Houston Chronicle – Billionaire investor George Soros told a Senate panel Tuesday that the run-up in oil prices has "some of the earmarks" of a bubble and that institutional investors stampeding into commodities are helping raise prices.
Appearing before the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, the famous hedge fund manager and supporter of liberal causes described the pension funds, university endowments and other large institutional investors pouring billions of dollars into commodity index funds as reminiscent of a craze to add insurance to portfolios that he said led to the stock market crash of 1987.
"In both cases," Soros said, "the institutions are piling in on one side of the market, and they have sufficient weight to unbalance it.
"If the trend were reversed and the institutions as a group headed for the exit as they did in 1987, there would be a crash."
