What's causing the oil slide?
Oil is at $118 a barrel and falling, and might keep falling. So, what's going on? Nancy Marshall Genzer reports increased output and lowered U.S. demand has helped lower cost, but there's more to it.
An oil rig overlooking Taft, Calif. (David McNew/Getty Images)
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From austin, TX, 08/06/2008
Yesterday (tues.) at 5 pm ET the CFTC announced that they had revised the COMMITMENT OF TRADERS reports for July and re-classified 600,000 contracts as Speculative instead of Hedging. This means that 48% of the Nymex crude oil contracts for July were held by specs, an incredible percentage. I can send you the link to the Reuters story if you like.....no need to post this, just FYI in case you missed it....
From Columbus, OH, 08/05/2008
I think Market forces are causing the oil slide. Demand is dropping and many developing countries have cut back or eliminated subsidies for fuel. There was a commodity bubble and we're getting a correction. Speculation cannot hold prices up over the long term as there has to be someone to take delivery of the commodity at some point.
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