this. It's not really a "free" market out there. But I'm posting this article because my non-political wife found this link and sent it to me. The truth is starting to seep in out there. Follow me below for more:
Dan Dicker, who has spent nearly three decades in the oil market, has a profoundly disturbing explanation of why the price of oil, and the gasoline that comes from the crude product, has risen so dramatically in recent months. It turns out, Dicker says, that the price has nothing to do with supply and demand for oil. It's the financial market for oil, filled with both professional speculators and amateur investors betting on poorly understood oil exchange-traded funds, who have ratcheted up the price of gas to such sky high levels.
The article is a good read, and Dicker asserts that sans speculation the price of oil today would be around $32/bl. This kind of puts the kibosh on notions that we are AT PEAK OIL -- YEAAAARRRRGHHHH!!! Seriously.
It does however lead to an interesting conclusion. We could fight this by trying to reign in speculators. That's a good way to do it.
Another way to do it would be to continue to demand diversification in our energy economy. If a significant number of Americans charged their electric automobile off their roof-mounted solar panels, oil prices would not be quite such a concern.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/...