This coming week, the Senate is scheduled to debate S. 3268, The Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008. It’s intended to prevent excessive price speculation in energy commodities like oil and natural gas, hoping that this would bring prices down. The debate has already begun on WashingtonWatch.com

One commenter on the bill makes the case against:

Speculation helps moderate supply and demand. Speculators, hoping for higher prices at a later date purchase present supplies. This increases the current price and slows current consumption. Later, if the speculator is correct, this prevents shortages and even higher prices. If the speculator is wrong, he loses big bucks and the future price will decline.

Commenter the second says:

This bill is not against all speculation, just the speculation that has no intention of using the product. The speculators having no interest in using the product are ripping everyone off by abusing loopholes in the system. If this bill does what they say, it should restrict speculation and hedging to the ones with a true physical interest in the product. The public should see immediate results.

Now, the second commenter also throws a link to a Web site called Stop Oil Speculation Now. That’s a campaign put together by a bunch of energy-using companies. So maybe commenter number two is just working for that campaign.

In this battle royal of trading policy experts, who comes up short? Who’s got nothing but smoke and mirrors? Judge for yourself. I have my own opinion, but I don’t want to force it down your throat, so I have cleverly concealed the identity of the loser somewhere on this page. (RSS reader? You may have to click.) Search around and you might learn who’s the weak link in this debate.

Here’s the latest voting on S. 3268, The Stop Excessive Energy Speculation Act of 2008. Click to vote, comment, learn more, or edit the wiki article about the bill: