Back in March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which is charged with policing the nation’s commodity markets, said that energy speculation, including speculation in the oil markets, was at an all-time high. According to many analysts, rampant speculation was responsible for the 2008 spike in oil prices, while Goldman Sachs analysts calculated that speculation was adding $27 per barrel to the cost of oil just last month.

McClatchy today examined how much has changed in the oil market over the last few decades, and found that, in 1990, oil speculators made up less than one-third of the oil market, but are edging close to 70 percent of the market today:

A McClatchy review of two decades of data compiled by the CFTC documents the boom in speculative trading amid rising prices. In the 1990s, the ratio of speculative trades to trades made by commercial users of oil was tilted heavily toward users of crude. But from 1991 forward, the big financial players such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase won exemptions that freed them from limits on how much they could speculate in futures markets…Prior to the 1990s, speculators made up about 30 percent of the futures market. In the latest reporting period, the ratio on May 3 stood at 68 percent speculators to 32 percent users of oil. Meanwhile, the volume of total reported trades has grown five-fold since 1995, underscoring the impact of speculation on futures markets.

The upshot is that supply and demand has not governed the recent run-up in oil prices. Even ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson admitted as much last week, saying that purely supply and demand would suggest oil prices closer to $60 or $70 dollars per barrel.

As we’ve been documenting, the CFTC already has the authority to limit speculative positions in the oil market, due to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, but the agency keeps punting the implementation of those rules down the road. Senate Republicans blocked development of similar rules in July 2008. A poll released last week shows that 90 percent of Americans believe oil speculators deserve some blame for the recent increase in gas prices.

As of today, the United States has officially hit its legal borrowing limit, bumping into the statutory debt ceiling. The Treasury Department has some options at its disposal for delaying default, but those will be exhausted around August 2.

For months, Republicans have been claiming that they will refuse to raise the debt ceiling — and thus risk the widespread economic consequences of the U.S. eventually defaulting on its debt — unless several conditions are met, including cuts to Medicare and Social Security. In fact, some Republicans have said that they think that default wouldn’t be so bad. “The case has not been made that this is an absolute necessity,” said Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI).

However, Republicans poo-pooing the necessity of raising the debt ceiling might want to look to conservative icon Ronald Reagan. In 1983, Reagan warned that the consequences of failing to raise the nation’s borrowing limit “are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate”:

The full consequences of a default — or even the serious prospect of default — by the United States are impossible to predict and awesome to contemplate. Denigration of the full faith and credit of the United States would have substantial effects on the domestic financial markets and the value of the dollar in exchange markets. The Nation can ill afford to allow such a result. The risks, the costs, the disruptions, and the incalculable damage lead me to but one conclusion: the Senate must pass this legislation before the Congress adjourns.

In a 1987 radio address, Reagan also said, “Congress consistently brings the government to the edge of default before facing its responsibility. This brinksmanship threatens the holders of government bonds and those who rely on Social Security and veterans benefits. Interest rates would skyrocket, instability would occur in financial markets, and the Federal deficit would soar.”

Several key Republican leaders, including Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) have admitted that failing to raise the debt ceiling is simply not an option, with Boehner saying that it would be a “disaster,” while Ryan called it “unworkable.” But the GOP continues to play games, inching the U.S. ever closer to the scenario that Reagan explicitly warned against.