Some viewer mail on Noel Sheppard’s “An Unconventional Fix for Fuel Prices“:

Noel Sheppard makes an excellent case for re-modernizing the CFMA of 2000 along with a sensible list of suggested improvements. Current regulations are certainly part of the explanation for the explosive price growth in each of the last 3 bubbles once word got around that there was easy money to be made in ___________. I wouldn’t expect that to eliminate future bubbles, however, because the world is awash in money looking for a safe and sure investment. Global economic growth has produced trillions of dollars looking for a good home. When those dollars meet up with computerized markets and programmed trading models this global pile of hot money races around the globe from traffic-jam to traffic-jam creating the bubbles we’re seeing wherever monetary and regulatory conditions allow. It’s kind of like the daily traffic jams at the Interstate 5, 405 and 110 interchanges in Los Angeles, where drivers race to the traffic jam so they can crawl in bumper-to-bumper traffic for the next ten miles. I think greater transparency and higher margin requirements for all would do some good. But as the traffic-jam analogy shows: even though everybody knows a traffic jam lies over the hill, nobody wants to slow down and let the guy behind get in line first. Consequently, the best solution may be for big brother to let the market punish the most greedy among us. All these efforts by our well-intentioned government to create soft-landings and avoid the inevitable slowdowns in the business cycle are just making things worse when the slowdown can’t be avoided any longer.