<h5>Congress: We Don't Need No Steenking Speculators</h5>

The WSJ’s ‘An Energy Sarbox’ describes an intrusion into the market that is grosser than the SEC’s favoritism to some institutional short sellers:

…Congress has begun to believe its own demagoguery.

Congress sez: "We'll drive our futures markets offshore. Those people are trading for ewww profit. Let them go to Dubai. Let's broadly expand the CFTC's powers and show these speculators who's boss."

Megan McCardle has more on the energy-trading legislation, which passed its first hurdle 94-0. I salute this commenter's pithy invective:

The legislation reads like an excerpt from a Soviet five-year plan for commodity futures.

And this one's:

How do you even compare the credibility of the two parties? It's like trying to compare the credibility of two 4 year olds when one says his dad is Superman and the other says his dad is a dinosaur.

And if the futures markets move to Dubai, we won't buy any oil! That'll show 'em!