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To: Broken_Clock who wrote (14785)	4/5/2012 11:30:34 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

The CFTC is mostly irrelevant to this point. With or without it, prices elevated for a year would cause downward pressure on quantity demanded, and upward pressure on quantity supplied. If the price for actual delivery was that out of whack then you would either have shortage (if the price was too low to balance supply and demand) or surpluses (if the price is to high). All that surplus oil has to go somewhere. Sure it could just be burnt or otherwise destroyed, but that would be stupid, its worth a lot of money. Buying oil to destroy it is a losing proposition. If the price that was out of whack wasn't the price for actual delivery, but just the futures price, then 1- People wouldn't be paying a manipulated elevated price at the pump, and 2 - There would be an enormous arbitrage opportunity which would drive the prices back together. The only way to escape all of that is for the speculators to buy up oil (or perhaps refined products) to keep it off the market. But if they did that there would be a lot more oil storage. You can't hide storage on the scale that would be needed. Everyday a not insignificant part of the world's oil production would have to be bought up without being used.