President-elect Barack Obama is expected to name Mary L. Schapiro – a strong proponent of protections for individual investors – to head the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when his administration takes office next month, according to news media reports that began circulating last night (Wednesday).

Billionaire investor George Soros has told Congress that the oil market is “a bubble in the making.”

“You hear it everywhere in the press… ‘Oil is in a bubble and it’s all down to speculators driving up the price,’” says Garry White in his Garry Writes newsletter.

“But I’m telling you now, they are all wrong. The real driver of the price of oil is supply and demand. Long-oil speculation is not rising – it’s actually falling.