Why food costs more (hedge funds)

[jpak]

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/printedition/story.html?id=efdba558-ad78-4c7f-8f97-467c75463b90

After steamrolling through a laundry list of base metals, then oil and gas, the global commodity boom is finally hitting us in the gut: at the supermarket checkout counter.

Canadians paid 3.8% more for food in April compared with a year earlier, including an extra 12.9% for fresh vegetables. The experts have coined a new term to describe the phenomenon. They call it agflation, and they blame the hedge funds.

The examples are everywhere. Global milk prices are rising at the fastest rate ever. Powdered milk, a key benchmark, has jumped 60% in six months to US$1.58 at the beginning of May. Since 2000, beef prices have jumped nearly 30% on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

We've all heard how China and India are pushing up demand for food products, and how the biofuels sector is gobbling up corn supply. But many observers say hedge funds are the biggest culprits behind food inflation.

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[no_hypocrisy]

1. Waiting for clean, fresh water to become a commodity fit for the hedge funds . . . .

[necso]

2. "Like many experts,

Mr. Gary believes the markets have become disconnected from the fundamentals as prices rocket through peaks and valleys that have little to do with supply and demand."

Speculation* in basic necessities (basic foodstuffs, water, shelter, etc) is especially pernicious. What do people turn-to when grains/fruits/veggies become more expensive (or more scarce) -- dirt? Food is not produced instantaneously; nor does it magically appear in the markets. Moreover, without alternatives (choice, competition -- and everything that these things require), there exists no possibility of the "free" market operating like the (paid, self-interested) shills say it (inevitably) does.

And hedge funds have the hallmarks of a huge disaster-in-the-making.

*: Here, using the power of money to make money -- without increasing production, productive capacity, efficiency, etc. The net result of such activity is that more wealth-on-paper is poured into the hands of the elite, increasing the percentage they hold of the total wealth-on-paper -- and, since we don't differentiate "dollars" made by creating real-wealth (things that hold value as something other then a medium of exchange (currency, currency-"equivalents": "money in the bank")/instruments valued primarily as being able to be exchanged for currency, and that might return interest, dividends, other income, or "value" gains) and by engendering paper-wealth, increasing the percentage the elite holds of the total real-wealth. (And decreasing the real/paper value ratio.)

Put another way: Joe Worker goes to work, labors hard, and makes maybe 50 or a 100 bucks a day; Joe Speculator goes to "work", gambles a little (generally with other people's money; and often "gambling" more against consumers -- who have no way to play the game -- than he does against other speculators: that would be risky), and "makes" two million dollars a day.

...

What? No slashes?

The slash is a useful, multi-faceted beast. It can replace an "and" or an "or"; a comma or semicolon. Moreover, it can leave the reader free to make his own (natural) associations between the slash-separated (connected) words, and the words these modify, etc.

Plus, it really helps to fudge a word-count. (Which is a somewhat cheesy gimmick, but one that helps ensure careful editing; a great and constant need in the particular case. Some things come easily; others only with great effort -- but enough effort can make the latter appear like the former.)

[Javaman]

3. simpler than that...

gas goes up, the price of food goes up.

Do we really need a long winded explanation?