HMMM it's an oil kind of day - Investors' Growing Appetite for Oil Evades Market Limits. Loophole for Wall Street Speculators Is Driving Up Prices

Hedge funds and big Wall Street banks are taking advantage of loopholes in federal trading limits to buy massive amounts of oil contracts, according to a growing number of lawmakers and prominent investors, who blame the practice for helping to push oil prices to record highs.

The federal agency that oversees oil trading, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, has exempted these firms from rules that limit speculative buying, a prerogative traditionally reserved for airlines and trucking companies that need to lock in future fuel costs.

The CFTC has also waived regulations over the past decade on U.S. investors who trade commodities on some overseas markets, freeing those investors to accumulate large quantities of the future oil supply by making purchases on lightly regulated foreign exchanges.

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OK, as a good conservative I believe in open markets, but sometimes you just have to take a step back and re-examine. For one thing this article implies that not everyone gets these exemptions. If that's the case it's not really an open market. How much impact does that have on the market? Questions that need to be considered.