Speculating on Industry Oil Speculations...
Posted by Karen Thomas on Wed, Feb 03, 2010 @ 10:05 AM
Opening the roads so to speak for discussions pertaining to less known trade and
agricultural-related transactions: The American Trucking Association is approaching the White House head on through Congress with an appeal that will ideally lead towards more transparency when it comes to transportation related issues such as "speculative trading that helped create massive bubbles in a range of consumer goods, from gasoline, heating oil and natural gas to wheat, cotton and other commodities," (www.thetrucker.com.)
The ATA chose Con-way Inc. Vice President Randy Mullett to appear before congress as a representative for the organization. The press conference is scheduled for today at 1pm EST.
The purpose of the visit to D.C. is "to improve transparency in the over-the-counter markets and establish aggregate position limits across all trading
platforms,"(www.thetrucker.com.)
So far in 2010, Washington D.C. has been an effecitve platform for the ATA to see through its initiatives. Just last week the President and CEO of the ATA, Bill Graves joined Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood when the Department of Transportation unvieled its official policy against text messaging while operating a vehicle.
One of the pressing initiatives on the ATA's list as it heads to Washington once again, is to curb speculation in the price of oil. Sharp flucuations in price have lead many industry insiders to believe that more than supply and demand theories are shaping the fuel industry's financial framework.
Truckline.com reported that, "While ATA cannot quantify the extent to which speculation is
responsible for the recent dramatic increase in the price of crude oil, we believe that excessive speculation is part of the problem. To address this problem, the federal government should increase the transparency of the derivatives markets and establish reasonable position limits for non-commercial traders."