Speculators and Oil price

The Economist covers speculators' effects on commodities based on recently recatagorized data release by the CFTC. They only released data for a brief period, BUT it was marginally inconclusive. If anything I gleaned that the data indicated speculators were playing a valuable market role. I suppose they will find some periods over which the results are more in favor of speculators and people will hem and haw like they do now.

More information is alwyas good. The market usually wins though, no matter WHO leads America. Educating more people so they don't believe politicians is our only hope. I'll cite the last 2 sentences of the articls:

It is tempting to look for scapegoats when high prices hurt consumers. But the real culprits for oil-price volatility may be much more familiar: supply, demand and global instability.