Speculation and food prices

[Parodite]

Want to stop banks gambling on food prices? Try closing the casino

Recent price spikes in global food commodities – most notably the bubbles of 2008 and 2010-11 – have exposed a fundamental fault of economic analysis: although speculation in the world's food supply has long been suspected, no one has been able to prove it. The world's most precious resources may have been transformed into a casino for high rollers such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, but it's nearly impossible to figure out who is betting how much.

[.....]

Another parasitic move by banks now literally feeding on other people's food. A Goldman Sachs trick mentioned on a TV docu (that made me post this) : buy so much volume without selling, that there is an artificial shortage that drives up the prices and the cashing-in can start. While people in poor countries depending on imported wheat (Tunesia for instance) get hungry....

Say no more.

A good comment below the article says it all IMHO, i.e. the first and on top by "cpp4ever":

All of which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the only way to stop speculation in food commodities is neither high-level debate nor regulation – how quaint and New Dealish – but criminalisation.

When the politicians are in the pocket of these very big money speculators do you really think anything is likely to change any time soon? Unfortunately it would appear that both supposed Democracy and Free Market Capitalism are failing the majority of people. How bad things have to get before anything changes is anyone's guess, but currently by the time that tipping point arrives things look like they will be a whole lot worse.

We are talking about criminals who pushed for, and benefit from, a type of "deregulation" not to empower free market capitalism and protect it from government, overregulation and criminality, but to enlarge the territory where other people can be robbed more effeciently and in much much greater volumes.

We need an AnonymousTrippleA group to get them down, exposed and in court. Fighting them only from the outside-in is a lost battle of course. We also need infiltrators, molls. Maybe a few people working in those Casino's can be bribed and become informants?!! And of course get those computernetworks alias "blackboxes" down where the trade happens.

[Enki]

Hoarding is already illegal.

What the world needs now, is snipers.

[YMix]

Not exactly about food prices:

An American tax exile living in the Cayman Islands has emerged as a winner from the chaos engulfing Greece, even as the political and economic turmoil in the beleaguered nation deepened yesterday, with Athens putting a senior judge in charge of an emergency government to lead it to fresh elections.

Kenneth Dart, the Michigan-born heir to a disposable cups fortune, was handed an estimated €400m (£320m) cheque from Greece this week, after successfully calling the country's bluff and refusing to take part in the restructuring of government debt that saved Greece from default in the spring.

[...]

After decamping from the US on his 220ft yacht, he settled in the Cayman Islands, where he is a powerful real estate developer. Dart Management, along with another vulture fund Elliott Associates, is likely to have picked up Greek debt at a fraction of its value in the hope of being able to force the country into paying some or all of what it owes. The two firms are still suing Argentina in the US courts to demand full payment of bonds on which that government defaulted in 2002. Mr Dart first came to international attention in this sphere by pocketing an estimated $600m from putting pressure on the Brazilian government after its default in 1993.

Yesterday, the company refused to comment on what it called market rumours. The Greek government, meanwhile, said Tuesday's payments did not set a precedent that meant it would divert any more of its precious bailout cash to the vulture funds in future.

The threat of a legal battle that could tie up funds earmarked for Greece from European bailout coffers adds another concern to that stoked by news that more than €1bn has been withdrawn from Greek banks in two days by savers fearing financial chaos if the country returns to the drachma.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/busin ... 58127.html

[Mr. Perfect]

[Enki]

Crop circles, like commodities bubbles are both caused by mischievous men. Very insightful to point that out.

[Mr. Perfect]

Indeed. And the explanations for said phenomenon... get out there.

[Parodite]

Indeed. And the explanations for said phenomenon... get out there.

Please educate us....before we end up in alien space ships and have democratic nano-chips implanted in our brains, never to see the light... ever... again.

[Mr. Perfect]

I guess you would like it all in 2-3 sentences as well?