Reining in the speculators

By R.A. | WASHINGTON

FEW relationships in life are as tight as that between rising oil prices and increasing complaints about commodity speculators. Nation reporter Chris Hayes sees the cost of oil going up and unholsters his anti-speculation column:

In the wake of the price explosion in the summer of 2008, a bubble that extended to all kinds of commodities, including copper and wheat, a number of observers from George Soros to Hedge Fund manager Michael Masters to former Commodities Future Trading Commission staffer and derivatives expert Michael Greenberg concluded that the underlying supply-and-demand fundamentals couldn't account for sharp rise in prices. In the first six months of 2008, US economic output as declining while global supply was increasing. And even if supply and demand were, over the long run, pushing the price of oil up, that alone couldn't explain the massive volatility in the market. Oil cost $65 per barrel in June 2007, $147 a year later, down to $30 in December 2008 and back up to $72 in June 2009.

The culprit, they concluded, was Wall Street speculators.

First, it's not true that American output was falling in the first half of 2008; GDP declined in the first quarter but rose in the second. Second, the oil market is global. While American output stagnated in early 2008, growth in places like China continued to soar and demand for commodities followed. Indeed, the fundamental trend in commodity prices, including oil, over the past decade has been a general upward movement as demand growth outstrips supply growth. Third, the fact that price increases span commodities undermines the argument that speculation has played a major role, because prices for commodities that don't trade on these markets have risen alongside those that do.

Fourth, the wild swings in price after July of 2008 aren't evidence for speculation either. As prices rose supply ramped up on a lag. Not all of the world's marginal supply can be turned on at the flick of a switch. But in the fall of 2008, the global economy fell off a cliff. Demand plummeted in the face of rising supply and prices tumbled. But by 2009, supply and demand were more closely aligned, and the global economy was recovering. There's no mystery here. And fifth, the easiest and most effective way to speculate on the price of oil is to leave the stuff in the ground, and there's not a thing the American government can do about that.

It's not impossible that financial market shenanigans have added a bit to the tops and bottoms of market swings. But America's vulnerability results directly from the fact that it uses a massive amount of a scarce resource that other people also want to use. As convenient as it is to blame the nasty bankers for causing this particular economic pain, the fact is that the problem isn't financial markets, it's American consumption.