If there’s one thing we in Southwest Florida should’ve learned from the housing bust, it is the dangers of excess market speculation. This time, it’s not real estate and mortgage derivatives, its oil.

According to the  Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), “Speculative traders’ interest in crude oil now account for roughly 70% of all trading in West Texas Intermediate crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange, compared with 37% in 2000.”

Like so many regulatory agencies under the Bush administration, the staff and budget of the CFTC have shrunk while the number of trades it’s charged with regulating have increased exponentially. Last month, in written testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the CFTC  laid out the need to increase transparency (there’s that word again!) and to ensure proper market controls, for aggressive enforcement and improved oversight coordination, and the need for increased funding.

If a lack of the regulatory oversight that leads to wealthy, unscrupulous, energy traders causing the rest of us to suffer sounds familiar, it should. As a recent article in the CS monitor put it, Call it Enron, the sequel.

The problem here, of course, is not the free market, but loopholes that allow devious profiteers to game the system and artificially drive up oil prices to the detriment of both honest brokers and consumers alike. 

There are a number of voices in congress who are calling for this lack of oversight to be addressed, but the question is What will our congressman do about this issue?

Do we have someone in office who is willing to stand against crooked hedge fund managers and greedy, manipulative executives (remember Ken Lay?) who make regular, healthy contributions to the campaign funds of one or the other major parties?

Or do we have someone in office who is going to ignore the exact same type of speculation that has already devastated the housing market, and who will pretend it’s just a supply and propose hollow, short-term fixes that will do little to nothing to lower fuel prices like allowing offshore drilling off of Florida’s coast ?

Hmm, I wonder…

It’s time for a change.