First of all McClatchy has had some articles on this in the last few days. "These steps could lower oil prices, but nobody'll take them" by Kevin G Hall comments about 3 reasonable ways to check rising prices(Monday June 9,2008). Today's (Wednesday, June 11, 2008) deals with the US Commodities Exchange Commission wanting to look into speculation and other matters that might play important role in the price increase.
It seems that another bubble might building due to our own fund managers taking our 401k and 403b monies and throwing them into the oil commodities market. The result of this bubble might have similar consequences as the housing crisis with billions and billions of lost revenue when the bubble bursts. It seems that we have little or no regulation of oil sales on the world market.
So yesterday the Senate Republicans refused to tax the high profits of the oil companies implying that if the profits were taxed the oil companies would simply raise prices to compensate for the tax. I'm not sure that is true. Oil company profits have never been higher. If they could have simply raised prices at the pump before this market speculation then why didn't they?
I think we aren't being told the complete truth about what is driving the prices higher and that our senators of both parties should being doing more than lip service concerning the buying and selling of this important commodity. We are not really getting much from the Democratic side either. Yesterday, Obama said that the price rise was caused by the market and he didn't seem to have any ideas about easing the pain.