1. Speculation is fine, but the spreading of false or unsubstantiated rumors and phony predictions by those who seek to profit from them are abominations.

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2. Sen Roscoe Bartlett has been speaking about peak oil for years on the floor. Here is one speech on March 14, 2005 http://www.energybulletin.net/node/4733

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3. You are absolutely right about speculators, but dead wrong about things like the strategic petroleum reserve and deep water drilling. Any reputable source will tell you releasing oil from the SPR will do absolutely nothing to lower oil prices. It only has enough oil to supply the US for 33 days. It's a drop in the bucket. As for the outer Continental shelf, even if we could get oil from it tomorrow (which we can't) it would only add a minute amount of supply. Since oil is priced on the world market modest increases in US production would not do anything.

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4. You're not convinced that Peak OIl is real? This is why humanity deserves everything it has coming toward it... Peak Oil is not a bipartisan theory. It is a proven natural phenomenon that is very, very real. And the consequences are very, very dire. And as long as ignorant journalists like you continue to produce to masturabatory pieces of crap like this - the mindless sheep of America will continue to remain completely clueless to its existence and definition and continue to only care about who won "Dancing With The Stars" last night. Good for you America. And good for you mass media. I hope your Armageddon is a pleasant one...

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5. How's Ford ego now? Pretty good. but what has that to do with my question Aquariun? Are afraid to answer? Does the idea that Dems and libs might be responsibility to a large part for what happened on 9/11 and Iraq, because we were not energy independent. By the way, according to the latest independent quality surveys, Ford is as good as Toyota..

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6. Conservatives always rant about free markets working efficiently, until it doesn't, as in the current meltdown. Then they blame their follies on Democrats.

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7. "The "love" of money is the root of all evil." Greed is bad. Making a profit is not. Sometimes the line between is blurred. We don't have to wonder what people will do to get more money and power. Some won't be happy until there is no middle class left. Then we will be the United States of Feudalism.

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8. Goldberg writes that speculators "really don't care if the price of oil is high or low as long as they guessed correctly." And what if they don't guess correctly? Then we have investors with billions of dollars' worth of incentive to distort the true supply-and-demand price in an attempt to soften the failure of their guesses. This is an unfortunate effect of speculation. It does not mean that all speculation is inherently bad. But no one is really arguing that. The candidates are arguing that the negative effects of speculation are worse than the negative effects of government regulation of the securities market.

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9. Personally I hope gasoline prices go up to $20 a gallon, not because I like throwing money away, because it's the only way to ween us off the stuff. And the less I buy, the less money Saudi Arabia gets. That's a plus in my book.

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10. Once again Goldberg proves his ignorance on yet another matter. Of course, speculators would rather have the price go up than down. How many of them do you think are betting the price of oil is going to drop, Jonah?

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