I'm not sure how I feel about this. I've been very annoyed with the politician's talk about "speculators" controlling oil prices. This article indicates, however, that a few actors do actually have a dominant position in the oil and other commodity markets. I'm not familiar with the details of how the NYMEX and other markets work except that it seems the NYMEX is regulated and controlled to some extent while there seems to be "back-door" markets that operate pretty much unregulated and hidden. I certainly don't mind unregulated and hidden markets on principle but I wonder about the mixed nature of what is going on now. It could be that these "speculators" might be taking advantage of less sophisticated participants with expectations of "protection" based on regulatory assumptions. Does anyone have real knowledge of more details? Any analysis based on libertarian, free market principles?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/20/AR2008082003898.html?hpid=topnews Ed$
