It is well-worth reading the underlying article. It would seem that this was in fact something of a "predator's ball" to quote Bruck. I think the article does lay out in quite clear and stark terms the question of a "predatory" vs. a political economy analysis of these kinds of activities particularly in looking towards "what is to be done... If one adopts a "predators" analysis which would seem obvious from the account which focuses specifically on the role of speculators in causing the localized starvation of the time, the question becomes where did the predators come from and what could possibly be done about them? Are they born predators as for example some people are born Swiss (or Hungarian) in which case perhaps some sort of genetic testing might be undertaken and once the marker had been identified they would then be set adrift on fast flowing rivers in reed baskets at birth? Are they made predators by their environment as for example living in high alpen regions (or in the salons of Budapest) in which case if we could eliminate the environment perhaps we could get rid of the problem. (I'll leave it to the military minded among us to work out the possible methods for such undertakings... Or perhaps predators (or "billionaires") aren't born or made but are rather somewhat ordinary if intelligent, calculating and amoral people who happen to find an opportunity provided to them by broken legislative/regulatory/taxation systems which they then take full advantage of to wreck their havoc. If the latter then perhaps through strengthening/fixing of the legisltative/regulatory/taxation system we might eliminate the enabling structures for their predation and reduce them to once again being simple folk exercising their amorality by haranguing other simple folk on email lists such as this one. Best to all, M -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michel Bauwens Sent: Tuesday, July 13, 2010 2:29 PM To: Peer-To-Peer Research List Cc: Paul B. Hartzog Subject: [p2p-research] food speculation
Dear Paul: though this has been reported in the news, here is the report outlining the link between hunger deaths and riots and financial specul ators. . I hope you can comment on it for our blog? Michel FOOD: HOW BANKSTERS STARVE THE POOREST PEOPLE The most sickening of this month's reports is about food and finance. Jayati Ghosh, a professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, has found that the dramatic rise and fall of world food prices in 2007-08 was largely a result of speculative activity in global commodity markets. At the height of the financial boom, he reports, so-called 'index investors' were thought to own 35 per cent of corn futures contracts, 42 per cent of soybean contracts and 64 per cent of wheat contracts. 'Cultivators and food consumers appear to have lost in this phase of extreme price instability', he writes; the only gainers from this process were 'financial intermediaries who were able to profit from rapidly changing prices'. Despite the recent fall in agricultural prices in world trade, food prices remain high and even continue to increase for vulnerable groups. Yuk. http://www.networkideas.org/working/dec2009/08_2009.pdf -- P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net Connect: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com; Discuss: http://listcultures.org/mailman/listinfo/p2presearch_listcultures.org Updates: http://del.icio.us/mbauwens; http://friendfeed.com/mbauwens; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens Think tank: http://www.asianforesightinstitute.org/index.php/eng/The-AFI
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