Financial speculators reap profits from global hunger

On Tuesday, April 22, a UN spokesperson referred to a silent tsunami that threatens to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger. Josette Sheeran, executive director of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), noted: This is the new face of hungerthe millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are.

A recent article in the British New Statesman magazine, entitled The Trading Frenzy That Sent Prices Soaring, notes that increases in global population and the switch to bio-fuels are important factors in the rise of food prices, but then declares:

These long-term factors are important, but they are not the real reasons why food prices have doubled or why India is rationing rice, or why British farmers are killing pigs for which they cant afford feedstocks. Its the credit crisis.

The article states that the food crisis has developed over an incredibly short space of timeessentially over the past 18 months. It continues: The reason for food shortages is speculation in commodity futures following the collapse of the financial derivatives markets. Desperate for quick returns, dealers are taking trillions of dollars out of equities and mortgage bonds and ploughing them into food and raw materials. Its called the commodities super-cycle on Wall Street, and it is likely to cause starvation on an epic scale.

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