Is it just me, or is it that these stories make it seem like the only way speculators 'speculate' in the market is by going long? Seems like they are trying to tell you "too many speculators in the market naturally leads to higher prices". In that article Leiberman says 'we are seeing EXCESSIVE MARKET SPECULATION'. I think that's the biggest flaw with their logic. Speculators can go long or short. The number of speculators/participants should be irrelevant. If anything, you want to avoid not having ENOUGH speculators. If prices are going higher there is another reason for it.
its the dream of Bennito Musolini absolute fascism. lieberman is a twat. their all twat's the fed said today they wanted more control of wall street. all the while bailing these places out ,then those bailed out they speculate some more and loan money to more speculator's If you all dont stand firm now. Chao's will reign supreme as will more m/a activity for banking enjoy the show and please keep your seat belt fastened its gunna be a bumpy ride
I saw that dipshit O'Reilly on TV the other day trying to give a little "briefing" to the average joes of this country about the evils of specualtion. It was asinine drivel. Did anybody else see it?
You obviously are unaware of the Enron "loophole" that Phil Gramm placed into Energy De-Regulation Legislation ( without even a committee hearing ) at the 11th hour in December of 2000 that allowed for the creation of un-regulated electronic exchanges/platforms to trade energy futures contracts such as West Texas Intermediate without any position limits or supervision by the CFTC. I guess you're "ok" with the ICE and DME trading WTI without any CFTC supervision, leaving the trading supervision of those WTI contracts up to the good people of Dubai and Great Britain. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNp0y0SjOkY Yeah, that works for me. NOT!
Dam i watch that and i have a new found found disrespect for this loser known as bill oreily I beat you now pay me for those wonderfull beating's
The futures market participants getting blamed for high commodity prices here are commodity index funds. They really are long-only, they never short and only sell to roll over into the next month. I don't think anyone is blaming the true speculators, who are still subject to position limits and generally don't take long term positions. Whether you call index funds speculators or investors is pretty much just a matter of perspective. Commodity index buyers believe they are investing, their opponents believe they are speculating. Commodity index fund managers are active traders, but only because they are forced by market liquidity to buy near contracts and roll them over every month. If you are of the opinion that commodity futures are a zero sum game and the only way to make money is to bet on the correct direction of commodity prices, you could argue that it is an inherently speculative activity. However a lot of people starting with John Maynard Keynes have argued that long-only commodities futures generate positive real returns in the long run even without commodity price appreciation, which seems to be borne out by the evidence, in which case it is hard not to call it investing. Personally I think this is being called speculation just to make it sound bad. It's really investing. Not necessarily good investing, but definitely not speculation. Martin