After Having Cryocautery

A criminal speculation

April 18, 2011

Xavier Caño Tamayo - Alainet.org

According to a report by Lehman Brothers, speculative investment in food has increased from 13,000 million dollars in 2003 to 260,000 million in 2008. The food crisis was triggered this year, no doubt, by the wild speculation and rising prices for basic food, not bad crops and because India and China consume more food than before. Wheat and corn rose on average 25%, there were riots in forty countries and more than 130 million people were added to the legion of hungry. In 2007 he had succeeded in reducing the world's undernourished to 850 million, but thanks to speculation and food are 1,100 million.

The price of food is marked with so-called futures contracts that are bought and sold for a while dozens of times, speculating on the rise and fall of the price. Although no one actually tries to buy these foods, only speculate, Veterinarians Without Borders report. Moreover, multinational food as Bunge, Dupont, Cargill, ADM and Syngenta control over 70% of the grain supply and make prices I agree to obtain billions of profits. While Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Santander, BBVA, Deutsche Bank ... speculate on food prices and present this speculative investment as safe and profitable sector.

But talk of an indisputable human right: the right to life, to a dignified existence. And poverty and hunger can not live with dignity. So Jean Ziegler, vice president of the Advisory Council of the UN Human Rights, complained that "it is an absurdity that food prices are set by the Exchange. Should be removed from the speculation. "

Ziegler insists that "food must be declared public good and its price determined by negotiation between producer and consumer countries. The system developed to make it the UNCTD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development), but large multinational corporations have been discarded. " According

denounces the "Movement two Landless Rural Workers (MST) in Brazil and the international Via Campesina, the causes of rising food prices are oligopolistic control a few companies have on world wheat trade, maize, rice, soy, milk ... more speculation of large investors in the stock of agricultural products. More pure financial speculation, because the banks invest in food, safer than stocks. More privatization of public services for agriculture, placed under the control of multinational corporations. Over the obscene position of the World Trade Organization became a mere commodity food ...

Ziegler complained that " are criminal law enforcement structures of the world that made the slaughter hunger everyday. Criminal structures and the export of products at prices much lower than at home, as does the European Union, which exported agricultural products to Africa at very low prices and destroy African agriculture. And it is a criminal structure stock speculation of big hedge funds (vulture funds) with rice, wheat, maize and millet, the staple foods of the world. "

To Heiner Flassbeck, chief economist at the UNCTD, the current rapid rise in food prices is as dangerous as that of 2008. And the main cause remains the same: the speculation: "The markets for agricultural commodities can not find appropriate prices and because they have been corrupted by financial adventurers," says Flassbeck, convinced that the international community must intervene to eliminate bubbles raw food before it is too late.

As Gandhi said , " hunger is an insult, humiliate, dehumanize, destroy the body and spirit, is the most murderous there." And Juan Torres rivets that " poverty is no disgrace nor famine, natural disaster. Poverty and hunger are a disgrace, a real organized crime. " So if our world had not fallen in democracy and justice in the last twenty years of imposition of neoliberalism, food speculators and their accomplices would be in jail, properly prosecuted, tried and convicted.

Source: http://www.attac.es/una-especulacion-criminal/