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When a private club that is too cozy with corporations make the rules on consumer protection, guess what happens? The National Conference on Weights and Measures met last week voted to just dump years' worth of proposals and plans to fix the "hot fuel" ripoff.  It reminded me of the old Soviet trick of removing purged bureaucrats from ceremonial photos.

Oil prices hit another record for the year today, at over $78 dollars for each 42-gallon barrel in futures markets. That's well over double the late 2008 low of 32 dollars a barrel. Here are the reasons given in various news stories: Dropping dollar, threats to Nigerian oil fields, a jump in U.S. industrial production, a drop in U.S. gasoline stocks. If that sounds like deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra would put it, you're right. And just like last year's pricing roller coaster, it doesn't add up.

Who knew that investment giant Goldman Sachs was in the oil business? I'm picturing top execs earning their tens-of-millions bonuses in hard hats and oil-streaked yellow overalls. The news is part of an otherwise depressing Wall Street Journal story on financial industry lobbying against regulations to cure the fever in energy markets that trashed the economy last year. But it's a Eureka! moment on loopholes.

Did you hear the one about how the Bush administration used the wrong calculations last year when it declared that it wasn't financial speculation causing the huge oil spike price?  It's one of many newsworthy punchlines of a strong new study that describes how government handed our energy markets over to corporate speculators, with economy-wrecking consequences--right up to destruction of the value of the dollar.

Oil Price Spike, As Exxon And Others' Profit Skids, Shows Potential For New Economy-Killing Energy Roller Coaster, Says Consumer Watchdog. Profit reports offer more proof that oil prices are disconnected from actual petroleum.

Last fall, the Bush administration said all that business with oil hitting $147 a barrel and gasoline at over $4.00 a gallon was just supply and demand at work. Today--big oops! The Obama administration, politely calling the report's data "deeply flawed," said it will issue a revised report in September saying speculation did indeed driver the wild price roller coaster. If tough regulation comes with the report, the roller coaster will be flattened, if not dismantled. And the "supply and demand" believers will be ever more in the category of the Flat-Earth Society.

Is it hot out? Well, so's your gasoline. You're losing a few cents a gallon each time you fill up at the pump. One senator is paying attention: Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri has reintroduced a bill that would gradually require gas stations to pump gallons that take temperature expansion into account, giving you the same amount of energy in every gallon. Her bill counters last week's cave-in by a group of state regulators, who punted the hot fuel issue under pressure from oil companies and gas station chains.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs is about to report an eye-popping profit increase, leaving the rest of the crippled economy in the dust. That should remind us of Goldman's key role in the energy-price bubble that brought us $4.11 a gallon gasoline last summer, and brought Goldman a black-gold rush of profits. It's a role that they are quietly repeating.

Watchdogs need to walk the walk as well as talk the talk. That's this watchdog's message to the chief federal watchdog of energy markets, Gary Gensler, who made news today by repeating some earlier pledges to get speculative oil markets under control. It'll take some guts on his part, if the Gordon Gekko-ish reaction of traders ("Speculation is good") is any indication.

Nothing changed in the real world today--economy still shrinking, gasoline consumption near 10-year lows. But speculators who doubled the price of crude oil and sent prices at the pump shooting up got some kind of extraterrestrial message today. The price of crude oil dropped about $2.50 a barrel, to around $67, and gasoline started inching downward a few pennies. Sigh of relief? Not yet.