IER Statement on Obama “War Against Free Markets”

WASHINGTON D.C. — Daniel Kish, Senior Vice President of the Institute for Energy Research, released the following statement after President Obama’s announcement today that his administration will boost penalties for commodities traders and increase federal regulation of energy markets.

“The Obama administration is ever scrambling to cobble together a coherent energy policy to avoid fallout from the president’s three-year effort to raise the price of energy. Today, the president announced the next phase of his failed strategy, a war on free markets that deploys more federal regulators and partisan bureaucrats to control commodities trading in the United States. “The federal government already has every tool the American people need to protect them from private sector market manipulation. What they need now is more protection from the Obama administration and the policies that have caused energy prices to skyrocket. “When the president says he wants ‘more cops on the beat,’ he means he wants an army of energy czars and market regulators with limitless power and endless taxpayer funding to execute his war on fossil fuels. What he should be doing is sending ‘cops on the beat’ to find out who’s holding up the Keystone XL pipeline and a host of permits on federal lands that would give consumers access to reliable, affordable North American energy supplies.”

Institute for Energy Research——Bio and Archives

The Institute for Energy Research (IER) is a not-for-profit organization that conducts intensive research and analysis on the functions, operations, and government regulation of global energy markets. IER maintains that freely-functioning energy markets provide the most efficient and effective solutions to today’s global energy and environmental challenges and, as such, are critical to the well-being of individuals and society.