SPECULATORS DRIVING UP GASOLINE PRICES - Not Supply, Demand, Free Market

(06/06/2009)

By Bob Weaver Hiding behind the claims of free markets, supply and demand, it's much clearer now what drives gasoline prices. Wall Street speculators. Oil and gasoline prices are rising fast, but not because supplies are tight or demand is high. Price per gallon is moving toward $3, at least in West Virginia. U.S. crude oil inventories are at their highest levels in almost two decades. There goes that spin. Demand has fallen to a 10-year low. There goes that spin. Refiners are operating at less than 85 percent of capacity, leaving plenty of room to churn out more gasoline if demand rises during the summer driving season. There goes that spin. Wall Street speculators, some of them recipients of billions of dollars in taxpayers' bailout money, may be to blame. Wall Street banks such as Goldman Sachs & Co., Morgan Stanley and others are able to sidestep the regulations that limit investments in commodities such as oil, and they're investing on behalf of pension funds, endowments, hedge funds and other big institutional investors. Critics say this speculative flow of money into commodities markets is a self-fulfilling prophecy that's distorting the usual process by which buyers and sellers set prices and is driving up the prices of oil, gasoline, grains and other essentials.

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