by M.L. Bushman

Created on: June 27, 2008

I've been studying the oil futures market for weeks now, trying to figure out just what's going on with the price of oil and/or gas.

Speculators are driving up oil prices, no doubt about it. Supply is there, virtually equal to demand. There are no gas lines in the US.

The Federal Reserve doesn't raise interest rates despite the continual weakening of our dollar. They say they won't shore up the dollar by raising interest rates because they don't want to send the country into a recession, maybe even a depression. I've got news for them-while they wait for the numbers and their analysts to tell them the bad news, we regular folks already know this country's headed for a serious depression.

But the big question I have now is who is doing the speculating and on whose behalf?

Think about it. The banks, all members of the Federal Reserve, are perilously close to failing, if not failing already due to the crash of the subprime mortgage market last year.

Right about the same time the bad news broke that the subprime mortgage market bubble had burst, oil prices took off like a rocket.

And now the Fed does nothing to shore up the dollar, thus leaving oil prices and the American consumer to swing in the breeze.

Who is making all the money? The Media never mentions any names, sticking instead to generic terms like hedge funds and the like, all of which say bank to me.

Wouldn't it be funny to find out that Congress is allowing speculation, and thus the astronomical rise in the price of oil, to continue unabated, despite the so-called nine different bills introduced over the past few days to "curb" said speculation, mainly so that the failing member banks of the Federal Reserve have a chance to make back some, if not all, the money they lost in the subprime mortgage market crash?

The joke would then be on us, the American consumer, wouldn't it?

Or would a joke this sinister and underhanded turn out to be on Congress and the Federal Reserve, because once the American People discovered just how well they'd been screwed and more importantly, by whom and for what reason, there may very well be a severe backlash, say, in the form of all-out revolution.

As my ultra-conservative neighbor who works in the banking industry said only a couple of days ago, "It might be time to have us another tea party."

Surprisingly enough, my neighbor wasn't joking either.

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