Why don't Gov. in Wash. D.C. make a law against Speculation to drive up the price of oil like Patriot Act???

There has been many laws passed to deal with anti-moneylaundering and recently as 2001 with the passage of the Patriot Act to lift all restrictions against investigating many acts of money laundering to restrict access to the financial institutions here in the United States along with other cooperating countries to help curtail the practice of illegal money laundering. Now there are people who are day to day speculating about the price of oil and contributing to it's daily rise in prices which are hurting a lot of people in this country and other countries also. Should the U.S. take the initiative to outlas this evil practice or should we wait until we have a President in office who really cares about whether the people in this country should suffer from double digit inflation just because they don't make enough money to coup with the steady rising prices that doesn't seem to have an end to them because of the rising oil prices? The people of this country should suffer no more.Why don't Gov. in Wash. D.C. make a law against Speculation to drive up the price of oil like Patriot Act???
I'd be cool with that. They should. But it wouldn't pass congress.Why don't Gov. in Wash. D.C. make a law against Speculation to drive up the price of oil like Patriot Act???
A lot of the ';speculators'; live in other countries, so that the ';Gov. in Wash. D.C. make a law against Speculation to drive up the price of oil like Patriot Act'; would only negatively affect U.S. citizens (leaving more oil for the non-U.S. citizens to speculate on).
How can you outlaw speculation?





Do you even understand what speculation is?





From reading your question, I don't think you understand the concept of speculation.
The 'speculation' as you call it, takes place in other countries, not in the US.





So go ahead and pass all the laws you want (although I have NO idea how you would frame this or enforce it even IN the US). All you'll do is make it impossible for US based companies to buy oil, since your system won't let them buy it at world prices.





Pass that law, and the immediate end of supply would probably have gas prices at $100 per gallon within days.





You need to study economics a bit more.
The U.S. Senate has been aware of the power of unregulated commodities speculation to influence energy prices since at least 2001.





See this link for legislation introduced in Sept. 2007:





http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/release…





To quote from the above link:





';Earlier this year, [2007] the Subcommittee released a report, “Excessive Speculation in the Natural Gas Market,” which found that a single hedge fund named Amaranth dominated the U.S. natural gas market during the spring and summer of 2006, and that its large-scale trading significantly distorted natural gas prices from their fundamental values. The investigation examined millions of trading records from the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) to track and analyze natural gas trading in 2006. The report concluded that the current regulatory system was unable to prevent price distortions and excessive speculation, because much of Amaranth’s trading occurred on an unregulated market. The report recommended closing the Enron loophole to restore the CFTC’s ability to police all U.S. energy markets.';





So it's not just confined to oil prices, but oil is in the spotlight now, obviously.





Bottom line: commodities speculation is nothing but gambling, no matter what any economist or ';financial guru'; tells you.  If it were outlawed, it would have no detrimental effect on the commodities markets whatsoever, and as a bonus, many useless, non-productive leaches would be removed from a potentially free market overall..





I urge you to contact your representative immediately and demand an investigation into this.  Feel free to reference the above legislation. It was proposed. Why has it not been enacted?  Where is similar legislation from the House?





It's very easy to contact your representative, you can do it online, right now, and it only takes a couple of minutes:





https://forms.house.gov/wyr/welcome.shtm…