Comment re the high price of oil and food
Oil could reach $200 per barrel within six months.
Food prices have become so high that several nations are now threatened with famine.
The problem has nothing to do with supply and demand. It arose because the trading of oil and food is no longer regulated.
Let’s consider oil…
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is a financial futures regulator that protects consumers from price manipulation and excessive speculation. The CFTC could only function as long as energy futures were only traded on regulated exchanges within the United States, like the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).
Then we got wave after wave of deregulation through Clinton and Bush.
Now energy futures are no longer referred to as “energy futures,” even though they remain energy futures. Because of a name change, they are no longer traded only through regulated markets like the NYMEX. And with the Federal Reserve’s devaluation of the dollar, big traders (such as hedge funds, Goldman Sachs, etc) use their money to play the energy futures market, rather than invest in industry. Their greedy manipulation has caused oil prices to skyrocket, and the U.S. economy to plunge.
Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and other traders wanted deregulation so they could manipulate the market at the expense of consumers. These agents wrote the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, and got it passed during the final hours of the 106th Congress. (All legislation that benefits the rich is slipped through Congress in the dead of night.) “Modernization” meant energy futures were no longer to be called energy futures. Hence they were no longer to be regulated by the CFTC, and no longer to be traded only on the NYMEX.
Now energy futures are traded “over the counter” electronically, all over the world. It’s a global casino in which speculation has pushed oil prices to disastrous highs. The casino is owned by firms like Goldman Sachs, and the house always wins.
Likewise, deregulation of the global food market has caused the market to also become a casino (once again owned by firms like Goldman Sachs). Speculation in this casino has pushed food prices to disastrous highs.
Some farmers play in the global food casino. Others prefer the global energy casino, because it’s so hot. Hence more and more farmers grow ethanol corn instead of food. This has nothing to do with “energy independence.” Powerful farming interests grow ethanol corn so they can get rich in the casino.
Food has become like dice thrown onto a global crap table (owned by Goldman Sachs). More food is more dice, which allows more speculation. Hence, the more food we grow, the more people starve. Food does not nourish the body; it feeds the cancer.
Again, all this arose because rich and powerful interests got the deregulation they demanded.
No system in the universe can survive with deregulation. The orbit of planets is regulated by gravity. Traffic flow is regulated by stoplights. Weather is regulated by physics. Health is regulated by physiology. If there is no regulation, there is chaos and cancer.
Oil companies, hedge funds, futures markets, and firms like Goldman Sachs are now a cancer that threatens the entire planet. Their only function is to grow until the entire body is consumed.
“Free trade” agreements are also a cancer. They are designed to eliminate free trade. Rich and powerful interests use “free trade” agreements to get monopolies, and to eliminate regulations such as environmental protection laws, worker’s rights laws, etc. These interests will never let sanity return, so we’ll just have to live with the food / oil bubble until it bursts, at which point the global pain will surpass anything that mankind has felt before.
Hopefully we can start over in the ashes.
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Some of the above information was taken from an article that appeared at Rense.com
Uhh, so long as those ashes aren't radioactive.
"Why Muffy, you're face is absolutely glowing."
And
"Chip, that radiation burn wiped years off your face, old man!"
My post was extremely grim, so your wit is much needed and appreciated.
Excellent. :-)
If the damage from the cyclone in Myanmar is as extensive as early estimates, rice production of the Irawaddy delta will be very limited for several years due to salinity. This is a major rice bowl and WILL PUT PRESSURE ON WORLD GRAIN PRICES.
The opium crop, #2 in the world, will be largely unaffected. Note the rice stalk on the Burmese flag.