Think Progress has a short piece up quoting from billionaire Wilbur Ross about how speculation in oil is hurting the economy. An excerpt:

Speculators drove up the price of petroleum, wounding the United States economy, billionaire investor Wilbur Ross charged today. Ross, an investor in domestic manufacturing, said the rise in the price of oil had been “hurtful” to gross domestic product growth. Fueled by unregulated, unrestrained speculators, the oil markets have surged from $35 a barrel in 2009 to $114 earlier this year, and have now slid to $82. That volatility — driven not by supply and demand but by hedge funds and profiteers — has crippled the economic recovery. In an interview on NPR, Ross said each $10 swing in the price of a barrel of oil is “probably worth one or two-tenths of a percent in gross domestic product growth”

An “investor in domestic manufacturing.” Is that what we’re calling coal mining these days? I’ll go with that phrasing since TP is OK with it.

And after quoting from Ross on how speculation in the oil markets was hurting America’s GDP, TP finishes with this:

As much as $50 of the $114 price of oil may be due to speculators, costing as much as a full percentage point of GDP growth. Furthermore, any domestic profits gleaned from expensive oil went almost entirely to the oil traders like Goldman Sachs and the Koch brothers, while working Americans suffered from high fuel costs.

So, TP wants to lower oil prices to help the economy? Sign me up!