Once again the 1% are playing with the price of oil. If I were to guess the motive this time goes beyond profiting at the misery of the 99%. Rather this appears to be a calculated effort to hurt the US economy so the hundreds of millions of dollars (most likely will be well in excess of a billion dollars) being spent on publican (not a typo, if the GOP is going to use Democrat instead of Democratic...) candidates don't go to waste.
http://www.miamiherald.com/...
WASHINGTON -- U.S. demand for oil and refined products - including gasoline - is down sharply from last year, so much that United States has actually become a net exporter of gasoline, unable to consume all that it makes.
Yet oil and gasoline prices are surging.
Still, oil's price shot up because it trades in financial markets, where Wall Street firms and other big financial players dominate the trading of oil, even though they have no intention of ever taking possession of the oil whose contracts they are trading.
What should the price of oil be if left to conventional supply and demand market fundamentals? Canada's the largest supplier of imported oil to the United States, which now actually produces more than half of the oil it consumes. Production and delivery costs for a barrel of oil from Canada are about $75 a barrel. The market-fundamentals cost for a barrel of oil is in that ballpark; above that, speculation sets the prices.
So the US economy does better than predicted in January. The President's ratings soar. Suddenly the price of crude oil and gasoline rise against all laws of supply and demand. It's not hard to figure out the who and the why.