Reasons why oil prices have pushed higher

I hope members of Congress are paying attention to this issue of IDE, because I’m about to reveal one of the biggest (and most ignored) reasons why oil prices have pushed higher… and exactly how to fix it.
The best way I can explain it is to compare Congress to a doctor.
When you’re sick and go to the doctor, you tell him how bad you feel.
Your doctor then determines – based on your symptoms – why you’re sick and how to make you feel better. Not only will he work on lessening your symptoms, but he’ll also give you medicine – be it an antibiotic or whatever – that treats the root cause of those symptoms.
Now imagine that you have a bacterial infection and instead of giving you those antibiotics, he simply told you to take some Tylenol for the temperature and some over-the-counter allergy medicine for the stuffy nose.
Sure you’d feel better, but if you stopped taking the medicine you’d feel sick again since the cause of the symptoms – the bacterial infection - was never treated.
This is exactly what’s going on in America. Congress spends too much time trying to eliminate symptoms without curing the underlying disease.
In the case of the oil market, what are the symptoms? Well, higher oil prices for one. And a growing amount of speculation is another.
This week Congress took a good, hard look at those symptoms, and they think that limiting speculation in the oil markets is the cure. But did Congress ever wonder what caused this excessive speculation in the first place?
If speculators see one investment rising 10 percent per month and another by five, they’ll buy the one that gives them the best return. So in reality, speculators are just reacting to higher oil prices by buying and looking for the return. They aren’t the cause of high oil prices, just a symptom.
So what caused higher oil prices? We know the obvious answer of more foreign demand from Brazil, India, Russia and China. But this isn’t the only reason why oil prices have gone up so much…
Considering a barrel of oil is priced in US dollars, wouldn’t the 40 percent devaluation of our dollar over the past eight years contribute to higher oil prices?
You bet it has.
My reasoning is very simple, too. As the devalued dollar pushes oil prices higher and higher, speculators look to the oil market as a place to make some decent gains. So they enter the oil market and make bullish bets. As investment increases and the dollar devalues further, prices move higher.
Now these speculators are getting bold. They’ve made good money in the oil markets and ramp up speculation… and you can see exactly where this is heading.
If it weren’t for Congress’ spending money like a bunch of irresponsible dolts, the value of the dollar may have never dropped by 40 percent and the price of oil would be much, much lower today.