Civil society, faith groups call on CFTC to fully implement Dodd-Frank Act

March 31, 2011 by 2 Comments

Civil society, faith groups call on CFTC to fully implement Dodd-Frank Act

As part of a tightly structured campaign to raise awareness of the role of speculation in commodities markets, over 80 national and international organizations and coalitions representing a broad spectrum of interests recently sent a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission urging the Commission to stand firm on financial reforms that Congress approved last year.

“We are concerned that deregulation in the [Read More...]

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Write to the CFTC today!

March 22, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Stop Wall Street from weakening financial reforms

Last year, calls and letters to Congress led to the passage of the Dodd-Frank Act which includes fairly strong financial reforms. But these improvements have not been implemented yet, and they are in danger of being undermined. Unless new rules are put in place, we face the danger of more food and energy price bubbles like we experienced in 2008.

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC, the five-person [Read More...]

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Obama misses chance on gasoline prices

March 14, 2011 by Leave a Comment

President Obama missed a golden opportunity to educate people about the effects of excessive speculation in commodities and win some political points at the same time. During a March 11 press conference that focused on higher fuel prices, he did not even mention the issue of speculation’s role in rising gas costs. He ignored the chance to comment on current efforts in Congress to undermine the fairly strong actions taken by the previous Congress and [Read More...]

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Great video that lays out the issue well…

March 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The Ed Show on CNBC had an excellent segment in which he explains the problem of excessive speculation in commodities, its effects on people’s lives and the political situation around reforming commodity market laws. He points out that the swing vote on many issues in the 5-member CFTC, Michael Dunn, will be leaving in June. President Obama will appoint another person to take Dunn’s place.

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Commodity hoarding. How do futures prices affect spot prices?

March 7, 2011 by 4 Comments

Commodity Hoarding

One argument that you hear often from those who say that excessive commodity speculation is not a problem is that, if it was unduly affecting prices, there would be hoarding of physical stocks of those commodities. Paul Krugman recently used this argument to say that excessive commodity speculation is not a problem.

But Krugman misses a few key points:

1) Demand for food and energy is highly inelastic, meaning that even with large price [Read More...]

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From the world of the bizarre

March 1, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Here’s a link I have a little trouble explaining. Perhaps Zazzle is getting ready for 2011 and the likely repeat of global food riots as in 2008?

In any case, if you want to be in top style during the upcoming food riots, go here and buy a “Commodity speculation food riots” baseball cap.

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