So, change the tax code, and watch what happens.

Nope. The could certainly hold board meetings elsewhere. And, anybody, foreign or domestic, can own US patents.

There's no such a thing as "fair share." Your fair share is whatever the tax law says it is.

Apple employs thousands of people. Those people pay taxes on their paycheck, and Apple pays payroll taxes on those individuals. Apple pays property taxes. It collects and pays sales taxes. It generates revenue for the music industry, which pays taxes. It generates revenue for the movie industry, which pays taxes. It pays rent to hundreds of shopping centers where the Apple stores are located; they all pay taxes. It pays advertising agencies, who pay taxes. It pays for medical benefits for its employees, and those doctors pay taxes. Its cafeterias purchase millions of dollars worth of food every year. And, what's more, Apple makes products which make the lives of tens of millions of people better.

Here's what happens when you try to start imposing some sort of "You're an American Company; pay American taxes" argument: Apple re-incorporates off-shore; its US operations are shunted to a US subsidiary, who works under contract with the main off-shore company. In the end, it pays a lot less tax, but is now a Cayman Islands company.

And pretty soon you're talking about real money. My kids are going to have to pay back $3.4M + interest for this study. Stupid.

There's a problem with your premise: speculators can NOT decide not to sell until they can "Get a certain percent profit." If they hold on to it for too long, then they will have 100 tanker trucks showing up at their front door. So, they eventually have to sell whether they get a profit or not.

Plus, consider that speculators aren't doing anything there that the original oil suppliers can't do. If it were possible to make money by refusing to sell a futures contract until the price went to a specific level, then the original oil producers (who the speculators bought from) could do exactly the same thing.

I did look at the report and at the chart and at the supposed analysis, which is in that second link. Please find where they included global oil production data or global supply data -- here's a clue: they didn't. All they did was try to find a correlation b/w US domestic oil production and US gas prices, controlled for inflation, but not controlling for any of the other dozen variables.

True, if there's only one seller. But, there's more than one seller. Think about it this way: If sellers actually had the ability to keep oil prices high and make big profits, then why do oil prices ever fall? If you were a seller, wouldn't you keep profits high?

That's silly. A global increase in oil production will lower prices globally (compared to what they would have been absent the increase), both for Chinese Consumers and US Consumers. Sure, it may mean more Chinese Road Trips. But, it will also mean more US Road Trips, among other things.

This is not responsible reporting. Anything that increases global supply will cause prices to fall, if you hold everything else constant (i.e. compared to where they would have been if you had not increased global supply). Domestic drilling is intended to increase global supply. The problems with the article were (1) it didn't look at global supply -- only domestic production, and (2) it didn't hold everything else constant.

In general, no. Those aren't assets that banks are allowed to count as "capital" on their books. They may make loans to people for oil and gas wells, but they do not invest in futures contracts on commodities.

As I posted elsewhere, please spell this out, because it just doesn't make sense. How do speculators increase the price of oil? What are the mechanics involved? Recall that every time a speculator bets that the price will rise by buying a futures contract, somebody else is betting that the price will fall, by selling a futures contract.

Yup. A lot of that is determined by government taxes on gasoline -- US taxes, by world standards, are quite low. Local factors certainly affect gas prices.

Please spell it out: what are the mechanics of speculation driving up gas prices?

Speculators buy and sell futures contracts. Every time they buy a contract, they are betting that the price of oil will go up. But, whenever they buy, somebody else is selling, betting exactly the opposite - that prices will go down. And, recall that speculators eventually have to sell those future contracts (or have 100 tanker trucks pull up to their homes.) When they do, the price will be determined by the actual facts on the group -- how much demand is there, and how much oil is being produced at the time.

This is the problem when journalists with political agendas pretend to be statisticians. Oil is sold on a global market and goes to many different uses. You cannot look at one part of the supply and say "well, increasing this particular part of the supply didn't affect prices in this other particular market." There are too many other factors to consider: How much oil did other countries use? How much oil was diverted to purposes other than producing gasoline, such as plastics or heating oil? What happened to production in other areas? NONE of this is accounted for in this silly "analysis." Most telling? The analysis excluded the oil shocks of the early 1970's. Why? That was the clearest time that domestic gas prices (and supply) are driven largely by the global oil market. Yet, this analysis is being put into papers all across the US. For what purpose? Could it be to deflect criticism from the Presidents' drilling policies? When an analysis concludes "therefore, the basic laws of economics don't apply," then just like one that says "therefore, the law of gravity doesn't apply," our first instinct should be to question the analysis, not the basic laws.

desist/disist/ Verb: Cease; abstain.

testament/testmnt/ Noun: A person's will, esp. the part relating to personal property.

Law has a bunch of these things that come from using both the Norman and Saxon words for the same thing. Other examples: "Good and Chattels," "aid and abet," etc.... Yes, the meanings aren't precisely the same, but it's silly to use two words when the same meaning can be conveyed by just one.

Are you SURE you're an anonymous coward. :)