Bring back common sense rules to commodity markets
“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...]
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 Radio Netherlands Worldwide article connects food speculation and land-grabs as significant drivers of world hunger. Dr. Dirk Bezemer, Associate Professor of Development Economics at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, says, “The role of the West [in solving the food crisis] will diminish in the long term, but in the meantime Western countries can help by curbing food speculation” and ending land-grabbing.
Bezemer sees food and land sovereignty as the solution to hunger in [Read More...]
A new report released by Friends of the Earth Europe describes how European banks, pension funds and insurance companies are fueling global hunger and poverty through speculating on food prices and financing land grabs in poorer countries, bringing increased prices and volatility to food markets as well as threatening the food and land sovereignty of local peoples.
Specifically, the report examines the major roles and activities of “29 European financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank, Barclays, RBS, Allianz, [Read More...]
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