I don't think that governments should permit speculation in raw materials, because they're what the economy basically needs.

The United States and Europe are in a state of debt deflation, where people and businesses have to pay banks instead of spending their income on goods and services. So markets shrink, sales and profits fall, and the stock market turns down.

People are putting their money into treasuries because they worry that the risk of putting their money into the bond market, the stock market or even the money markets is very high.

Trump's claims that he's making taxes more democratic for the people, but it actually is a vast sucking of income and wealth upward.

High prices can be the result of speculation, and maybe plunging prices can be attributed to the end of speculation, but low prices over time aren't caused by speculation. That's oversupply, mainly by Saudi Arabia flooding the market with low-priced oil to discourage rival oil producers, whether it's Russian oil or American fracking.

Actually, high housing prices don't help the economy. They raise the cost of living.

Economists often define their discipline as "the allocation of scarce resources among competing ends." But when resources or money really become scarce, economists call it a crisis and say that it's a question for politicians, not their own department.