The CFTC is beginning to think so - after plenty of political pressure, the commission's now taking steps to increase regulation of the energy market. But how much of the rise in the oil price can really be blamed on speculation? This Fed letter discusses the outlook and predicts the price settling back to around $70 - certainly below $100 "absent supply disruptions" - it also discusses the impact of the falling dollar and rising inventories. Yves Smith doubts "the prevailing view that an price increase of nearly 50% in six months in crude oil prices is entirely a function of demand" here. Calculated Risk throws up its hands and complains about the lack of information coming out of the oil states on their real reserves (or lack thereof). In a related story, US journalist David Corn goes into the Phil Gramm story in more detail here, linking him not only to the subprime crisis but also to the deregulation of the US energy markets which gave Enron its chance to, er, shine in the 1990s. (His wife, incidentally, went from CFTC to Enron's board.)

The sign of doom in the restaurant business, apparently, is when your suppliers start asking for cash in advance. (According to Anthony Bourdain, anyway.) In that context, the Times has bad news for US airlines:

Sources within the airline industry indicate that credit is being denied to most of the leading American carriers and the practice is moving to Europe and Asia. So uncertain is the cash solvency of the industry that jet fuel suppliers insist on prepayments into special bank accounts... The need to put up money before delivery of fuel is a huge financial burden that has been shifted from the oil companies to the airlines. According to John Armbrust, a US jet fuel consultant, the oil industry had $5 billion (£2.5 billion) of jet fuel credit outstanding to airlines before the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Now they are demanding that airlines leave cash on deposit. "The airlines can't afford it. Traditionally, oil companies extended credit for 14 or 21 days and some as long as 30 days. Now, most American airlines are on prepay. South West is one of a few likely to still get credit."

And via Calculated Risk comes this (not airline-related):

Standard & Poor's Rating Services said Wednesday evening that it had slashed the ratings of 1,326 Alt-A residential mortgage-backed securities, after recent data is proving performance of Alt-A loans originated in 2006 and 2007 to be particularly problematic. The downgrades affect $33.95 billion in issuance value and affect Alt-A loan pools securitized in the first half of 2007 - roughly 14 percent of S&P's entire Alt-A universe in that timeframe. Perhaps more telling were an additional 567 other Alt-A classes put on negative credit watch by the ratings agency. A review of affected securities by Housing Wire found that all of the classes put on watch for a pending downgrade are currently rated AAA, suggesting that S&P's confidence in thin overcollateralization typical of most Alt-A deals is quickly waning.

Lots of attention, of course, on the FT's scoop about Moody's credit rating models.

Moody's awarded incorrect triple-A ratings to billions of dollars worth of a type of complex debt product due to a bug in its computer models, a Financial Times investigation has discovered. Internal Moody's documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in 2007 that products rated the previous year had received top-notch triple A ratings and that, after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four notches lower.

The Bear Stearns bailout was the Fed's worst mistake in a generation, Vincent Reinhardt, former Fed director of monetary affairs, said this week.