Barclays 'making up to £340 million profit' on food price speculation

[cory777]

Source: The Ecologist

High-street customers could be subsidising the role of Barclays Capital in driving up global food prices and leaving millions facing hunger and malnutrition, says campaign group. Tom Levitt reports

Barclays could be making as much as £340 million a year in profit through gambling on the price of key commodity crops like coffee, sugar and wheat, the Ecologist has learnt.

By creating funds to allow investors to speculate on the price of food, in the same way they would invest in the shares of a company, Barclays and others are able to bet on the price of food. However, food commodity trading is leading to higher and more volatile prices, say campaigners, which affect poor families in the less industrialised world the hardest as they can’t afford basic foods and also make it more difficult for farmers to plan and invest.

A World Bank report in February showed an extra 40 million people had been pushed into poverty as a result of rising food prices since June 2010.

Read more: http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/833156/barclays_making_up_to_340_million_profit_on_food_price_speculation.html

---

News That Matters http://activistnews.blogspot.com/

[itsrobert]

1. Barclays defrauded a solar company I had stock in

I lost a lot. They are dirty crooks.

[lonestarnot]

2. Bastards!

[davidthegnome]

3. You said it

K & R

[PSPS]

4. Only when their dead bodies are swinging from lamp posts will this stop.

[aquart]

6. Do we really have enough lamp posts?

Should we get more?

[glinda]

5. This should be on every news channel everywhere.

[orwell]

7. There's your hyperinflation...

...it's in the pockets of commodity speculators...

Wonder why oil is north of $100 a barrel on tepid demand?

[melm00se]

11. Part of the answer

is speculation but a much larger factor is the value of the USD.

here is the price of oil



Here is the value of the USD



Notice the upward trend on oil and the downward trend on the USD?

Think there might be a correlation there?

[DeSwiss]

8. K&R

On 13 February, 2010 Barclays announced it would pay more than £2 billion in bonuses. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barclays">link)

[glowing]

9. Between them and Goldman Sachs.. I'm not sure what company is going for the

title of most Evil Corporation in the World.

[avaistheone1]

10. ASSES OF EVIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[lostnfound]

12. Would love to see Democracy Now, Jeremy Scahill.or Greg Palast

Investigate this.