Free Market .com

What good is a free market if prices are driven up artifically by speculation?

Depending on who you listen to: Oil prices are in part due to shadow markets (hedging, derivatives) What good is a free market if they allow price distortions like this to persist?

Public Comments

1. Straight from the UK is a very intelligent and thought-provoking video on what causes markets to rise and fall. You have to watch it. It's awesome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJ_qK4g6ntM ___________________________ But, in all seriousness, we can't change the way that markets operate. The market is the market. The best that we can do is to try to understand the general, long term forces that take place. For investment education, I highly recommend the American Association of Individual Investors, and the Investors Business Daily.
2. you got to speculate to accumulate so if you are good speculating £££££££
3. Puts a lot of money in the pockets of the rich . Turns the rest of us into a third world society .
4. Speculation "IS NOT" the tail that wags the dog. Speculation is "ALWAYS" the lagging indicator of a bubble. For instance, how many speculators were loading up on Condos in Miami in 1991? None, because nobody believed Condos could be flipped 2/days after buying them for a profit. Yet in 2005, buying and flipping Condos was all the rag. Not of homebuyers, but of Speculators. But it wasn't speculators who created the bubble, they only jumped in at the tail end. I hate to burst the bubble of people who wish to blame rising fuel prices on money thristy speculators. But they didn't drive oil from $60-$120. They might be driving recent prices, but they didn't get prices to the point they are today.. Everybody needs to realize that China and India are growing economies. Not only that, they also have 2.3 Billion people between them. And those billions of people are moving from Bicycles and Mud Huts to BMWs and Condos. All of which require energy. And that added demand is tipping the scale from Supply to Demand. Thus causing prices to rise. So if anybody is to blame, blame the high fuel costs on growing affluence around the world. Poor people aren't the problem. Its people becoming well off and wanting more.