Oil, Oil Everywhere and Prices Are Still $55 A Barrell

There are a couple of quotes in this CBS Marketwatch story that are simply frightening.

What the analysts say is that despite good news on Friday on oil supply and inventory levels commodity brokers still drove up the price. Here is the best example.

"Now as the 'fear' over gasoline supplies is fading, the next 'fear' is heating oil," Kyle Cooper, energy analyst at Citigroup, told clients. "Middle distillate inventories in the U.S. are almost exactly equal to last year as of May 27, and they are 15.6 million barrels higher in Europe at the end of April. From fear to fear. Fact means little."

If facts are being ignored in the stock and commodity markets then Western civilization is in trouble.

What this situation makes me think that there is somebody behind the scene manipulating the market. Think ENRON and how it manipulated energy prices to the point wher the average Californian could not afford electricity.

What other reason could there be for brokers to ignore the obvious, stupidity perhaps. In which case we are still in trouble.