I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

As Larry Ribstein cogently explains, Southwest Airlines has taken advantage of futures markets over the past several years to hedge its fuel costs (previous posts on Southwest’s hedging program are here). That hedging program has been one of the major factors in allowing Southwest to remain one of the only profitable U.S. airlines. Along the same lines, Bloomberg’s Matthew Lynn explains how such markets provide an essential function in re-directing resources in the overall economy.

Meanwhile, Congress is trying to hamstring the very markets (see also here) that provided Southwest and many other businesses with the platform on which they hedged fuel-cost and other business risk. The wealth and lower prices generated from those hedges is not inconsequential.

Finally, the Justice Department continues its advocacy of an effective life sentence for one of the men primarily responsible for developing the robust markets that facilitate Southwest and others’ wealth creation for shareholders and lower costs for customers.

And these folks in Congress and the Justice Department are supposed to be representing our interests?