How are you going to do that? Oil is traded in every major city in the world. This is just more chest thumping and idle threats by the politicians who know nothing about commodities markets. Let's say everyone got together and stopped futures trading. What then? We we would have no oil deliveries. Oh, that's a great idea.

Besides that, what is speculation anyway? It just means oil is being priced at what it is worth at the moment. No one has a corner on the oil market.

Instead of everyone complaining, you have to look at alternatives. I think natural gas is our best bet for a transportation fuel. It's much cheaper than gasoline, and the US has huge NG reserves. There are some tradeoffs in terms of vehicle range, but everything has a tradeoff. Second thing is to stop burning natural gas to produce electricity. That's just a waste.

Michael

The logistics would be difficult at best to implement, but there are lots of commodities for sale that do not have a public trading market.

So you have two years to increase your income enough to still afford to go boating.Yes if this happens it will end high performance boating for anyone making an average income.Make sure you are not in that group and you will be fine

One idea: Has anybody ever considered the fact that the higher the price goes the more tax dollars the gov't gets.....the same gov't that is trillions in the hole. Then they set up a committee to look at the problem, a committee they know couldn't resolve anything.
Second idea: Could it be our gov't is trying to covertly address the global warming "issue" that they haven't been paying attention to over the past 40 years. Could the high price of fuel be one way to basically MAKE Americans start to automatically address the situation???? Probably 90% of new car buyers are shopping for mileage when purchase.....which is exactly what the gov't wants.
I love conspiracy

The other night I was half in the bag doing a little channel surfing. I ended up on CSPAN. It was coverage of the "gas crisis Committee". I was in a trance with the babble that was dripping out of these peoples faces. If you ever get bored...I mean real bored, flip on CSPAN and grab a good cocktail.

I like the way you think!

If gas goes to $7.00 a gallon we will have much bigger problem on our hands to worry about, I guess I will just take the boats to Venesuela and buy it for 25 Cents a gallon.

In all seriousness, if it goes that high our economy will stop, thus will the worlds.

Enjoy it now boys and girls. In the not to distant future, we may look back on 2008, as having available gas at only $5.00/gal.

We may be reaching the end of the era of affordable oil based fuels. Thank you bleeding heart, liberal, tree hugger, dems.

I fear we may also be nearing the end of the republic, as we know it. Just look at the candidates for pres.

Easier said then done...............

Ironically, if that were to happen, our problems would be over.

If the average American became more productive and became more fiscally responsible, our national wealth would skyrocket. That would cause significant strengthening of our dollar and, as if by magic, all these issues would evaporate.

Remember, if the dollar doubled in value against the world currency market, oil would cost half what it does today.

I also believe the there needs to be sweeping change in the way petroleum is traded and speculated against.

One other thing- markets find their own natural equilibrium. Whether or not people like to hear it, oil was not overpriced until just recently. Speaking from a market perspective, nothing that people continue to purchase is over-valued. Once regular unleaded moved past the $3.50 a gallon barrier, consumption dropped significantly. It's going to take a while for the markets to react and the speculative facet adds buoyancy to the pricing but I don't believe $7 unleaded is a realistically conceivable thing.

At the same time, I can't say it wouldn't be advantageous to the oil companies. Even selling half the volume, double the price doesn't just net them the same net revenues. The shed a whole expensive load of production and infrastructure costs. I think at that point, you'd have a legislative lynch mob fast-tracking the nationalization of oil and gas under the premise that the manipulation of their supply presents a clear and present danger to the security of the US.

Maybe that wouldn't be a bad thing.