International Policy

We work with international partners to help bring about global agreements on commodity market regulation. We work especially with the G20 and EU Commission.

Barclays considers stopping its agricultural speculation

December 1, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In response to growing public pressure against excessive speculation in food and energy markets, Barclays is considering stopping all of its trading in agricultural products due to “potential reputational damage.” Barclays would join a growing number of European banks and pension funds who have recently stopped trading in agriculture futures due to growing concern that this speculation is driving world food prices higher and making them more volatile.

More recently, investors are pulling out of [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, National, Responsible Investing

Proven model predicts higher food prices if speculation is not reined in

August 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

The New England Complex Systems Institute, that has developed a quantitative model able to very closely predicted the FAO’s food price index, released a new report predicting sharply higher food prices due in part to excessive speculation.

Their model, originally released in September 2011 matched the FAO’s index from 2004 to 2011. Since then it has continued to closely follow the real world numbers.

Unfortunately, the model now predicts, “another speculative bubble starting by the [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, National

Could oil prices be rigged too?

July 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In the wake of the Barclays’ Libor scandal–with internal memos now hinting that the scandal will envelop other banks–some politicians and fuel campaigners are urging regulators to expand its investigations to determine whether oil prices have also been pushed up.

Concerns around the reliability of oil prices–reinvigorated by the huge spike in gas prices earlier this year–continue to grow after a recent G20 report “found the market is wide open to ‘manipulation and distortion.’” Oil [Read More...]

Filed Under: Congress, International, National, Wall Street Tagged With: , , , ,

Contention over CFTC’s Proposed Interpretive Guidance on Cross-Border Application

July 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

On June 29, the CFTC released its proposed interpretive guidance on cross-border implementation-of financial reforms – essentially, how exactly, if at all, will new CFTC regulations flowing from Dodd-Frank be applied to foreign subsidiaries of U.S. banks and others trading on U.S. markets from another country. Organizations working for strong financial reforms were encouraged to see the CFTC, in the face of objections from Wall Street and abroad, adopt strong interpretive guidelines that would affect [Read More...]

Filed Under: CFTC, Congress, International, National, Wall Street Tagged With: , , , , ,

Oxfam Germany releases new report on German banks speculating on food commodities

May 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

“Taken together, German financial institutions are responsible for one sixth of the total global investment volume in agricultural commodities, which is estimated by the Barclays Bank to lie at 99 billion US$ (68.8
billion EUR)”

From the English summary:

Banks and financial advisors in Germany have
been promoting agricultural crops as an
attractive investment category for the past few
years: rising food prices promise high returns
that no one should [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, Wall Street Tagged With: , , , , , ,

BNP Paribas challenged over food speculation

May 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment

On Wednesday Friends of the Earth Europe and Friends of the Earth France challenged BNP Paribas (BNPP)–a major player in global agricultural and energy markets, offering many funds and commodity-related investment instruments–over its role in food speculation and global hunger.

FOE challenged BNNP at its annual shareholder meeting in Paris. They told BNNP that given the severity of food crises around the world and the growing body of evidence that links excessive financial speculation to [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, Wall Street Tagged With: , , , , ,

Danish bank Nordea abandons speculation in food commodities

May 14, 2012 by Leave a Comment

DanWatch, a Danish independent non-profit media and research center, has reported that the Stockholm-based financial services group, Nordea, will remove food commodities from their financial products.

Nordea, a Stockholm-based financial services company, is Denmark’s largest provider of index based financial products in commodities.

When DanWatch and Tænk Penge in August 2011 inquired Nordea about the bank’s position on food speculation, the bank was conducting an analysis and was awaiting a conclusion later that year.

Now [Read More...]

Filed Under: International Tagged With: , , , ,

India tightens position limits on agricultural commodities

April 3, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Following last week’s announcement to terminate all guar seed and guar gum contracts, India’s commodity market regulator, the Forward Markets Commission (FMC), says that it plans to to lower position limits–cutting the number of contracts any trader can hold in agricultural commodities. These recent measures to curb excessive speculation came after India’s food minister ordered an investigation into volatile prices.

“The review will be done now and we will be consulting with the exchanges as [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, Wall Street Tagged With: , , ,

Update: The EU and regulating commodity speculation

March 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

SOMO and WEED give an update on the EU’s attempts to regulate excessive commodity speculation in their latest newsletter.

Notable updates include a draft report by European Parliament Rapporteur on MiFID, Markus Ferber, which includes several amendments to the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID)–EU regulation that aims to curb excessive commodity speculation and improve the functioning of agricultural commodity futures markets.  The proposed amendments address HFT more directly and forcefully:

Prohibition of direct electronic access to a trading [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, Wall Street Tagged With: , , , , ,

Deutsche Bank rules out new food investment products this year

March 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

MarketWatch has reported that Deutsche Bank will not launch any new products in agricultural commodities this year due to concern that those products may interfere with global food prices. While Deutsche Bank still says that it doesn’t consider speculation to have a significant effect on prices, it says that it is taking more time to investigate the relationship between the two.

“We recognize that the proper functioning of agricultural markets have wide social ramifications. Therefore we [Read More...]

Filed Under: International, Wall Street Tagged With: , , , ,
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