There has been a slight decline in the price of oil in recent weeks resulting in a small drop in the price of gasoline. However, there is no guaranty that it will continue in any appreciable decline in price nor any guaranty that it will not spike again. Here in Connecticut the drop was only from $4.39 per gallon to $4.26 per gallon for regular as of yesterday. Most of it was due to a lack of demand by driver's that are closely monitoring their driving habits to maximize their expenditures for gasoline. There seems to be a shift to the use of scooters, mopeds and motorcycles in this area  rather than SUV's.

Yeah, gasoline is still available....at double the cost of a year ago... most of which economists attribute to unregulated speculation,  the weakness of the American dollar as well as increased demand in India and China. I am sure there are other factors too that figure into the equation. Does not look  like unregulated speculation has done much to control price stability in the past two years...to the point of where $2.00 per gallon of gasoline looks good.

It is true the the success of the economies of both India and China have contributed much to the increase in the demand and price of oil. With populations that size it is not surprising. In the case of China there has been discussion that China has kept the price of gasoline artificially low in an attempt to showcase the "New China'" at the Olympics, and that subsequently the price controls will be removed. The result would be that the citizenry of China will be faced with the same dilemma of higher prices at the pump.

No, I am not proposing price controls nor onerous taxes...simply a more structured manner in which speculation is conducted. The legislation is still in the fact finding and discussion stage. Nothing is cast in stone yet. One of the ideas being considered is to make speculation in the oil futures less attractive to the small investor. The preliminary  information seems to indicate that the rise in oil prices has become attractive to estate planners and managers of retirement accounts/401K plans thus driving up the price. One proposal I have heard is to require investors in these commodities to actually take possession of the oil when they invest in the commodity.