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Market Speculators Drive Crude Past $100 per Barrel
For Immediate Release
January 2, 2008 (Boston, MA) – Market speculators seeking big profits and year-end bonuses at the expense of American families and small businesses pushed the price of crude oil past the $100-per-barrel point today for the first time in history. “Wall Street greed is pushing the American family and our small businesses to the breaking point,” Shane Sweet, of the New England Fuel Institute, said. “Thanks in part to the Enron Loophole, Wall Street traders received more than $50 billion in bonuses this year for driving the price oil to historic highs. They should get even larger checks next year, now that they’ve driven it past $100 a barrel.” The Congress has moved toward closing the Enron Loophole, Sweet said, but so far they’ve failed to take a decisive step. Originally, the U.S. Senate required that “agriculture and energy” commodities trading be fully regulated by the U.S. Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). In 2000, lobbyists from Enron inserted an amendment to the regulation that deleted the words, “energy commodity” from the regulations, so that only trades involving agriculture products could be regulated. Energy was deregulated. Simply adding back the words “or energy” to the existing regulation would allow all commodities to be regulated the way they were before the Enron lobbyists did their job, Sweet said. “We’re paying $100 a barrel for oil now so Wall Street traders can take home millions in bonus payments,” Sweet said. “The policymakers in Washington need to finish the job and make sure that the Enron Loophole is permanently and meaningfully closed once and for all.” For more information contact:
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