Wall Street Grain Hoarding Brings Farmers, Consumers Near Ruin

This is the same thing that's happening to the oil market. the utures traders are totally skewing the real price of things. It's as if some dude in St Jo Mo had his fantasy baseball ticket start controlling the outcomes of the MLB. Either there needs to be some type of heavy handed regulation on food and energy futures or they should simply be banned.
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original-bloomberg

Wall Street Grain Hoarding Brings Farmers, Consumers Near Ruin

By Jeff Wilson

April 28 (Bloomberg) -- As farmers confront mounting costs and riots erupt from Haiti to Egypt over food, Garry Niemeyer is paying the price for Wall Street's speculation in grain markets.

Commodity-index funds control a record 4.51 billion bushels of corn, wheat and soybeans through Chicago Board of Trade futures, equal to half the amount held in U.S. silos on March 1. The holdings jumped 29 percent in the past year as investors bought grain contracts seeking better returns than stocks or bonds. The buying sent crop prices and volatility to records and boosted the cost for growers and processors to manage risk.

Niemeyer, who farms 2,200 acres in Auburn, Illinois, won't use futures to protect the value of the crop he will harvest in October. With corn at $5.9075 a bushel, up from $3.88 last year, he says the contracts are too costly and risky. Investors want corn so much that last month they paid 55 cents a bushel more than grain handlers, the biggest premium since 1999.

``It's the best of times for somebody speculating on grain prices, but it's not the best of times for farmers,'' said Niemeyer, 59. ``The demand for futures exceeds the demand for cash grains.''

Commodity investors control more U.S. crops than ever before, competing with governments and consumers for dwindling food supplies. Demand is rising with population and income gains in Asia, while record energy costs boost biofuels consumption, sending grain inventories to the lowest levels in two decades.

Fund-Buying Gains

Index-fund investment in CBOT corn, soybeans and wheat has increased 66 percent to the equivalent of 902,105 futures contracts, a record, since January 2006, when the government began collecting the data. Each contract represents 5,000 bushels, about what Niemeyer reaps from every 22 acres of corn planted.

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complete article here

:spray:

I can't stop laughing today! Wall Street is breaking EVERYTHING, yet people will fight to the death to defend what they are doing.

Unreal.

The whole corrupt capitalistic system is imploding!

Wake up Sheeple!!!

The cat and the fiddle,
The peasants strung up to the moon
The little Pugs laughed to see such fun,
And the rich ran away with the (silver) spoon.

Congress sends Bush sixth extension of farm law

By AP: MARY CLARE JALONICK – 4 hours ago

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i440tH3TeSZXsKhDYs-GYMqnLhXAD90D1O1G8

Farm groups are not the only interests lobbying for the bill. Anti-hunger organizations are also pushing Congress to finish the legislation, as around two-thirds of the bill's cost would pay for food stamps and other nutrition programs. The legislation includes a more than $10 billion boost for nutrition.

Rising food costs have added to that urgency.

"I cannot overemphasize how important it is for our elected officials in Washington, including President Bush, to complete their work on the farm bill and bring hope to the 25 million Americans our network serves," said Vicki Escarra, president of America's Second Harvest — The Nation's Food Bank Network.

Is what future speculation IS. Gambling with our lives using "the market". It's all a game for the super rich.The "market" is a huge pyramid of gambling.


If you really believe that finance is not gambling, you do stupid things. You design insurance products that people don't want to buy, and you misprice them. You don't understand why stocks are so volatile, and you mismanage portfolios. You miss the point of commodity, currency, and fixed income markets..

The reason for using the word 'speculation' (or 'betting on an idea') is that when individuals carry out the act they do not have enough evidence available to prove whether they are right or wrong. This situation is in contrast to the gambling situation. The latter refers to situations that have been and can be repeated many times, and where the probabilities as well as the monetary gains and losses are the same for everybody and well known.

http://riskmarkets.blogspot.com/2006/06/poker-face-of-wall-street.html

Question is... Do you like the idea some rich fuck wad who has too much money and a slipshod character and too much time on his hands speculating about shit that doesn't exist and hasn't happened and betting your financial future on it? A rich fuck wad who has no clue you even exist ,but yet he can with a mouse click BET your life away for you? He might like the risks and stakes because it is barely impacting his fat wallet , but could YOU endure it if he loses the bet on the wrong prediction?? Most likely NOT.

I have no problem with the regular commodities market, but the futures market needs to be freakin shut down period. If it takes the UN or the IMF or whatever to do it then fine.

Not to family farmers.