Posted by
Vonnie on Thursday, August 06, 2009 3:09:51 PM
In Ben's article, a few speculators had control over market exchange or an interface of the exchange.
Either market handlers manipulated the online exchange or corporation investors took advantage of an online error or timing. Including oil shortage and foreign upsurge demand hoax rumors, price rose to sky high levels.
Regular oil speculators could not make buyers pay a higher price unless they had control of what the market price is.
According to Ben, a few speculators, investment bankers, and/or hedge funds manipulated online market price of options. The best price was either delayed or replaced with a higher price. Buyers would accept higher prices than what the sellers were willing to accept. Further driving up of prices was when option owners held off selling because prices could go higher in the next days.
Why would exchanges, hedge funds, investment brokers, etc. risk their reputation? Why with only oil and not any other commodity? Oil is emotional because it touches all our lives. The risk reward is to have a "Cap and Trade" bill pass for alternative oil stocks or environmental enthusiastics.
This proves manipulation of capitalism is the problem, not capitalism operating freely.
Trust, but verify. We have to make sure our capialism has liberity and our audits are checked and re-verified. It could be an innocent computer error.