On May 4, 8:56*am, Larry Jaques wrote:
On Tue, 04 May 2010 08:21:22 -0400, Jack Stein
wrote the following:

wrote:

Oh, the recent spike in gasoline prices? Nothing to do with supply and
demand, and everything to do with unregulated market speculators.

I'm still stuck on the fact the government makes more profit on a gallon
of gas than the people that invested 100's of billions to get the gas to
the pumps...

Why do you think they don't try to reduce prices on oil? *They make a
percentage, so the higher that is, the more money they rake in.

I'd be happy if the courts ruled out non-physical trading. One source
said that oil had been traded up to 100 times on paper, each with
profits, before it actually moved from one point to another, source to
purchaser. *That's a lot of useless markup.

That would certainly put a crimp in large users of oil, like
airlines. They'd probably all be bankrupt by now if they couldn't
deal in futures.