"While the economic world ought to work this way in theory, it doesn't in practice. Goldman Sachs has an investment structure that is only about buying food futures. Despite what the theorists say, speculators have profited from hunger. And there's now mounting evidence from some economists that the rush of money into commodity funds is indeed driving prices higher.
But even these kinds of analysis assume that there are rational moves made by actors within the market's confines. When financial powerhouses like Glencore are able to control and engineer the terms on which they are governed, economics has painfully little to say. Rather than being "price takers", today's financial behemoths are price makers. To understand the power at play, we're better served by the insight of the French historian Fernand Braudel – that capitalism is, at its pinnacle, not about the facilitation of free exchange, but about its destruction."
+081.jpg)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment