Wall Street and Washington Conspire to Destabilize the U.S. Economy, One Barrel of Oil at a Time

Comments (0) By Pete Kotz Thursday, Jul 5 2012

...continued from page 4

Then again, the same people have been doing the same thing for 25 years. Yet regulation just keeps getting weaker. "You will know that somebody's serious when they put 500 FBI agents and a dozen of our best prosecutors on Wall Street," says Kelleher.

In the meantime, it could all get a lot worse if Mitt Romney is elected. Even after the JP Morgan fiasco, he reiterated his plan to repeal Dodd-Frank, which also contains measures guarding against future bank bailouts.

Pete Ryan

Charles Steck

Former international securities lawyer Dennis Kelleher: "I asked the senior official at Goldman [Sachs] at the time. There were no supply and demand issues that could remotely explain the doubling and doubling again of oil prices."

More About

Writes Politico: "Romney's reaction is the equivalent of putting out a small fire in your house, then deciding that the lesson is you need to stuff your house with matches, throw out your fire extinguisher, and cancel your fire insurance. And doing all this after the house nearly burned to the ground less than four years ago."

These days, the oil market has again begun to dive — through no help from our leaders. A stalled Chinese economy, plus fears of serial bank crashes in Europe have caused speculators to scatter. Prevailing theory: The world may soon be too broke to buy gas.

But at some point, the economy will show signs of recovery. And Washington has ensured that the speculators will return, there to suffocate it in its infancy.