Re: that's al fine and dandy

[quote]The spot price, however, isn't being set by the oil companies themselves, but the commodities markets. The resulting prices are nominally determined by commodities traders reacting to supply and demand, and keep in mind that net global demand is up relative to production, way up, because of rapid economic growth in China and India. The current equilibrium point is necessarily much higher than the run at $17 and brief dive to $9 we experienced in the late 1990s -- but it also appears the market was operating in a speculative bubble concurrent to the housing market, hence the $40/barrel crash in the past few weeks.

It's not that there aren't ways that people could be manipulating this to some degree (and more than a few are probably trying), merely that it is a very complex system and simplistic conspiracy theories are inadequate to explain it. [/quote]

I think we are on the same page, just using different words to describe things.