Speculating Banks Profit as World's Poorest Go Hungry

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http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/03-3


Nearly a billion people are already too poor to feed themselves, so any long-term food spike is guaranteed to trap millions more who are now just “getting by,” says Oxfam.

Reports over the weekend saw some of the world's most powerful financial institutions accused of profiteering on the backs of the world's poorest people and those most vulnerable to the wild price fluctuations caused by over-rampant speculation on the price of food commodities like wheat, soy beans, and corn.

"Barclays is the UK bank with the greatest involvement in food commodity trading and is one of the three biggest global players, along with the US banking giants Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley," reported the UK's Independent, citing research from the World Development Movement.

Christine Haigh, policy and campaigns officer at the WDM and one of the analysts behind the research, said the behavior of the banks "risks fuelling a speculative bubble and contributing to hunger and poverty for millions of the world's poorest people."

As droughts have devastated grain crops in major agricultural strongholds like the US and India this year, experts warn of a food crisis taking shape across the globe. The accusations of 'profiteering' by groups like WDM and Oxfam International, however, transcend the price changes due to external conditions like drought or farmers who use commodity indexes to protect the price of their crops, and speak to the greed and recklessness of investors who create volatile trading conditions by speculating on the future prices of such commodities with no regard for the harm it does to real people.