Posts tagged speculation

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Posted 1 year ago

Banks Are to Blame for Rising Food Costs

mediafreakgodicon:

What’s behind the spiraling cost of food? It’s not just oil and the burgeoning appetites of Americans.

As Frederick Kaufman, the author of A Short History of the American Stomach explains in an article in this month’s Foreign Policy, titled “How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis”:

Since the bursting of the tech bubble in 2000, there has been a 50-fold increase in dollars invested in commodity index funds. To put the phenomenon in real terms: In 2003, the commodities futures market still totaled a sleepy $13 billion. But when the global financial crisis sent investors running scared in early 2008, and as dollars, pounds, and euros evaded investor confidence, commodities—including food—seemed like the last, best place for hedge, pension, and sovereign wealth funds to park their cash. “You had people who had no clue what commodities were all about suddenly buying commodities,” an analyst from the United States Department of Agriculture told me. In the first 55 days of 2008, speculators poured $55 billion into commodity markets, and by July, $318 billion was roiling the markets. Food inflation has remained steady since.

While rampant speculation by bankers in commodity index funds might sound lands away from your next meal, Kaufman writes in an earlier article for Harper’s (subscription req’d):

The worldwide price of food had risen by 80 percent between 2005 and 2008, and unlike other food catastrophes of the past half century or so, the United States was not insulated from this one, as 49 million Americans found themselves unable to put a full meal on the table. Across the country demand for food stamps reached an all-time high, and one in five kids came to depend on food kitchens. In Los Angeles nearly a million people went hungry.

And it’s inevitably going to get worse as the world reaches 10 billion. Time for bankers face the hard truth to their complicity.

Illustration: Tim Bower/Harper’s

via mediafreakgodicon
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Posted 1 year ago

What is Time Banking All About

I think organizing something like this on a broader scale might be an interesting example of a post-capitalist paradigm. Potentially, it could take the form of a network of worker cooperatives where people can volunteer their extra time and then spend it on things that they want. For example, a skilled member of a furniture/woodworking cooperative could put in an extra hour or two and then exchange those hours for beer from a brewing cooperative. I think the political goal of the four-hour day dovetails nicely with this. Putting in 20 hours a week (or preferably, 16) at a local cooperative gets you all the basic necessities of life- food, water, shelter, medical care, education. If you want more, then nothing apart from the constraints of your time prevents you from working more. A system like this allows for workaholics to get their fix, and can serve as a nice counterexample to those who claim that anti-capitalists are lazy and their proposed economic systems incentivize a lack of a work ethic.

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Posted 1 year ago
opinions?

Turkey entering EU? yeah ok.

my quick rant: lets talk about things that i think will NEVER happen. i believe turkey would become the only country to enter the EU that is not christian. thats number 1. number 2, we have the fact that it is extremely easy to enter Turkey, get a visa etc. 3. it is a direct link to the east. 4. cultural differences 5. the most powerful countries in the EU, or bilaterally connected to the EU, dont particularly like the east. (Switzerland, Germany etc.). 6. Turkey is still occupying like.. half of cyprus - cyprus is in the EU. do you really think one country occupying another one in the EU is going to be let in? 7. turkey has an extremely large population:

The population of Turkey stood at 72.5 million with a growth rate of 1.45% per annum, based on the 2009 census - wikipedia

The combined population of all 27 member states has been forecast at 501,259,840 as of January 2010.[9][5] - regarding the EU - wikipedia

Turkey will increase the population of the EU by almost 4/25. that is huge when you take into account all of the differences listed above.

the ONLY way turkey would be let in, would be for the overall financial gain of the the EU. after romania and bulgaria, the Euro tanked. combined with spain, greece and italy’s woes, the EU is getting spanked. So.. after letting in weak countries, we now have the possibility of Turkey, with its booming economy of:

GDP (PPP)2009 estimate - Total$880.061 billion[2] - Per capita$12,476.449[2] GDP (nominal)2009 estimate - Total$615.329 billion[2] - Per capita$8,723.406

i think we have proof that, should turkey join and adopt the euro, the EU’s economy should bounce back nicely. so now we have to ask, will the EU with its federalism, adjust itself culturally and racially, to fix their economy?

finally, is it really a sustainable business practice to a) keep with federalism, b) keep annexing willing countries to fix your organization?
ommegang asked

Capital, being inherently expansionary, will work its way across borders and cultural boundaries. So I think that you’re right in that Turkey is becoming more of a contender for EU membership, but it will ultimately only happen if Turkey neoliberalizes its economy and allows European capital into its borders- at least with the present arrangement of EU policy. Naturally, that will probably mean great things for the Turkish economy, but bad things for the Turkish people. 

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Posted 2 years ago
When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done.
John Maynard Keynes
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Posted 2 years ago

Wall Street Pursues Profit in Bundles of Life Insurance

The bankers plan to buy “life settlements,” life insurance policies that ill and elderly people sell for cash — $400,000 for a $1 million policy, say, depending on the life expectancy of the insured person. Then they plan to “securitize” these policies, in Wall Street jargon, by packaging hundreds or thousands together into bonds. They will then resell those bonds to investors, like big pension funds, who will receive the payouts when people with the insurance die.

The earlier the policyholder dies, the bigger the return — though if people live longer than expected, investors could get poor returns or even lose money.

The investors have finally figured out how to securitize death. In its late stages, capitalism shows everyone its true face.