Letters to the Editor
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Time to buy a taxi cab?
As a matter of public policy telegraphing your intentions to manipulate the oil market will only invite the middle men to step in front of the consumer with price increases; truckers, freight lines, just about everybody. The effect to the economy might actually be a net negative for consumers.
That's an important point about thin markets in commodities, which set the price, but cannot make delivery. That's fundamentally flawed, but it happens increasingly in global markets where off market trading between countries occurs, changes in the benchmark currency, and other political matters make these markets less representative.
The war on terror/drugs/political enemies, is often fought in the computer databases that conduct international banking transactions. Freezing and confiscating accounts is one way the US destroys confidence in global markets. Another is through a weak dollar policy.
At the bottom, according to Bob Prechter, it only takes one buyer and one seller to destroy the value in any market, housing or oil. The official government policy is to see that that one transaction always takes place at what is considered a fair price. (In the final outcome they can control housing if they prevent lower income housing from trading, even if only one McMansion trades, that becomes the benchmark.
Of course it all gets ridiculous after a point, and buyers and sellers know the real score, which is why oil is still going up despite the rally in the dollar.