“At a time, in short, when sacrifice is being asked of everyone… the American people are going to find it hard, as we do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives… could act with such utter contempt for the interests of 180 million Americans.”.

A month ago, we reminded everyone that ExxonMobil’s Chief Executive Officer, Rex Tillerson, told Senator Maria Cantwell (D WA) at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that the oil would be about $60 70/barrel if the speculators in oil futures were not driving up the price.

Eliminate oil speculators and you have solved some of the problem.

But that won’t change our higher cost energy future, which is mostly a result of fundamentals, real things, and not the Wall Street Boyz.

Every time a Honda Civic owner fills his tank, he hands $7.30 to Wall Street.

As a result, Honda Civic drivers pay an additional $7.39 per fill up, said the commissioner, Bart Chilton.

Even with rising production, oil prices have been rising in 2012 due mainly to the tensions with Iran.

The current price run up, they say, has been driven primarily by the threat of war with Iran and the world’s limited spare capacity to pump more oil in case of an emergency.

Secretary Reich reminds us that, historically, 30 percent of oil futures’ trades were conducted by speculators — today, that number is 64 percent, and it is a relatively small group of traders.

The Dodd Frank law gives the CFTC the authority to limit the ability of speculators on Wall Street to inflate the price of oil by putting in place position limits.

Richard Gates is a business journalist based in Seattle, Washington. Richard has a passion for financial markets and breaking news stories and loves writing about business news, stock market, and economic opinions that matters most to its audience. Richard spends a lot of time discovering and researching latest financial markets and industry news stories in order to make sure the latest and greatest stories are brought to you first on BigBoardNews.com.