A Senate panel warns the markets' regulator to rein in speculators. - Commodities/Oil

LA Times

The record-shattering run-up in energy and food prices has put investors who buy and sell such things on the hot seat -- so hot that some in Congress on Tuesday threatened action.

"The American people are about to take out pitchforks" because of the cost of groceries and gasoline, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said during a Senate hearing on whether commodities are being pushed higher by investors' high-stakes bets that prices will keep going up. Given the uproar from consumers, McCaskill warned an official from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, "if you don't do something, Congress will."

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), who chaired Tuesday's hearing before the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said that commodities trading by pension funds and other institutional investors has risen sharply. He noted that investment in index funds tied to commodities has grown twentyfold to $260 billion in the last five years.

"This unbridled growth raises justifiable concerns that speculative demand -- divorced from market realities -- is driving food and energy price inflation and causing a lot of human suffering," Lieberman said.

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fi-traders21-2008may21,0,5049494.story?track=ntothtml

Has nothing to do with supply and demand!

I've seen it for years as, what the market will bear

the slop that m$m feeds them, that is