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There is a vast difference between what Enron did in California, and managing to have a big impact on a global commodity that trades on an enormous scale. It's like saying because a warlord managed to take over a small part of Afghanistan, he could then take over the world.
I haven't read the RR/joule debate, but to indicate energy markets cannot be manipulated is unwise.
That's not what I said, even in the post that you just responded to.
I mean no disrespect here. I follow your contributions avidly. But I disagree. California is something like the 10th largest economy in the world. The scale of market manipulation there was profound... and it went on for a long while. During which... it was denied by very experienced finance professionals.
In the recent Amaranth case, Bloomberg reported that Hunter (the trader) had purchased, in some cases, 20% of the market's available positions. Nymex NG, though not global, is not a small market either. My point is that the technology, the leverages and the access to many, many billions of $$$ does exist. My disagreement has nothing to do with gasoline going up or down, it has to do with your assertion that oil is too big a commodity to manipulate. Nate Hagens reminds us twice a week that's it's the marginal barrel that prices the market.
It would be interesting to know how Goldman-Sachs traded the market in the run-up to reducing that allocation <g>.
Of course this can backfire, as when the very good engineer and humanitarian Herbert Hoover tried to get reelected.