I'M NOW A LITTLE LESS PUZZLED

Remember how the price of a barrel of oil shot up without regard to the fundamentals of supply and demand? Of course speculators were involved and JERRY REMMERS at the Moderate Voice found a 60 Minutes report that places some of the blame on our buddies the Wall Street investment banks. Here's a little more evidence that the Free Market Fairy doesn't exist:

A recent report out of MIT, analyzing world oil production and consumption, also concluded that the basic fundamentals of supply and demand could not have been responsible for last year's run-up in oil prices. And Michael Masters says the U.S. Department of Energy's own statistics show that if the markets had been working properly, the price of oil should have been going down, not up.

"From quarter four of '07 until the second quarter of '08 the EIA, the Energy Information Administration, said that supply went up, worldwide supply went up. And worldwide demand went down. So you have supply going up and demand going down, which generally means the price is going down," Masters told Kroft.

"And this was the period of the spike," Kroft noted.

"This was the period of the spike," Masters agreed. "So you had the largest price increase in history during a time when actual demand was going down and actual supply was going up during the same period. However, the only thing that makes sense that lifted the price was investor demand."

This scam would not surprise Adam Smith, who warned us the those who deal solely in profit may work to the detriment of society as a whole.