Vampire Squid showing its blood funnel.

I’m sure GS has no worries today, Obama the “progressive” disappeared around midnight last night.

sure is puzzling that the end user corps haven’t bought the “commodities committee” that that Graham chaired that deregulated commodities. All they would have to do is reinstitute a rule that the bidders on commodities have to be capable of taking delivery of the product.

i suppose the answer to my question is that end-users of commodities can just pass through the increased prices so it hasn’t reached a critical point yet. and monsanto’s agriculture deptartment guarantees their profitability so … the “7 fat years” continue with no regard for the “7 lean years” underway.

If this is “God’s Work”, then maybe it’s time to raise a little Hell?

Thank you for a well written article Dan.

This is indeed a problem that needs to be addressed. While most Americans are not priced out of the food market, there are underdeveloped nations where tens of thousands are starving when they would otherwise be able to afford food were the prices not inflated by speculation.

Thanks for this! It should be Exhibit #1 when responses to climate change are considered. If Goldman can play commodities markets like this, to make money from food shortages, they’ll have a ball with cap-and-trade legislation. Let’s take the moneylenders out of the equation and pass fee-and-rebate legislation, not cap-and-trade, so that all of the money generated by carbon taxes comes back to consumers to offset their higher energy prices.

There is no reason in the world anybody should still be accepting on faith market fundamentalist claims such as that speculation could not be responsible for increasing food prices. But I for one do not understand how it is doing so, if it is.

The linked article in the Independent sort of hand-waves it in a paragraph toward the end, but doesn’t explain it. So if DSWright or any commenters can explain to me how Goldman Sachs is “driving the price of food up”, I would be appreciative.

My belief as of now is that food prices are generally rising because there is a growing human population, a larger portion of whom are demanding high-input foods like meat, living on a planet spiralling into climate chaos and general ecological exhaustion. Correspondingly, I view this sort of speculation as benign, by bankster standards.

There is little anyone could do to Goldman or its shock troops that would trouble me, including things that I suspect would make many here blanch. But understanding has value independent of one’s likes and dislikes. So I would be grateful for any illumination on this subject.

The bastinado would be a good starting place

Lloyd Blankfein is just doing “doing God’s work.”
Must be helping out with the plague of locusts.

For them? Or for me, for not-wanting-to-but-still-sort-of defending them above?

I guess that uncertainty is why I should be more circumspect in wishing blanch-worthy chastisement on others.

Fun to invest when risk is socialized and rewards are privatized.
Starving the masses is a good way to reduce the surplus population which is a nice side bonus.

Friends and colleagues. We should be fair. After all the business of banbks is to make money steal as much money as they can get away with.

Funny how nary a day goes by without some type of bank scandal, fraud, theft, abuse, collusions, conspiracy etc.

P.S. YOu don’t see the word “nary” very often anymore. I think it’s time to bring it back.

Nary an opportunity escapes ol’ Lloyd and his band of robbers.

After the Little People are bled white and have no disposable income, where are these rich fucks going to get their money?

You would think that enlightened self-interest would kick in and they would realize that their wealth is tied to that of the Little People. None for them; ergo, none for me. But no, short-term goals prevail. Even parasites don’t kill their host, instead they develop a symbiotic relationship.

Some parasites do kill their host and even at that you disparage parasites putting these contemptible bastards in the same group.
We could all live without them very easily but as you say they need us for everything that has to do with their lifestyles and persona/id.

After the Little People are bled white and have no disposable income, where are these rich fucks going to get their money?

More importantly, who is gonna clean their pool??????

this link might help give you a better understanding of the
current state of our commodities markets

http://hsgac.senate.gov/public/_files/052008Masters.pdf

links to this and other testimony before congress on this subject are available here under the GORY DETAILS section

http://www.rbobgambit.org/Home_Page.php

This link provides a crude estimation of the cost of commodities
speculation just in the WTI and Brent crude oil markets.

http://www.rbobgambit.org/Oil_Speculation_Premium.php

Correspondingly, I view this sort of speculation as benign, by bankster standards.

When you begin to realize the enormity of this problem I believe that you will change your mind concerning its benignity.

Can you say “commodity market manipulation”, that’s what I’ve been preaching about every since I came to FDL, but nobody’s listening. Go to this website

Go to this website http://wp.me/p2vRlu-4

Goldman Sachs simply provided the money, the enablers for this commodity market manipulation are on Capital Hill.

hear, hear

re “how does gold sacks drive up food prices” by (playing) the commodities market? basically, they outbid the bread, cereal, chicken corps on the price of grain they will need in future to make bread, cereal and feed chickens.

gold sacks sells when grain near or at harvest time. the price increases because the bread, cereal and chicken corps have to have the grain (that gold sacks got the contracts on by out-bidding them) to stay in business and can pass the higher costs to customers.

it may be easier to understand if the description was “future harvest of grain contracts” that gold sacks is outbidding the end-users of grain on. gold sacks holds the contracts until harvest which results in the cereal, bread and chicken corps bidding against each other for “gold sacks’ grain contracts” i.e. the harvest.

Food is just the most obscene “commodity” that the banksters play with in the “futures market.” gs bids against airlines and utilities for oil, milk vs. cheesemakers, steel vs. automakers, etc.

Michigan and Huron lakes are very low.

Funny how a firm like MF Gobal which actually was a lot of farmers and ranchers getting insurance against crop, harvest, etc failures see their money vanish when MF Global goes under (hint – we all know JP Morgan has it), but nobody goes to jail. And now, Goldman profits by crop failures. Sort of a naked short betting on famine – how classy.

I keep getting told that investment banks are necessary to enable the creation of real goods. Nothing was created, just a bunch of ultra wealthy people holding the rest of the world ransom for food.

Just think how much $$$ Men with Sacks of Gold ( AKA Goldman Sachs ) will make when things really heat up in a few yrs. and billions are starving.

Thank you very much for those links.

So far I’ve read the first one, the Senate testimony, and am not convinced. That was given during the 2008 oil bubble and there was tremendous demand for such stories, but I still see no answer as to how speculation in a commodity can raise prices in a sustained way (as opposed to a temporary bubble) without a system to restrict what actually comes to the end market.

“Benign” was a poor choice of words, sure to provoke here, and certainly Goldman could be screwing other players in the trading markets, but that’s different from engineering long-term price increases.

The financial crimes that have devastated so much are actually not hard to understand, yet I cannot see how this one is really supposed to work. Nor can most economists, such as Paul Krugman who explained as much in 2008.

I will continue to look at this question, but I suggest you do the same, with a more critical eye.

>Lloyd Blankfein is just doing “doing God’s work.”<

Yes, investing heavily in Israel and AIPAC, etc.