It's the Oligopoly, Stupid!

As the Senate holds hearings to grill oil company executives on their obscene, windfall profits, no one mentions the actual reason why these windfall profits exist. The fact that they only needed to talk to executive from FIVE companies is the problem. Ever since Reagan, and the corporate cronies that controlled him, allowed the antitrust laws and regluations to be gutted and flooded the federal courts with "free-market" judges who think monopolies are just fine, the oil industry has been in an orgy of merger and consolidation. How difficult is it to control prices when you now have only 4 or 5 companies that control virtually the entire US oil and gas market? It's comical to listen to these hypocrits defend raising gas prices 24 cents in the hours after Katrina hit as a proper market response! Anyone with a basic knowledge of supply and demand knows that if the market is running properly, prices rise and fall according to market conditions. Why is it that gas prices are raised instantly everytime there is a remote threat to production like a hurricane 1,000 miles away from the Gulf, but weeks after prices haven't fallen back down? The polite terms are inperfect competition in an oligopoly. The plain reason is that a small number of people fix the price of oil and gas and have no fear of the White House or Republican controlled Congress doing anything about it. Senators complain that the oil companies should at least invest their profits in America. I say they already have. They spent millions on buying a president and vice-president.