In recent years, by hyping the so-called Chinese demand factor on the world oil market and driving up marketable surplus in an underhand manner, the US has managed to increase the generalized speculative trading volume to more than half of the total on NYME and turned profiteering into the dominant trend of investments.
One of the "symptoms" of this "epidemic" is that huge amounts of US pension funds and investment banks, driven by the need to avoid risks and increase value, have become little different from the traditional experts in speculation – the hedge funds – and frequently dive into the oil and other futures markets.
As the volume of speculative trading grows and the amplifying effect of rumor-mongering adds to it, any geopolitical stirring would cause a tsunami on the oil futures market. The speculative investment mania has reached such "unprecedented" severity that the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced not long ago it had begun extensive investigation into the suspected oil price-fixing activities on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Citing Japan's suspension of rice futures trading to prevent profiteering as an example, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi even suggested that international oil futures trading should also be suspended to contain rampant price hikes.
Lastly, the US and the EU acted on a whim to advocate bio-energy resources and misguided international energy investment.
Motivated purely by their own interests, the United States and the EU have pushed for the use of biofuel, but it failed to stabilize international oil price predictions and caused grain prices to soar worldwide instead.
