Speculators are driving up oil prices, no doubt about it. The Federal Reserve doesn't raise interest rates despite the continual weakening of our dollar. They say they don't want to shore up the dollar because they don't want to send the country into a recession, maybe even a depression. I've got news for them--while they wait for the numbers and their analysts to tell them the bad news, we regular folks already know this country's headed for a serious depression.

But the big question I have now is who is doing the speculating and on whose behalf?

Think about it. The banks, all members of the Federal Reserve, are close to failing, if not failing already due to the crash of the subprime mortgage market last year.

Right about the same time the bad news that the subprime mortgage market bubble had burst, oil prices took off like a rocket.

And the Fed does nothing to shore up the dollar, thus leaving oil prices and the American consumer to swing in the breeze.

Wouldn't it be funny to find out that Congress is allowing speculation, and thus the rise in the price of oil, to continue unabated, despite the so-called nine different bills introduced over the past few days to "curb" speculation, so that the failing member banks of the Federal Reserve have a chance to make back some, if not all, the money they lost in the subprime mortgage market crash?

The joke would be on us, the American consumer, wouldn't it?

Or would the joke turn out to be on Congress and the Federal Reserve, because once the American People discovered just how well they'd been screwed and by whom, there may very well be a severe backlash, say, in the form of a revolution.

As my ultra-conservative neighbor who works in the banking industry said a couple of days ago, "it might be time to have us another tea party."

My neighbor wasn't joking either.