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There's nothing really new about fiddling futures. futures are just another derivative but they are actually useful when it's just producers and consumers buying and selling the contracts. Ah, but for people with money to come in and buy up buckets of the things to resell and buy and resell again to milk profit out of the system - well, that is what ran the price of oil up a couple of years ago leading to a world of hurt for average consumers - but there's worse:
gambling with food futures. This sort of inflation of food prices actually leads to malnourishment and starvation even when there isn't a real shortage.
I know it's not new. One of the worst famine years in Bangladesh happened in the same year as a bumper rice crop - but people starved because speculators had run the price of futures up betting that crops would be poor.
While we might shrug when third world countries get clobbered by cancerous economics aren't we supposed to be a bit more sophisticated? How come we allow this stuff to go on?
gambling with food futures. This sort of inflation of food prices actually leads to malnourishment and starvation even when there isn't a real shortage.
I know it's not new. One of the worst famine years in Bangladesh happened in the same year as a bumper rice crop - but people starved because speculators had run the price of futures up betting that crops would be poor.
While we might shrug when third world countries get clobbered by cancerous economics aren't we supposed to be a bit more sophisticated? How come we allow this stuff to go on?