I am curious how many times a barrel of petroleum is sold from the time it leaves the oil field to the time it arrives at the refinery and how many times it is sold from when it leaves the refinery until it arrives at the filling station pump. I am also wondering how many of those sales are necessary for getting petroleum from the field to the consumer and how many of those sales are contrived to profit an unnecessary "middle man". It was those unnecessary middle sales that undid the housing industry.

The law of supply and demand makes sense. When it works as it should business adjusts and consumers adjust. When supply is manipulated out of greed or whatever reason the economic system is put in jeopardy.