That's one of those debatable areas. Does speculation really cause crude prices to rise higher than they should? You can put the shoe on the other foot. Speculation caused crude prices to fall precipitously in 2008, when the world economy started tanking, and those very same speculators were actually betting on the downside. There's no question that this increases the volatility of crude oil prices. Does that actually translate into higher wholesale prices? Yes, if those futures prices are sustained over a period of time. When you see the speculation go up and down on a day-to-day basis, we don't see the pump price going up and down on a day-to-day basis as well because refiners don't buy today's NYMEX price. They buy the spot price, basically. So there's a relationship, but not as strong as one would think.
