Manipulation of oil futures

[NeoConsSuck]

Is this possible? Maybe I'm paranoid of the 'Oil pResident' and his buddies, but the stock market has been getting crushed the past few weeks because of the price of oil futures. And as the market gets crushed, so do voter's 401ks. Which is making a lot of voters angry.

But if oil futures could be manipulated, and this is all planned, then one month before the election, fix oil futures to drop dramatically, stock market explodes, voter's 401ks rise dramatically, and bush is re-elected.

Anyone with any knowledge of the oil business who could provide any info?

[German-Lefty]

1. They can't manipulate supply

I've wondered about using market based manipulation like that but I don't think it'll work. The real problem is that consumption has been going up steadily while supply has not.

Check out the graphs here:
http://omrpublic.iea.org/
I like this site because it's a financial not political site.

The world is producing about 83 Mb/d and is expected to demand is supposed to increase beyond that in the next year. OPEC has turn about everything they've got on.

I think the real problem is kind of similar to outsourcing. If a guy in China or India can do compete for your job, he can also compete as a consumer. They've got this one graph showing a Chinese demand increase, even throughout our recession, when ours was going back.

So, I think the reason prices are high is natural.

I'm also not too sure Bushies have the power to manipulate oil prices that much. His Saudi friends do, but they're pulling all the stops out to keep prices down (maybe to help Bush).

Besides even if Karl Rove could decide the price of oil, it makes no sense for him to keep the price up, doing damage this whole time. It's not like 1 million jobs will just bounce back in October and people will say "thanks, I'll just forget about being unemployed for the last years".