Several months ago, around July 2008 if my memory is correct, oil prices soared close to US$150 per barrel. Prior to that, OPEC announced in several instances that its member countries were raising oil production to cope up with increasing demand and therefore ease the price. However, its pronouncements did not really cause oil price to go down. In fact, the uptrend continued for several months until the financial meltdown.
Industry analysts claimed that OPEC did not really have control of the oil price at that time. While the demand was indeed high because of China and India’s economic expansion, speculative trading in the United States commodities market also contributed significantly to the soaring oil price. Conspiracy theorists pointed at the big US investment banks (some of which have already collapsed) as the ones controlling the price of crude oil. They said that these investment banks placed a lot of money on oil contracts trading, distorting its price and in the process enriching oil-exporting countries while causing misery on most parts of the world.
If the report about the US asking US$300 billion from some oil-rich Gulf States to rescue its troubled financial system is true, then is it the law of karma catching up to balance the system?
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