Oil to be released from Reserves

[opebo]

Does anyone expect this to do anything besides an initial (temporary) drop?  Saudi's are counter-balancing lost supply, so what will this achieve other than a short-term price drop?  

That's what it is supposed to do.

[opebo]

Yep. Good move.

Bad move.  It isn't going to do much economically, and it will look like a desperate effort to be seen as doing something, largely because that is exactly what it is.  I haven't seen anything this boneheaded politically in Presidential politics since McCain suspended his campaign briefly to do absolutely nothing about the CDO crisis.

One wonderful side affect of doing this occasionally and unpredictably is to punish the oil traders.  I'd like to see this done in all 'financial' markets - punish the traders.  Also high capital gains rates of 70% or so would put them in their place.