[basil]

I don’t know a lot about banking, etc—but something tells me that this entire article is pure BS!

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

something tells me that this entire article is pure BS

Your instincts are correct. What is one man's speculator is another man's market maker. Futures and derivatives are financial instruments which allow actors (farmers, agricultural wholesalers, for instance) to disperse risk, much like insurance policies. Planting a crop is a gamble, as is contracting for future deliveries of agricultural products that do not even exist yet. Middlemen play a vital role by assuming some of the risks in these gambles.

Demagogues like Huey Long, Barack Obama, ad infinitum prey on envy and economic illiteracy. Given enough power they produce results like the Soviet Union, Maoist China and USA 2016.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

something tells me that this entire article is pure BS

Your instincts are correct. What is one man's speculator is another man's market maker. Futures and derivatives are financial instruments which allow actors (farmers, agricultural wholesalers, for instance) to disperse risk, much like insurance policies. Planting a crop is a gamble, as is contracting for future deliveries of agricultural products that do not even exist yet. Middlemen play a vital role by assuming some of the risks in these gambles.

Demagogues like Huey Long, Barack Obama, ad infinitum prey on envy and economic illiteracy. Given enough power they produce results like the Soviet Union, Maoist China and USA 2016.

[rellimpank]

---having been raised on a farm where my 92 year old mother rents out the cropland, about a year ago I started watching commodity prices--corn and soybeans --.

--not surprisingly , as little rain fell , the price doubled---didn't really take a genius to figure out---

[mnehring]

I don’t know a lot about banking, etc—but something tells me that this entire article is pure BS!

You are correct. GS investments have nothing to do with children starving. It is just anti-business tripe.

[jjotto]

Pure BS. $400 million isn’t even a drop in the bucket compared to global food supply. Just the US feed grains crop is worth $70-80 billion.

Food of all kinds has never been more plentiful worldwide.

People who are starving are the victims of their local political arrangements, not because there’s a food shortage.

[fhayek]

It is. These people really need to educate themselves about the role of futures markets in a capitalist economy.

[Little Bill]

We have heard this crap before. I don’t care about the starving masses in the failed states of the third world, I don’t care what the UN thinks.

I have an obligation to help my neighbors when needed but I don’t have an obligation to help those who refuse to help themselves, you made your bed, sleep in it.