permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

Wondering why food (fuel and everything else) is becoming more 
expensive? Greedy creeps jacking up prices on everything they can get 
their hands on.

Be prepared, grow your own, be self sufficient and independent. Don't wait.

<>

How Goldman Sachs created the food crisis - Boing Boing
http://www.boingboing.net/2011/04/29/how-goldman-sachs-cr.html
How Goldman Sachs created the food crisis

Mark Frauenfelder at 1:17 PM Friday, Apr 29, 2011

Frederick Kaufman's piece for Foreign Policy examines how the Goldman 
Sachs Commodity Index (GSCI) is responsible for the increase in food 
prices.

    The boom in new speculative opportunities in global grain, edible 
oil, and livestock markets has created a vicious cycle. The more the 
price of food commodities increases, the more money pours into the 
sector, and the higher prices rise. Indeed, from 2003 to 2008, the 
volume of index fund speculation increased by 1,900 percent. "What we 
are experiencing is a demand shock coming from a new category of 
participant in the commodities futures markets," hedge fund Michael 
Masters testified before Congress in the midst of the 2008 food crisis.

    The result of Wall Street's venture into grain and feed and 
livestock has been a shock to the global food production and delivery 
system. Not only does the world's food supply have to contend with 
constricted supply and increased demand for real grain, but investment 
bankers have engineered an artificial upward pull on the price of grain 
futures. The result: Imaginary wheat dominates the price of real wheat, 
as speculators (traditionally one-fifth of the market) now outnumber 
bona-fide hedgers four-to-one.

    Today, bankers and traders sit at the top of the food chain -- the 
carnivores of the system, devouring everyone and everything below. Near 
the bottom toils the farmer. For him, the rising price of grain should 
have been a windfall, but speculation has also created spikes in 
everything the farmer must buy to grow his grain -- from seed to 
fertilizer to diesel fuel. At the very bottom lies the consumer. The 
average American, who spends roughly 8 to 12 percent of her weekly 
paycheck on food, did not immediately feel the crunch of rising costs. 
But for the roughly 2-billion people across the world who spend more 
than 50 percent of their income on food, the effects have been 
staggering: 250 million people joined the ranks of the hungry in 2008, 
bringing the total of the world's "food insecure" to a peak of 1 billion 
-- a number never seen before.

At least the Goldman Sachs vampires have plenty of money to buy guns to 
shoot starving peasants who will be trying to steal heirloom tomatoes 
from their manor gardens. Don't blame American appetites, rising oil 
prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall 
Street's at fault for the spiraling cost of food.