Mr President, you said this past week there is not much you can do about gas prices. I beg to differ. Oil speculators are driving up the price of oil which drives up the price of gas. This is a fact, and it is a fact that the senate tried to address but failed to do so. I It is time to awaken the senate so they can at least start a public conversation about oil speculation and what can be done to stop it.
Enron led the drive to deregulate the oil speculation market and you need to lead the drive to re-regulate it.
Don't say you can't do anything. You can and you must.
a report issued the following September contradicted the IEA report, pointing to correlations between the influx of money in oil futures markets and the rising cost of oil. The price of oil doubled, tripled and eventually quadrupled in step with the increase from $13 billion to $260 billion in the market from 2003 to 2008 [source: U.S. Senate].
In response to calls for better regulation of oil futures, Congress introduced the Consumer-First Energy Act in May 2008. The bill would have extended CFTC oversight to foreign markets, but the act died on the Senate floor the following June. After the bill was defeated, the argument over oil speculation changed focus. No longer was the debate over what caused oil prices to rise beginning in 2006, but how long the United States would allow speculation to continue
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