Investors’ Growing Appetite for Oil Evades Market Limits
7th June 2008
It’s the good thing the government regulates these things, otherwise we’d be in deep doo-doo.
Oh, wait:
The federal agency that oversees oil trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has exempted these firms from rules that limit speculative buying, a prerogative traditionally reserved for airlines and trucking companies that need to lock in future fuel costs.
The CFTC has also waived regulations over the past decade on U.S. investors who trade commodities on some overseas markets, freeing those investors to accumulate large quantities of the future oil supply by making purchases on lightly regulated foreign exchanges.