It’s the story of the gasoline selling for $4.15 per gallon down the street. It’s the story of the 5 dollar vegetables. It’s the story of an oil industry that is making record-breaking profits, and commodities traders who are sitting on treasuries of crude, just waiting for the price to go higher.
It’s also the story of prices that have dipped slightly since the Senate announced it would be investigating allegations of illegal price gouging and market manipulation behind this year’s unprecedented energy costs.
In two hours, the gavel will come down on a public hearing held by the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in the United States Senate. The goal of the hearing is to “examine energy market manipulation and federal enforcement regimes. The hearing will also consider the current state of the oil and gas markets and their impact on consumers, as well as solicit testimony and discussion as to the key factors the Federal Trade Commission should incorporate into its upcoming rulemaking on its new responsibility to prevent manipulation in the wholesale oil and petroleum distillate markets.”
Will it be a truly probing, hard-hitting examination? I wouldn’t look for fireworks. The Chair of the Committee is Daniel Inouye, a not-very-progressive Senator who is quite willing to play along with the power brokers of the corporate world. The Vice Chair is Republican Ted Stevens from Alaska, who has been seen strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue hand in hand with a barrel of crude oil after a hard day’s work in the Senate.
Oh i’m sure this will go nowhere.
All this investigation does is create a “show” for the taxpayers. (As if Congress is actually doing anything except enabling Bush and his corporate cronies.)