Forum Post: Top Ten Ways Americans are Getting Squeezed: Report Shows Wall Street Driving Up Food, Fuel Prices
Posted 12 years ago on Dec. 30, 2011, 6:46 p.m. EST by fucorporatemedia
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Why have grocery costs grown so high? Just normal inflation right? Think again. How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis Goldman Sachs and other bankers are gaming the system, driving the costs of commodities higher and higher with a derivative they made up just for this purpose “the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index”…just to make themselves more money.
In 1991, Goldman bankers came up with a new kind of investment product, a derivative that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat to be known henceforth as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI). For just under a decade, the GSCI remained a relatively static investment vehicle.
Then, in 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets. Bankers recognized a good system when they saw it, and dozens of speculative non-physical hedgers followed Goldman’s lead and joined the commodities index game, including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Pimco, JP Morgan Chase, AIG, Bear Stearns, and Lehman Brothers “You had people who had no clue what commodities were all about suddenly buying commodities,” an analyst from the United States Department of Agriculture told me.
In the first 55 days of 2008, speculators poured $55 billion into commodity markets, and by July, $318 billion was roiling the markets. Food inflation has remained steady since.
Hard red spring wheat, which usually trades in the $4 to $6 dollar range per 60-pound bushel, broke all previous records as the futures contract climbed into the teens and kept on going until it topped $25. And so, from 2005 to 2008, the worldwide price of food rose 80 percent — and has kept rising.
Why does it cost so much to fill the gas tank? Must be Peak Oil right?
How Koch Became An Oil Speculation Powerhouse From Inventing Oil Derivatives To Deregulating The Market – October 6, 1986: First oil derivative is introduced to Wall Street by traders at Koch. Koch Industries executive Lawrence Kitchen devised the “first ever oil-indexed price swap between Koch Industries and Chase Manhattan Bank. “Documents reveal that Koch is also participating in the unregulated derivatives markets as a financial player, buying and selling speculative products that are increasingly contributing to the skyrocketing price of oil.gas prices
Excessive energy speculation today is at its highest levels ever, and even Goldman Sachs now admits that at least $27 of the price of crude oil is a result from reckless speculation rather than market fundamentals of supply and demand. Many experts interviewed by ThinkProgress argue that the figure is far higher, and out of control speculation has doubled the current price of crude oil. “
- U.S. Oil Exports Reach Record Highs; That’s Right…Exports
Why are my heating bills so out of control? See above.
Why is there a “housing crisis”?
- Goldman Sachs on mortgage crisis: ‘Serious money’ to be made
- Goldman Sachs Misled Congress After Duping Clients Over CDOs … Goldman sold AAA bonds they knew were “sacks of shit”, then shorted the bonds. The bonds were MBS- mortage back securities, mortgages, thousands of family homes. The more people that lose their homes, the more money Goldman makes. GoldMansacks appears to be trying desperately to snatch the most evil company award from Monsanto, as if they’ll get a prize.
- The case against Goldman Sachs
- Banks That Created Fake Demand Made Financial Crisis Much Worse – A ProPublica analysis published this week examines the extent of the “fake demand” created by major banks that sold lucrative mortgage-backed securities, and how the institutions fueled the economic crisis with their self-dealing
The Great Looting: Homeowners, Pensioners Robbed by Wall Street; Congress MIA - There is no doubt, the ‘foreclosure crisis’ was an engineered fraud enabling the banksters to scam money on both sides of the equation. Related: New Banking Chairman says Washington is there “to serve the banks“.
Rep. wants foreclosure investigation to ignore robo-signer controversy.
They used predatory lending practices to encourage people to get loans they couldn’t afford. They even cold-called people to get them to refinance a house that was already paid in full. Now a few years later they are trying to snatch that house out from under the family that has lived there for generations. And they did it on purpose! This happened over and over again. Why? The “securitization of loans” deal that allow the banks to bundle the bad loans, intentionally mislabel them AAA, then sell them to pension funds and other duped investors. Millions have lost big money in their pension funds because these fraudsters blatantly stole their money and the government did nothing about it.
Why are my electricity rates going through the roof?
- The People vs. Oncor: The Smart Meter Rebellion – SMART Meters overcharged customers when the interior temperature reached 100 degrees . The meters may have overcharged each customer over time hundreds or thousands of dollars, but PG&E will only rebate customers $40.00.
- Oncor (Goldman Sachs) to start Rolling Blackouts Across Texas … Enron Anyone? A Goldman Sachs Oncor? How cute.
- Utility rates surging nationwide
- Buggy ‘smart meters‘ open door to power-grid botnet
- Experts say smart meters are vulnerable to hacking
False Scarcity- Where did all the money go?
Across Europe countries are going “bankrupt” and governments are pushing bailouts and “austerity” measures on their citizens, stealing their retirement, enacting pay cuts, service cuts, all so they can pay the banksters interest. How are all of these major countries going bankrupt at the same time? Where did all the money go? In fact, there is no money shortage- these countries aren’t bankrupt- the governments and banksters have pilferred the treasuries and are now blaming it on the populace.
For instance, here in America Senate Leader Bill Frist’s family business, Billion $$ behemoth Columbia Healthcare paid a $2 billion settlement for overcharging medicare… but nobody went to prison, and Columbia still has gov’t contracts. They stole our money, and got away with it.
Almost half the $14 trillion debt is owed to the Federal Reserve, which is a consortium of private banks- ie half of America’s debt is to the banksters that created the crisis in the first place.
This a worldwide brawl for the future of the planet. The worldwide 99% needs the US 99% to step up and fight.
Your house, food, gas, heat, health care, electricity, water- all of your major bills are being jacked by just a few of the 1%. Americans are being squeezed from every direction, deliberately. It truly is about The Fall of the Republic. That’s their goal here in America, where do you stand?
http://getsmartnews.com/news/243459
REPORT SHOWS WALL STREET DRIVING UP FOOD, FUEL PRICES http://www.bettermarkets.com/reform-news/new-better-markets-research-report-shows-wall-street-driving-food-fuel-prices
Better Markets today released a new research report showing speculative commodity trading pushed by Wall Street is causing market disruptions that have increased prices for American families and farmers.
The analysis reviews commodity markets data over the last 27 years and shows that, since 2005, so-called commodity index funds have triggered an upward price curve in the futures markets when they trade out of an expiring month contract and into a new future month (referred to as the “roll”). This has resulted in rising prices and costs as well as a boom-and-bust cycle by changing the incentives of producers and consumers of commodities. It also has sent misleading and non-fundamental price signals to the market, which have disrupted the futures and physical commodity markets.
“This research report analyzes commodity market activity for more than 25 years and specifically analyzed speculative commodity index fund trading,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of Better Markets. “This is the first study to directly isolate the impact of the speculative index fund roll trading. The data shows the trading those funds do every month has severely disrupted and dramatically changed those markets, causing food and fuel prices to increase, hedging costs for businesses to rise, and prices to swing erratically up and down, which also raises everyone’s costs.”
“When this research and data is considered with Better Markets’ prior research on speculation, the need to ban commodity index funds is overwhelming,” said Mr. Kelleher.
-Nice Post-
::::::::::::The Speculative Scrum Driving Up Food Prices::::::::::::
High-Frequency Traders and Momentum-Driven Hedge Funds Made it their Business to Speculate on Food in 2011.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/dec/20/speculative-scrum-driving-food-prices
-20 December 2011-
...."Prices have been way out of equilibrium in 2011," Bar-Yam told me. "The bubble has not burst yet."
According to Bar-Yam, the international thirst for biofuels has put a strain on arable land previously reserved for food production. At the same time as the rise of the biofuel mandate, the rise of investable commodity indexes and other electronically traded funds has offered investors of all stripes a chance to sink their cash in a sparkling new casino of derivative products. As a result, an ever-flowing spring of speculative capital sustains the status quo.
But just as food is no ordinary widget, speculation in commodity markets is not simply a matter of financial predation. "The high prices of food have resulted in accumulations of inventories at the same time as people can't afford food," said Bar-Yam, who noted that the Arab spring was triggered by the food-price bubble. In fact, Necsi's quantitative model of speculation predicted the uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and warned that if food prices remain inflated, riots and revolutions will go global sometime between July 2012 and August 2013.
"We are at a critical point," said Bar-Yam. "We don't have a stay-the-course option right now."
He believes the time has come for global regulators to step in and manage the global market. Their first task would be to guarantee transparency and make public information previously shrouded in secrecy – such as who holds the biggest stakes in global commodities. Transparent accounting practices would have made the disappearance of $1.2bn worth of customer money from the books of MF Global... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2071686/Jon-Corzine-apologises-MF-Global-clients-1-2-billion-money-remains-missing.html ...less a matter of sleight of hand and more a matter of international crime...
(((Read the -entire- article Here))) http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/dec/20/speculative-scrum-driving-food-prices
Bankers Hedgefunds and Sovereign Wealth Funds are Gambling on Hunger by Speculating on Food Supply
http://maxkeiser.com/2011/12/20/bankers-hedge-funds-and-sovereign-wealth-funds-are-gambling-on-hunger-by-speculating-on-food-supply/
-December 20, 2011-
The Food Crises: A Quantitative Model of Food Prices Including Speculators and Ethanol Conversion
http://necsi.edu/research/social/foodprices.html
D e b t C l o c k
http://www.usdebtclock.org/#
Thanks for the links!
Your welcome! I appreciate your post. I cannot post here on the forums myself. I have been banned from doing so. Seems I'm only allowed to respond on the threads. So I wait for posts like yours to pop up. -shruugs-
$707,568,901,000,000: How (And Why) Banks Increased Total Outstanding Derivatives By A Record $107 Trillion In 6 Months
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/707568901000000-how-and-why-banks-increased-total-outstanding-derivatives-record-107-trillion-6
-11/26/2011-
Food Prices Set to Rise Even More http://www.thedailysheeple.com/food-prices-set-to-rise-even-more-in-2012_122011
Excellent post!
Some stores are just ridiculously expensive, like CVS, even compared to Walgreens. Went in for rubber gloves, they only had 3-5 dollar kind. Ridiculous. Walgreens has 99 cent gloves, sometime they are two for a dollar. I am never going into a CVS again.
Great post. You must be aware of the now 650 trillion global credit default swap market that is gaming everything that could possibly be gamed. I remarked on another post, "How do you fight that kind of power?" if our own government won't do anything but sit on their thumbs? It would take a massive coordination effort on the part of the 99%, which is entirely possible, but we need alot of people with super organizational skills.
It would take a massive coordination effort on the part of the 99%, which is entirely possible
yes, and we must.
We owe it to the rest of the world who are suffering worse than we are.
I agree, we do owe the rest of the world our attention in the matter of this crisis. OWS should try to focus on educating the 99% and soliciting organizers nationwide to take up the cause to organize. I still am not sure if electing our own 99% to public office is possible, given the sad state of affairs with election fraud, via electronic voting. General strikes might be an option. National boycotts of multi nationals could work. But it's about getting organized to pull these actions off. OWS needs to stop talking about doing things, and just start doing. Target on mult national at a time. Anonymous seems good at doing this.
There is so much to do it is overwhelming.
I think it starts by taking back the media. Everything we do is fighting the big lies created by the corporate media.
If they were telling the truth about food prices and why they are so high, EVERYONE would be hitting the streets.
We must find a way to demand corporate media start telling the truth about what is really going on, why so many American's are broke. Surrounding the stations and demanding truth is the only way I can see. We cannot just let them go on with their lies 24/7. This whole mess of a democracy is all their fault.
One way to help ourselves is to plant a garden. We are still enjoying produce, mostly potatoes and carrots and apples too. We canned a lot and I recommend this to everyone to help put the cap on high food costs. Chickens, hogs, and a cow if you have the room.
Yes, starting to grow some of the food you consume is an excellent idea. My husband and I grow lots of produce in the summer and micro greens and sprouts in our green house over winter to sell locally. We are participating is the "locally grown" movement here in our community. If people have just a little land, they can start with that, it doesn't take much. If everyone did this it would make a huge difference, they'd feel healthier in mind and body.
No doubt about it. I don't have a green house, and our growing season can be short, depending on frost. This year we had an early frost, last year a very late one. How large is your greenhouse? We usually to a bit of trading with friends and neighbors too. "Hey Harry, I'll give you a mess of raspberries for a couple chickens, or how about some potatoes for some apples." It is fun too.
Dont forget how the 650 trillion goes into several quadrillion after hedged, derivatized and swapped again!
Yes, that's true. I can't tell you how many financial reports I've heard talking about the fact that no one, not even the bankers know, who is leveraged and for how much in the CDS market, what a joke. And the Feds should be charged with malfeasance for allowing this shit to continue unabated and allowing it to destroy millions of lives.
The destruction hasn't even begun yet...
Wait until they declare the big "bank holiday" and devalue currency by 40%.
Thats when it will get bad - very bad, the Great depression was never fixed. It was postponed , the Greatest Depression will be the worst thing in history for this nation.
A global jubilee is the only way out of this mess,
Yes, I'm afraid you're right and already we are beginning to see a very frightening pattern emerging from our useless government and that is they are letting people starve and die a slow death by decimating what little we have of a social safety net. The oligarchs are out of control pycho's and our political reps are just a notch below them.
Hi fucorp, Thank you for all your efforts on this post. Best Regards, Nevada
Here, you might find this article interesting.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032258_economic_collapse_2012.html
Thanks for posting this. I strongly believe right now, the elitists want to impoverish the 99%. The middle class will be no more and the poor will become poorer. They want to make as much money as possible off of us now.
Then, the game plan will change and there will be those who will be systematically starved (all in the name of population control). This will go on all around the world. Either the cost of food will be so high that people will die because they can no longer purchase food, or there will be deliberate "food shortages and famines." I am not a crazy conspiracy theorist, but with the b.s. that has been pulled off in this country already, I really put NOTHING pass these evil elitists. They are complete psychopaths.
Greed is a disease and should be treated like you would a cancer.
Take a look at this (when you are up to it). It's a heavy subject.
http://www.naturalnews.com/032258_economic_collapse_2012.html
I will, Thanks.
It IS a mental and spiritual disease - a full-blown PATHOLOGY.
I have become so convinced of that fact, that even though I find the ACTIONS of these sociopaths evil in the extreme, I see the PEOPLE or GROUPS committing these evil acts as too demented to be truly, consciously evil.
While I do NOT condone in any way, shape or form, their evil actions, I see these people or groups as doing evil in a state of clinical insanity. Many books have been written on corporations as "pathological entities". These corporations and their CEOs need 1 - to be stopped; 2 - to be jailed if they have committed criminal acts; 3 - to be forced to get treatment!
And we as a people need to to ask ourselves to what degree we may actually have bought into this collective "greed-is-good" madness...
I agree. People have been starving all over the world for a very long time but somehow this tragedy was so far removed from our world it was hard to grasp. Now we get it. Or as they say, until you experience something yourself, it's difficult to understand how it feels. Well, now there are lots of people right here in the US starving, kids, young adults, seniors. The one thing I can't understand is why there is not rioting in the streets?
Yes, we had it too good over here for so long, that it was hard for us to related to those starving around the world. Now we are beginning to understand.
I think that we will see rioting in the streets soon. I don't want to sound negative, but I think 2012 will be rough year. Just thinking of all those people that believe in that end of the world date (December 21,2012), makes me nervous. I think would see some people out there rioting. However, I really worry for Europe and America who are skating on some very thin ice. I wonder if there be a collapse of the Euro, followed by the U.S. dollar. This is constantly on my mind.
We can never fully know what the future has in store for us, but there are signs out there that we shouldn't ignore. I really don't like what I see going on. If the worst happens, you better believe that all hell will break loose. We will see rioting that will go on for days on end, followed by Marshall Law. I think we all need to prepare ourselves in case this becomes a reality. I am praying that it doesn't.
Yes I feel some bad times coming but I think everyone has to figure out personally how they can decouple themselves from the economy of the oligarchs, who don't give a shit about any of the 99%. It's going to be a huge shift but it has to happen if people are going to survive. If you can learn how to grow some food, barter if you can in your local community. The more small communities can set up their own economy that reflects the needs of the majority of that community the better chance they will have of a somewhat stable life. We have to rid ourselves of the bloodsucking 1%, we've given them too much power and now we have to get it back.
It might help if Uncle Sham would publish the real inflation numbers and not "adjust" them for political purposes.
What the hell is "core inflation" ex energy and food anyways? Sounds like bureaucratic BS to me.
Eckstein, Otto (1981), Core inflation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_inflation Pretty much bureaucratic BS. The point was to X the volatile components in the economy to better gauge the reality of inflation. I'm not sure how relevant this system can be in the age of cheap China imports.
It is the cost of everything going up, with exception of food and energy, even though those items esp. energy drives up cost of everything.
It basically means your dollar buys less now.
derivatives do not affect the price of the underlying commodity--derivatives "derive" their pricing from the prices of the underlying commodity--NOT the other way around. i am sorry but the notions set forth above and that are commonly reiterated are complete bunk. however, what is going on is COLLUSION among suppliers not to reduce prices to normal market supply/demand curves. ONE example: OPEC; another is Cargill, another would be farmer co-ops. It's price fixing, but it's hard to prove, and in the case of OPEC we allow it, because it's easier to have a strong relationship with 10 sheiks than entire nations--all posited on the theory that such arrangement promotes stability in the mid-east, which is what Israel wants. See how that worked out?
Yes derivatives do effect the underlying asset when they induce traders to manipulate the underlying prices of the asset to take advantage of the inordinate potential return derived from the derivative.
Such as Goldman-Sach writing mortgage derivatives that blocked together inordinate numbers of high risk and low quality mortgages with a few AAA mortgages that they sold to funds while at the same time shorting the derivatives themselves. And then pressuring banks to foreclose knowing that they would make out on shorting and on the principle that they would not have to return to the funds they sold the derivatives to.
The Justice Department has Goldman in court right now on this issue.
The entire mortgage market of America has been significantly and negatively changed by this manipulative derivative trading.
derivatives do not affect the price of the underlying asset, that is just false. i trade derivatives daily on stocks and commodities,,, and because i am not buying the underlying security or commodity, i do not affect it's price... the price of my derivative will move up or down based on the price of the underlying. it is my job to predict the direction of the underlying. yes, i could go rent out several supertankers, fill them with oil and not deliver that to market in an attempt to bump up oil prices to maximize a trade on oil futures, and that is done by some, but that action is not a derivative,,,, it's renting a tanker. the fact of purchasing or selling a derivative does not affect price.
anyone who purchases anything from Goldman, should do their homework, and understand what they're buying--it's the lazy and stupid investment managers at banks, sovereign wealth funds, etc... that purchased this crap. they should've known better. the "securitization" you mention was not a derivative--they were securities (underlyings), and yes separating the initiating lender from the holder of the debt, as securitization did, was a very bad idea with bad results. i know plenty who made a ton of money betting (with derivatives) that those underlying mortgages were crap... but their derivatives did not cause the security to crash, it crashed on its' own when people failed to pay!!
Tell that to the tens of millions of Americans who have had their home values depreciated by derivatives traders like you.
You are all criminals who expect the rest of us to believe your lies and predatory practices.
I am in the markets everyday and I know better than to believe your con game.
nobody who trades derivatives caused any home to depreciate, although they may have profited. i regret that so many people made foolish decisions and panic purchases of overpriced homes. the banks merely facilitated their poor decisions by supplying capital, and trusted they'd be paid back, no matter what--they've observed clearly that's not always the case. the securitizations, and derivatives traders didn't pull the trigger and tell people to mortgage 55% of all their future income (i.e., give it away to a bank) for 30 years. it's the buyer, always, who is responsible--just as the case of the investment managers buying that junk from goldman.... just as i am responsible for bad trades. i am not a liar nor a predator... i would say the buyers were fools....
Compartmentalization and denial. A sorry attempt to evade responsibility.
totally agree, do not trust anything else this poster says.
Kinda like the idea that Congress is inept...HAH! They are corrupt bastards that did it all on purpose.
Were they accidentally insider trading based on how they were going to vote too?
My point exactly. Were the mortgage lenders totally inept millions of times over when they did their due diligence on the mortgage buyers? Did they get it wrong 20-30 million times when they did financial analysis and credit worthiness tests of the low income buyers?
I think not. I strongly feel that the lenders knew exactly what they were doing and hoped the mortgages would fail so that they could take the people for every thing they could and then take the houses back too and get their principle back. Fuckin criminals. And the derivative writers knew this was happening throughout and raised the stakes with bundling of bad mortgages that they masked under good mortgages.
Take the whole industry out and shoot them all!
When they bet against their own derivatives, it became pretty fucking obvious they did it on purpose.
But the corporate media keeps on 'nothing was illegal'
Bullshit! We need to stop allowing them to lie on our public airwaves.
not responsible at all. blame the idiot buyer. when you buy.... you are at risk.... when you sell... you are not at risk (unless you gave a warranty).... i know they don't teach this in elementary school, but perhaps they should.
Great post. It's what I've been saying all along:
And I suspect your statement It truly is about The Fall of the Republic. That’s their goal here in America, is right on.
I think that about half of Congress is completely asleep to this possibility.
It can be difficult to come to grips with the concept that a significant portion of our elected officials are in fact deliberately pursuing policy that is self destructive - and they put it down to a cynical process that is cyclical - elections.
I think it's much much worse. I think it is deliberate sabotage of the nation.
Part of it I suspect goes to questions regarding how we will shape our energy future - we all know that at some point the oil will run out, necessitating change. What will that change look like?
Will we have a decentralized system of energy production?
Or will it be centralized, privatized, enslaving the masses even further?
and then there is the question of geo-engineering - who will pay for that? Who will control it?
the repelican party is nothing but a bunch of seditious, lying scum.
the repelican party is DONE
I agree with you. Ever since Reagan their goal has been to destroy our government. It's amazing we still have one at all. That's what all this "big government" BS is; it's a code word for democracy. They want to get rid of democracy. I've thought that for a long, long, time now.
sure - and they have gone after regulation from two directions - sabotaging it from the inside, with either bad regulation or no funding; while from without they point at the worst examples of that sabotage while claiming all regulation is a job killer.
and just look at what financial deregulation has gotten us - and they are not willing to consider backtracking in the least.
Those who will get shouted down, painted as clowns, and many get voted out of office.
the fukers
You said it!
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