The conspiracy theorist’s natural inclination is to answer “Yes!” In their mental/emotional world, bad things are caused by powerful, evil people acting behind the scenes. Speculators fit this profile perfectly.

For a different perspective, see the June 13 New York Times story on speculators. It cites “people with years of knowledge about how commodity markets work” as saying that “without speculators these markets do not work at all.”

Farmers, miners, oil producers and others involved in producing or consuming commodities – such as food and oil – use futures contracts (a contract to buy or sell commodities at a specified price at a certain time in the future) to decrease uncertainty about the price for which they will eventually sell their production or, if they are consumers, buy it. Without futures markets, there would be much more uncertainty about future prices. This would likely scare some producers away. And if the supply of a commodity goes down, its price goes up. So, future markets make costs lower than they would be otherwise.

Speculators pour additional money into these markets, making them larger and, experts say, less volatile. They argue this makes likely lower, not higher, prices.

If speculators are not the “bad guys,” who are? The article cites several factors causing higher food and oil prices:

• High-growth economies in China and India
• Bad weather
• Increased demand for corn-based ethanol, which drives up corn prices
• The weakening U.S. dollar, which drives up the cost of commodities, such as oil, that are priced in dollars.

In other words, increased demand and decreased supply drive up prices. That’s economics 101.

Unfortunately, complex, abstract causes don’t fit with the very human need to find a villain when things go wrong. So, conspiracy theories, which meet this need, multiply.