5-27 IAN Conspiracy

 If you don't resent the slick suits on Wall Street yet, stick around.  If you're wondering where all the money is going from record grain and commodity prices, it's not reaching you on the farm or middle America on Main Street USA.  No, it's the very same people we bailed out with billions who are reaping much of what you sew.  A recent editorial by Frederick Kaufman Foreign Policy magazine suggests a conspiracy wherein  Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis. Don't blame American appetites, rising oil prices, or genetically modified crops for rising food prices. Wall Street's at fault for the spiraling cost of food.Goldman Sachs realized the simple truth that nothing is more valuable than our daily bread. And where there's value, there's money to be made. In 1991, Goldman bankers came up with a new kind of investment product that tracked 24 raw materials, from precious metals and energy to coffee, cocoa, cattle, corn, hogs, soy, and wheat. They weighted the investment value of each element into a mathematical formula that could be expressed as a single manifestation, known as the Goldman Sachs Commodity Index.  In 1999, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission deregulated futures markets. All of a sudden, bankers could take as large a position in grains as they liked. Bankers recognized a good system when they saw it and the scene had been set for food inflation that would eventually catch unawares some of the largest milling, processing, and retailing corporations in the United States, and send shockwaves throughout the world. As I said I am just quoting Kaufman but doesn’t it seem, like Paul Harvey always used to say,  “the rest of the story”.