Should Congress investigate why oil is nearing $70 in a recession?

Is it time for the U.S. Congress to systematically investigate the oil futures market?

Market absolutists cry no, but an oil price pushing $70 per barrel amid the worst U.S. recession since 1982, the first global recession since World War II, and 10-year-high inventory levels argue otherwise.

After hitting a record high of $147.27 per barrel during the leverage-fed investment and trading frenzy of 2008, the price of oil collapsed with the onset of the U.S. recession and then the implosion of the financial crisis, the latter of which took numerous hedge fund and investment fund oil futures buyers out of the market. Prices plummeted to a low around $35 in December 2008.