Regulating derivatives could lower price of food

Pollin: Unregulated speculation in food and oil is major factor in creating food and energy price bubbles

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp61WJOpboc

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Regulating
• derivatives
• price of food
• Pollin
• Unregulated
• speculation
• food
• oil
• major
• energy
• price
• bubble

[dangerouslytalented]

...... sometimes you need somebody to point out the fucking obvious.

[daleshankins]

I am victimized my own fear and greed. It seems that others may be as well. This places me (and others?) in a position of never being able to say "I have enough." I continue to want more in order to protect myself from feared future scarcity. Perhaps if I worked and shared more with others in my community rather than trying to accumulate enough to be "safe" I would find myself freed from this fear and greed.

[DavidAKZ]

@dangerouslytalented +1 . In an increasingly complex world, increasingly required

[DavidAKZ]

@daleshankins just remember 'Greed is Good'

[Nashoba07]

We have a Greed problem

[ytgv3fc7]

@daleshankins I agree very much with you. I think there's certainly more than one way to get there too, just not using the centralized and subsidized systems currently in place, or the "demand of rate of return" all-growth "investment" (gambling) that people keep trying to push (ponzi scheme generators)

[daleshankins]

@ytgv3fc7 I believe it is possible to balance individual freedom, achievement and ownership and the common good of all men. An accurate accounting of the costs and benefits of products and services would help us see that balance is necessary. "Wealth" that does not include social and environmental costs is an illusion. For example, if oil prices included all subsidies, expense of wars and spill cleanup costs, gas would be over $10/gal. This would make cleaner, sustainable alternatives viable.

[ytgv3fc7]

@blackiron60 absolutely. I'm so sick of the arses that argue "free" markets against me when what they really want is freedom from the law, freedom from morals, freedom from community, freedom to rape and murder for money and call it GOOD. Now and then one youtuber, maskedphrogg, will pop in and claim to have "beaten" me in arguments all the while NEVER proving his precious capitalism isn't the instrument of rape and murder, while I prove it is. So pathetic

[ytgv3fc7]

@daleshankins if enough people work together, two great things happen about "scarcity" : #1 stop making things become scarce to give them capitalistic value #2 stop making things scarce relative to needs of people by reducing demand to the limits of need AND reducing the number of people to what the land can support (this also mean no more making farms into parking lots or factory-farm bio-reactors for killer diseases into our water supplies and so on)

[blackiron60]

This is why, or more accurately one of many reasons why, all the brainwashed kids who worship the free market are such fucking idiots.

[deadeyedick1933]

@juliganp The spikes up in oil and food prices have been due to speculation, not a change in production cost. The final buyer of commodities in effect pays one fraction (~10% for corn in 2000) to the producer and another fraction to the speculator (usually connected to the grain cartel who owns the corn contract). So Cargill makes money by correctly predicting shortfalls or windfalls in production, and you pay that cost at the grocery store.

[deadeyedick1933]

@juliganp The 1936 Commodity Exchange Act put most commodities on regulated exchanges and limited the ability to use options (speculating without ownership). It basically fell apart in the 1970s due to loopholes, and was replaced with broader but weaker provisions. In my comment blow, FDR passed several laws to guarantee federal purchase of commodities at or near production price, which made heding unnecessary.