Oil futures were originally created to give heating oil dealers, gas retailers, aviation companies and other businesses a method of hedging against adverse price changes. Instead, they've become just another Wall Street plaything.
Shorts wager on price declines by selling shares that they have borrowed in the hope of buying them back at far lower prices.
For Randy Neugebauer, the Texas Republican who chairs the investigations subcommittee, the top sources of funding for his 2012 reelection campaign are from the insurance, banking, finance, securities and real estate industries.
If you think Wall Street has a short memory, you're dead wrong. No, the folks who work on Wall Street, regulate Wall Street - and, above all, invest in its wares, notably its hedge funds - don't have a bad memory. They don't have any memory at all.
At their worst, message boards can subject you to mindless braying or outright stock scams. But at their best, they provide meaty insights on just about every stock imaginable.
In the struggle against sexual discrimination on Wall Street, Pamela K. Martens is a latter-day Rosa Parks - a woman who, metaphorically speaking, refused to sit in the back of the bus.
