Goldman Sachs Denies links with global Food Crises

[bobbyw24]

Goldman Sachs has angrily defended itself against a public campaign that claims the bank is exacerbating global food crises through its commodity trading operations.

The Wall Street bank has dismissed as "disingenuous and downright misleading" the conclusions by the World Development Movement that its activities have led to increased food prices, food riots, and poverty around the world.

The WDM, a London-based non-governmental organisation, on Monday started an on-line campaign to persuade the public to report Goldman to the Financial Services Authority (FSA) as the biggest bank allegedly distorting commodities markets.

The organisers said they want to put pressure on authorities to limit the ability of banks and hedge funds to trade in commodity futures.

The move came as Armajaro, a hedge fund run by Anthony Ward, was accused of cornering the cocoa market and pushing up prices after buying £650m, or 240,000 tonnes, of cocoa beans.

The campaign follows the publication of a report by the WDM called The Great Hunger Lottery: how banking speculation causes food crises, in which the lobby group accuses banks and hedge funds of "gambling on hunger." The report concludes that commodity trading is "dangerous, immoral and indefensible."

The money flowing into commodity index funds and commodity derivatives soared from $46bn in 2005 to $250bn in March 2008, according to the report. The authors claim that the flood of cash pushed up food prices across the world, particularly impacting developing countries. The high price of staple foods provoked a wave of riots in cities across the world during 2007 and 2008.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/7899210/Goldman-denies-links-with-global-food-crises.html

[Brian4Liberty]

Food as a Wall St. commodity does pose some moral dilemmas. Is Goldman Sachs making money on food commodities? Where does that money come from? It either comes from squeezing the farmer or squeezing the consumer. No doubt Goldman Sachs profits come from both. (And yes, this is in addition to the damage that we know that inflation and the Fed inflicts on the process)

Two models:

Farmer -> Market -> Market -> Consumer (assumes some processing or whole-seller)

Farmer -> Market -> Goldman Sachs -> Market -> Consumer (Goldman Sachs takes a cut from the process, not unlike the government taking a cut, which they do too).

[EvilEngineer]

I have absolutely no problem with areas like South Africa starving to death.


After the media's announcement that their long campaign of sanctions, boycotts, and intimidation had finally succeeded in bringing "equality" and "democracy" to what had previously been one of the few outposts of White civilization on the African continent, the media coverage of that country almost ceased, and one seldom hears about South Africa today in the mass media. The reason is that South Africa is rapidly descending into crime, disease, filth, and savagery.

Since the Black takeover in 1994, 1,368 White farmers have been murdered in farm invasions and attacks that number in the multiple thousands. More than half of the White farmers have given up and left their farms permanently, contributing to the region's looming famine. And yet this is not an issue in the Jewish media. South African farmers now suffer the highest murder rate in the world -- 274 per 100,000. In a study commissioned by a leading South African bank, Nedbank, it was revealed that the Black attackers are

"'deliberately targeting specific homesteads to kill the [White] Afrikaner victims': robbery was not the prime motivation, in fact in 85% of last year's farm attacks, nothing had been 'robbed.'"

Cause and effect... kill the farmers... you don't get to eat.