“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...]
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...]
The Interfaith Center On Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), which represents 300 faith-based organizations with over $100 billion in assets, has just released its Guidelines For Responsible Investing In Food Commodities, which gives investors recommendations to promote responsible participation in these markets.
The ICCR guidelines come in response to growing evidence and concern that excessive speculation in food commodity markets inflates food prices, contributing to global food prices bubbles, which have been linked to malnutrition and famine [Read More...]
Following JP Morgan Chase’s loss of $2 billion and counting in a credit derivatives deal gone bad, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chairman Gary Gensler told reporters that the CFTC would join the the SEC and FBI in their investigation into the controversial trade. Gensler did not specify what exactly the CFTC was examining, but did say he had concerns about how the contentious Volcker rule may be interpreted.
Critics of the rule say a [Read More...]
On Friday Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, called on officials overseeing the implementation of Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to finalize the new rules and provide the strong protection markets and consumers need. The rules have languished for months, giving Wall Street lobbyist and House Republicans an open season to effectively gut and kill any substantive reform.
In her letter Stabenow also [Read More...]
(Bloomberg)-The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission may propose easing Dodd-Frank Act regulations limiting speculation in oil, natural gas, wheat and other commodities, according to four people briefed on the matter.
The CFTC’s five commissioners are considering a private vote to change how companies aggregate their trading positions when they have ownership stakes in other firms, according to the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The agency may propose raising to 50 percent from 10 [Read More...]
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...]
A recent article by Wallace Turbeville, a former VP at Goldman Sachs, on the Demos blog cuts through the partisan rhetoric surrounding the role of excessive speculation in rising oil, gas, and food prices. Find the article below; it’s worth reading it in full.
The President’s Rose Garden press conference last week on speculative trading and gas prices has induced a flood of editorials that lecture the administration on the law of supply and demand. [Read More...]
Last week President Obama introduced new measures to control oil speculation. While President Obama came out with hard hitting rhetoric around regulating energy markets, his actions primarily target illegal manipulation of prices, rather than the excessive but legal financial speculation that many experts say is contributing [Read More...]
In its February 2012 report on commodity investments, Barclays admitted that an increase in commodity speculation leads to increased prices. The report lists three main causes of the current run-up in commodity prices, stating,
“The second key driver is that commodity investors have begun allocating to commodities again after beginning 2012 heavily underexposed to the sector.”
The report goes on to explain that “net long hedge fund positions across all U.S. commodity futures markets have [Read More...]
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