I have not heard enough yet either on exactly where congress plans on going with this.  I read some of the testimony of Michael Master of Masters Capital Management.  He mentioned that assets allocated to commodity index trading strategies rose from $13 billion at the end of 2003 to a recent $260 billion.  He suggested curtailing swaps trading and reclassifying some positions to distinguish between legitimate physical hedgers and speculators.

The airline CEOs noted that twenty years ago, 21% of oil futures contracts were purchased by speculators trading on paper with no intention of taking delivery, and now purchase 66% of all future contracts.

The testimony from farmer's groups was pretty sad, one suggesting that the massive influx of money has rendered the market "ineffective for hedging against price risks and discovering prices".

We of course need speculators in the commodities markets for liquidity.  However, it seems the volume of speculation is hurting the intended beneficiaries of the future market, the farmers, granaries, processors, the oil producers, distributors and end users.  Hedging is darn good insurance for everyone involved.  It seemed from the testimony I read, only the Commodity Futures Trading Commission thinks everything is ok as is.  I am hopeful that this will be one of those too rare instances where congress will find a bipartisan solution.  Ignoring for the moment the negative impact the volume of speculation is having on the consumer, there are a lot of interested parties that depend on the futures market that are being hurt.