Oil tops $70

Have those nasty speculators returned? Given still-sluggish demand, there's no market-related reason why crude prices should be increasing this much this fast. The role of speculators became a political lightening rod last year when the price of oil peaked at $147 a barrel before plummeting to $33. Putting aside conspiracy theories, what we know for sure is that fast-rising oil prices lead to fast-rising gas prices. The average price of regular is drifting closer and closer to $3 a gallon. Timing for all this is just lousy, what with the summer vacation season just getting under way. From AP:

"That everyday, in-your-face experience of seeing higher gas prices at the pump; that has quite an impact on people's psyche," said Tom Kloza, publisher and chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. "There's this feeling of 'here we go again' with what happened last year," Kloza said. "It hurts discretional spending. It leaves people to think about not taking those summer vacations."

Benchmark crude for July delivery jumped as high as $70.32 per barrel, the highest since October, before settling at $68.44.