Should commodites rules be changed so speculators can drive the price of oil up?
No. In the first place, you are contradicting yourself–you claim the market was manipulated and then that it’s a “failure” of a free market. You can’t have it both ways–if the market is subject to deliberate manipulation, it’s not a free market in the first place. In fact the oil market WAS manipulated–but that’s because it isn’t a fee market and never was. Not when the suppliers consist of a) a small group of governments who act openly as a cartel and b) a handful of large corporations who do the same–and some are owned by those same governments. Go look it up in an economics 101 textbook–thaat is by definition NOT a free market. Regulations won’t help. Those corporations and governments are the ones that make–and more to the point, enforce, any regulations. Nor can you take oil off the commodity market entirely–it will make no difference. The oil producers are a cartel–they will simply return to the old practice of setting whatever price they want directly. They created the “
