It looks to me like powerful people are starting to pay serious attention to how much of the ups-and-downs in energy prices has been driven by a “casino-minded” attitude towards the future markets. Last week, PVM Oil Associates employee Steve Perkins lost $10 millon in a day playing the “electronic oil casino”. This week, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is going after Goldman Sachs and others concerning alleged manipulation, or perhaps the word is abuse, of the futures markets. (There is a lot of other nonsense going on with Goldman Sachs, too.)
All this news shouldn’t come as a complete surprise to readers of The Gas Game. We’ve been talking about the effects of speculators and “investors” in the energy markets for quite a while.