Today the airlines are calling for increased regulation of the futures markets especially in oil and gas by asking their customers to mail some canned letter to their congressman. The letter says something about how speculation is whats causing high prices yada yada yada. This is ironic because they themselves speculate all the time. Southwest was one of the most referred to examples of a company that hedges itself well from oil prices.
Besides that people tend to forget that if I'm a speculator I have to re-sale my futures contract. Why? Because an oil futures contract is a contract with an oil supplier to receive oil produced in the future at an agreed price today. That means that by the time a contract comes due an end user has to buy it, otherwise Mr. Speculator would have to take delivery for his oil.
It really is a great tool for airlines and such to reduce the volatility in their earnings and make long term budget decisions but to blame higher prices on speculators and not increased world demand is a pretty blind view.
Lastly I was pretty surprised to see pretty much all of the major airlines on the list. I would have expected a few who were better hedged than their peers to be pushing for higher oil costs. They then could have enjoyed their oil they hedged cheap while their competitors went out of business.
