Jeff Merkley: “I find it fascinating that we have a variety of regulatory powers, but essentially despite those powers dispersed among…”

“I find it fascinating that we have a variety of regulatory powers, but essentially despite those powers dispersed among a number of different agencies, we have a picture of companies, big banks, that have enormous assets being able to buy vast quantities of particular commodities and control of the distribution systems through pipelines, through offshore oil tankers, through warehouses, not only providing a huge amount of market information that is very advantageous in trading, but also in a sense to have a thumb on the scale in terms of supply and demand and be able to have some influence over the price.”