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Alternative Market Briefing

Other Voices: A speculative attack – on blaming commodity speculators

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

From Sean Corrigan, Diapason Commodities Management: Those tempted to blame all the ills of the world on a sinister class of ‘speculators’ in commodity markets might first wish to consider the following questions before joining in the prevailing clamour.

Who was it who allowed stocks of many commodities to fall to secular low multiples of their usage?

Who has been responsible for the escalating price of coal, ocean freight, iron ore, steel, minor metals, silicon, sulphur, phosphates, sunflower oil and many other raw and semi-processed materials for which tradable markets are either insignificant in scale or actually non-existent?

Who caused the exceptionally bad harvests which occurred simultaneously in several major grain growing areas last year?

Who persuaded people to eat a wider range of foods as their wages rose, including more meat and dairy and hence put more of a burden on existing crop land?

Who banned GMO crops or otherwise denied the full benefits of the Green Revolution to large numbers of consumers?

Who paid the West’s more efficient farmers to forego full production in order to featherbed small scale farming?

Who passed laws requiring the use of biofuels instead of readily available and more efficient hydrocarbons and then restricted trade in the most efficient of these substitutes by erecting tariff walls and offering discriminatory tax-breaks to local products?

Who banned, limited, or ot......................

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