"Poor Hillary. It must be tough trying to pass yourself off as a working-class, beer-drinking populist who refuses to kowtow to elite opinion or put her lot in with economists when, deep down, you're still that same solid middle-class kid who went to Ivy League schools, made partner at a corporate law firm, speculated in hog futures and real estate development, reveled at Renaissance Weekends, wonked up on health care, lived off millions of dollars in speaking fees and book advances, and hasn't pumped gas in decades.

Having just lived through seven years with a president who proudly ignored the advice of economists, scientists, military commanders and foreign policy experts, I'm not sure we can survive another.

Her proposal for a gas-tax holiday, ripped from John McCain's playbook, is so ill-conceived that she's managed, if only for a moment, to unify the entire economics profession in opposition. Nor is it the only example of her misguided populism. There's also her proposed moratorium on mortgage foreclosures and her threat to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement.

But here's the dirty little secret: Hillary Clinton is actually in favor of raising gasoline prices, not lowering them. That's right. And for that matter, so are McCain and Barack Obama. That's because all three would-be presidents support some version of a cap-and-trade system for carbon dioxide emissions to deal with the very real problem of global warming. As Peter Orszag, the head of the Congressional Budget Office, reminded the Senate Finance Committee the other day, any cap-and-trade system effectively imposes a carbon tax on businesses and households.

How that burden is distributed depends on how the program is designed, and how the proceeds from selling emission credits are used. But, based on Orszag's estimates, any plan that is likely to pass Congress is almost sure to raise gasoline prices and reduce the after-tax income of the average household.

That may well be a modest price that Americans are prepared to pay to help save the planet. But if a gas holiday is a bad idea, aren't there some other things that could be done to reverse or offset the ridiculous run-up in oil prices?

Actually, there are.

Hillary even hit upon one this week when she called for taking tough action against OPEC.

These days, people who want to be thought of as sophisticated aren't supposed to rail against the oil cartel, either because it is viewed as ineffective in controlling supply or because there's nothing legally that can be done about price fixing when it is done by sovereign governments. Both assumptions are false.

While OPEC may not be so good at controlling how much its members pump, particularly when supply is plentiful, it has been very effective in limiting the pace at which new capacity is developed. We were reminded of that reality only last month when the Saudi oil minister said his country would not go beyond the 11 percent increase in pumping capacity that it embarked on several years ago after decades of almost no growth. And in recent weeks several of his OPEC colleagues have acknowledged that as long as prices remain this high, they have no incentive to make the investments needed to dramatically increase supply.

Nor is it true that there is nothing to be done about this. While the Supreme Court has ruled that current price-fixing laws do not apply to foreign governments, there is nothing preventing Congress from changing the law -- or, as Hillary and others have suggested, challenging the legality of price fixing at the World Trade Organization. Short of that, the United States could deny visas to top officials from OPEC governments, prohibit U.S. oil and drilling companies from doing business with known price fixers, and make it more difficult for the sovereign wealth funds of price-fixing countries to make direct investments in the United States.

Such unilateral actions could aggravate our dear friends in the Gulf states, and in the short run shut off access to Middle East investment capital. But one should not underestimate how much Arab elites value the respect they are accorded and their access to our markets, our companies and our top officials. After a couple of years of being treated like political and economic pariahs, they might begin to realize that there will be a cost to their piggy price-fixing behavior.

At the same time, there's lots the government could do to let the air out of the speculative bubble that accounts for much of the recent run-up in oil prices.

A genuinely concerned president could hire a team of former Enron traders to manage the filling of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and give them the dual mandate of filling the reserve at the least possible cost while adding some "balance" to markets in which everyone seems to be leaning in the same direction. These guys were brilliant at manipulating markets to the benefit of themselves and their shareholders. Given the resources of the federal government, I bet they could work wonders on behalf of American consumers and taxpayers.

At the same time, Congress could close what is affectionately know as the Enron loophole and bring the massive market in commodities derivatives trading under the regulatory scrutiny of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Because of the hundreds of billions of dollars in investment capital that has poured in over the past two years, this unregulated, over-the-counter, shadow commodities market has overwhelmed the regulated market in real-world commodities futures. Reigning it in will have an immediate effect in reducing the speculative pressure on all commodity prices, particularly oil.

Of course, we don't have to rely solely on government to do something about price fixing and excessive speculation in oil markets. We can also take things into our own hands by setting aside a week every three months -- the week all the big oil companies announce their quarterly earnings -- to avoid the pumps altogether and use as little gasoline as possible.

Instead of driving, let's try walking, bicycling, car-pooling or taking public transportation for a week, or working from home some days. Yes, it will be inconvenient. Yes, it will involve sacrifice. But it will also be good for the environment and good for your pocketbook. It might also shave a dollar or two off the price of your next fill-up, even without a tax holiday.

Best of all, it will send a powerful message to OPEC, oil speculators and their free-riding friends in the oil industry that we're not going to take it anymore.

So mark your calendar for the week of July 27 through Aug. 2: Boycott the Pump! And don't forget to tell a friend." (Steven Pearlstein, The Washington Post, May 7, 2008)