US truckers join coalition calling for oil speculation limits

Source: Todays Trucking

WASHINGTON -- As oil prices rose over $70 per barrel last week and Goldman Sachs raised its forecast for oil prices, the American Trucking Associations joined a coalition of trade associations asking Congress to rein in excessive speculation in the commodities markets.

ATA joined a broad coalition of 79 other trade associations in sending a letter urging Congress to bring full transparency in the commodities markets and prevent excessive speculation.

Energy commodity prices have surged recently, even though the demand for petroleum products has declined significantly and supplies of crude oil are plentiful.

...

Brokerage and market analysis firm Goldman Sachs raised its oil price forecast for 2009 to $59 a barrel from $50 a barrel and for 2010 to $80 a barrel from $70 a barrel.

...

The letter recommends several actions, including establishing aggregate position limits, requiring reporting of over-the-counter trades, closing various trading loopholes and subjecting these trading platforms to regulatory oversight, and requiring a review of emerging environmental markets, including emissions trading products.

Read more: http://www.todaystrucking.com/news.cfm?intDocID=21877

Most of us are barely hanging on right now. If we have another summer of really high fuel prices it will kill this industry.

done already !!! I'm with the truckers on this one, and.........WTF is taking Congress from doing something about this anyway ? Oil Companies are recording record profits each quarter that goes by, while we are just watching gas prices go higher, and higher again !!! There's a topic here about one of the bail-out brokerages leasing tankers to store crude oil(bought with our tax money no doubt) off shore until they can sell it for higher profit.....aren't we being hosed enough by all of this ??? Investigate my azz.............stop the speculators from robbing us blind for a second time, lets get something done about this NOW !!! K & R !!!

Maybe they thought they could get a more sympathetic ear with the O'bama Administration.
Good luck. I hope they get it done.

C'mon folks, this happens every summer. The only difference is that it's not going to stay high, the price will drop big time around August, like it always did before * was in office.

Do you see why saying "prices always go up in the Summer" is actually evidence of price-fixing (or at least "over speculation") when demand is actually down this Summer? :hi:

People are so skittish about what happened under the * administration that they think the usual price spike that happens (and it's always because of "short supply" or "market speculation" or "low demand") during the summer is going to stay that way. Investors over-buy and hoard during the summer and take a bath on their investment and panic sell at the end of summer.

be no argument against regulating these practices. Of course, I don't think the PL sheets of these oil "investors" supports your "take a bath" argument. :hi:

I understand wanting to protect a lucrative, make-money scheme, but I hope you can see that for me - being on the other end of this legalized gambling - it's not so romantic.

I'm just saying don't be shocked by something that has happened every summer. Tell me the last time gas prices went down in anticipation of the summer driving season. But now that we have an actual President at the wheel of the country, instead of the moron oil putz we had in charge, the market will return to its normal up during the summer and winter, down during the fall and spring.

And they DO profit from their forecasts, even if they're not supposed to.

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/06/gas_prices356.html


Goldman Sachs Raises Oil Outlooks As Gas Prices Surge
National average gas price climbs to $2.59 per gallon

How high will oil prices go this summer? They’re already off to a pretty good start, nearly breaking $70 a barrel in Thursday’s trading. A major bank thinks they’ll go much higher.

In its forecast for the rest of the year, Goldman Sachs Group raised its price target for oil to $85 a barrel by the end of 2009. Costly oil, it seems, is the price of a recovering economy.

“As the financial crisis eases, an energy shortage lies ahead,” said Goldman analysts Jeffrey Currie and David Greely in their report.

Already, gasoline prices are reflecting the upward movement in oil prices, even though the U.S. is still in a recession and has plenty of oil and gas on hand. The market is all about the future, and traders are pushing prices higher as they bet the economy will improve and demand for energy will rise.

but a 35% increase is another.

:kick:

by doing things like this?

Oil is the lifeblood of this nations' and the entire world economy. You disrupt oil, you disrupt the country.

Every single winger that I have told that speculating on crude oil threatens national security has, to the person, shut up and didn't know what to say. Of course, maybe my expectations were too high and they were too stupid to respond.

This is ENRON.. over and over and over again.

I am absolutely convinced that the price we pay for gas is a fiction dreamed up by investors and has little to do with the actual cost of extraction and processing.

in an effort to drive up the price... well... they say waiting for the price to go up. There was a thread about that a week or so ago.

They're making money hand over fist even with the low barrel prices. Last year when gas was $1.50 a litre (Canada) oil was around $150 a barrel. The price per litre has traditionally followed the price per barrel. But this time when the price per barrel went down, the price per litre only went down marginally. So we continued paying around $1 per litre with the price of oil down around $50 and they still raise price at the pump every time the oil goes up even a bit. Basically gas at the pump doubled in price for us even though price per barrel was way down. So they are already making massive profits based on this gouging and certainly our government plus all the opposition parties are complicit because nobody is talking about it.