Quote Originally Posted by Verik
Your not very bright with international financial trade are you? I didn't say that the US would stop consuming oil. However it will place the control of oil prices in that of the rest of the world if the US starts restricting speculative trade from inside the states. It is a worldwide market so congress can only limit the US's involvement in that market (which unfortunately is a horrible decision, as are most when the government decides to intervene in a free market) meaning that the people who are speculating the prices we pay for crude oil is going to be done by foreigners because we won't be legally able to ourselves.

And Tony, yeah this is capitalism. I'd much rather the government not touch or try and restrict free markets. Oil is a very inelastic good in our society and the markets are coming into realization of that fact. If you want a government that plays and ****s up free markets, head over to china and enjoy socialism.

Tony and others want socialism, but wont admit it. Banning speculation is a joke, like i mentioned in another thread: speculation is 100% of the price of any given publicly traded item.

Ok, say this bill gets the US market on oil to drop. So lets say the NYMEX is going to be at 70$ a barrel for crude, what makes any intelligent person think the dozen other exchanges in the world are going to be at 70 bucks a barrel. They wont, because they will still be openly traded instead of socialized like so many people in the US wants. Each exchange is normally within fractions of dollar to the same price, I dont see how socializing our market will convince every other market to drop with ours.

Socialist bills like this frighten me, and so do people that have no clue what market prices are based on. And reading a bill that says 60 bucks of the oil price is speculation makes me laugh in terror, partly due to the fact that politicians think they can get away with such BS, but mostly because there are people ignorant enough to believe them.

As much as i want 2$ a gallon gas, I do not want it at the expense of a free market (the little we have left).