Posted by
m0t0r1zed on Wednesday, June 11, 2008 4:21:52 PM
Okay, so a ton of people jumped into the oil market. They realized that they could drive the price higher without a decrease in demand - or at least there would be a long lag in response time since it's hard for industries, gov't, people to change their oil consumption and usage patterns.
However, now oil and gas have hit a point where gov'ts are reducing their subsidies, Americans are driving less and buying small cars, manufacturers are switching to alternative materials, reducing manufacturing of big cars, other energy sources are looking more attractive, etc. The problem is, it takes time for demand to adjust, and if we wait that long, we will be in a world-wide recession, thanks to the speculators.
Gas prices are high. The oil market's thrashing around on a daily basis. It's getting rather annoying. Very annoying.
I think it's time to drive out the speculators. How? Supply and demand. Drop prices by creating an artificial glut on the market. If you intentionally release more oil on the market than is needed, you will drive prices down and hopefully chase the speculators out the door, and then you should make it hard for them to come back in by shutting the door. Not completely, of course. Just raise the threshold of entry or implement some other measures to prevent the nonsense that's been going on.
I'm not an economist, so maybe I'm wrong. It's just an idea for a quick, short-term fix to avoid a global recession. No big deal really.