Obama continues blaming speculators

I have tried several times to explain how speculation works, but Democrats can't pass up a chance to bash businesses.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST: Let's talk a little bit more about the economy. Gas prices are starting to come down this week, but the president wanted to show he's on top of it, saying he's prepared to crack down on speculators.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: My administration will take new executive actions to better analyze and investigate trading activities in energy markets and more quickly implement the tough consumer protections under Wall Street reform. None of these steps by themselves will bring gas prices down overnight, but it will prevent market manipulation and make sure we're looking out for American consumers.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Keith, the president did made a concession there. The problem is they actually hadn't been able to come up with any evidence that speculation was driving up the price. There's a lot of hunches, no hard evidence.

KEITH OLBERMANN: Yeah. One of the -- one of the things I turned to, to try to establish that was to look at the average gas price at various key moments, and the lowest price in the last six years, the nadir of gas prices at the pump, was the day of this president's inauguration in 2009. There has to be some connection between that being the least busy political moment of a president's career, where you're not going to -- you're not going to hurt them, you're not going to harm him that way, and the price of gas. There has to be an almost deliberate or at least a side effect quality to that. There must be.

The rambling here about conspiracy theories is crazy.  Speculators make money my arbitraging away price differences.  To sell gas when you think that it will rise in the future is a sure way to lose money.  The same is true if you buy it up when you think that it will be lower in the future is another way to lose money.  For a massive market like oil where this conspiracy trading increases the profits of other speculators to go in the other direction.