Byron Dorgan: “the final matter I want to talk about today is this issue of the price of oil and the price of gasoline and excessive…”

“the final matter I want to talk about today is this issue of the price of oil and the price of gasoline and excessive speculation. There has been some discussion today about this, and I want to make this point. We have seen a dramatic runup in the price of oil and, therefore, the price of gasoline. There is no justification with respect to the fundamentals of oil and supply and demand for that. There is no justification for it at all, but something has changed in this country. What has changed is the futures market has become an orgy of speculation. Let me quote a man named Mr. Fadel Gheit, a top analyst from Oppenheimer and Co. He has been in this business for 30 years. He said this a couple of months ago. There is absolutely no shortage of oil. I'm absolutely convinced that oil prices shouldn't be a dime above $55 a barrel. Oil speculators include the largest financial institutions in the world. I call it the world's largest gambling hall. It's open 24/7. It's totally unregulated. This is like a highway with no cops and no speed limit and everybody's going 120 miles per hour. This is happening in the futures market. You need a futures market to hedge. You need it for liquidity. I understand that. What has happened to the futures market is pretty bizarre. We now see on the futures market 20 times the amount of oil bought and sold every day than is used every day. Twenty times more is bought and sold than is used.”