Larry Dighera wrote:

While there is little doubt that OPEC is setting the price of their
product at the highest point they feel consumers can bear, that isn't
the real cause of the astronomical rise in prices. From what I've
heard, about 50% of the price of crude oil is the result of wall
street investors moving their wealth out of dollar denominated bonds
and other instruments (because of the threat of the dollar's continued
devaluation) and moving it into inflation-proof commodities (oil).
That creates an exaggerated demand, that raises oil prices, that
increases inflation, that further weakens the dollar, that .... So,
although OPEC naturally shares some of the blame for high fuel prices,
you can thank wall street brokers and wealthy investors for the lion
share of the price increase. And the Chevron/Exxon/Shell/BP/... are
raping, er.. reaping the benefit. So it would seem that we are the
victims of the wealthy and big business; what else is new?

How does OPEC share any blame in this? The have not cut production quotas.
They do not set prices, only production quotas. World commodities markets
set the price.

You correctly identified the culprits as the speculators in the commodities
market. The flight from U.S. dollar based investments into commodities (by
largely unregulated hedge funds) means that trillions of new money have
entered those markets. Much like the stock market bubble of the 90s and the
recent housing bubble, this causes prices to reach unrealistic (and
ultimately unsustainable) levels.

This is very obvious when you look at non-oil commodities like copper,
steel, gold, corn, etc... It's not just oil prices that have gone through
the roof.

John Galban=====N4BQ (PA28-180)

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