Drunk Trader Raised Price Of Oil 1%

For evidence that commodities prices are subject to the whims of (often irresponsible) traders, I present you the following story from oilprice.com:

On June the 30th 2009 oil mysteriously jumped by more than $1.50 a barrel during the night, to reach its highest price in eight months, the kind of swing that is caused by a major geopolitical event. The amazing, true cause of this price spike has now been released by a Financial Services Authority investigation (FSA). Although not authorised to invest company cash in trades Steve Perkins, a long standing, senior broker at PVM Oil Futures, had managed to spend $520 million on oil futures contracts throughout the night. On the morning of the 30th an admin clerk called Mr Perkins to ask why he had bought 7 million barrels of crude during the night. Mr Perkins had no recollection of the transactions, and it turned out that he had made the trades during a “drunken blackout.”

One man, in a "drunken blackout", managed to raise the worldwide price of oil by 1%. I'm an advocate of free market capitalism, but I think its sufficient to say that when one man has the power to raise worldwide prices of anything during a drunken stupor (using other peoples' Fed-printed credit/dollars), there's a serious problem.