If a bank can manipulate such a vast market, is it not conceivable that a national entity, whose economy is deeply tied to oil prices, might well attempt to bring about an analogous manipulation?

Maybe we should all send our next gas station tab to the good folks at CME headquarters in Chicago. Surely they protest too much.

You might think that the declining price of gasoline means that we don't have to pay attention to all that talk about oil speculation driving up the price of oil. Right? Wrong.

Natural gas, as traded today on U.S. exchanges, is a uniquely isolated American commodity and any attempt at influencing its price, overt or otherwise, would fall under the purview of the nation's anti-trust laws and its stated prohibitions to all manner of collusion.

In a futures market, we can actually see what prices are expected to do in the future, unlike most other asset markets. And in oil? We are in backwardation -- meaning that as time goes on, prices goes DOWN. A lot.

One is compelled to pull out that old chestnut, "There he goes again." The personage of a Saudi oil spokesman entertaining us to one of his seminal dissertations, expounding on Saudi Arabia's concerns for the well being of all mankind.

This surprising aside while sermonizing us with the usual exculpatory rhetoric emanating from the White House that "...what I've said about gas prices is that there is no silver bullet ..." to high, ever higher gasoline prices.

It's got all the ingredients of a high-stakes courtroom thriller: billions of dollars on the line, intense Wall Street deal-making, and highly profita...

Recent astonishing debates about the responsibility of the President of the United States Barack Obama -- on the recent increase of the price of a gal...

Funny, I don't hear Republicans rail against speculators -- the leading cause of rising gas prices. Could that have anything to do with the fact that hedge funds and money managers are bankrolling the GOP as never before?

The tumult and fabricated anxieties over Iran's oil supply give ample cover to an oil price veering ever higher -- prices explained away by the political tensions at hand. But the question needs to be asked -- what is really driving oil prices?

There's no reason to allow wealthy speculators to position themselves between the world's limited oil supplies and those who have to use that oil to keep the world economy functioning.

Business must be slow and circulation down at Barron's. What better way to stimulate newsprint distribution than a blazoned scaremonger front page headline as in this past weekend's edition, "Get Ready For $150 Oil".

On first inspection, President Obama's decision to tap the nation's petroleum reserves, announced Thursday, seemed far more symbolic than consequentia...