The system is wrong, not the people. The financial sector is out of control and is screwing the rest of us. We know traders will trade in anything that looks like making a profit. We know they make profits out of rising prices, and falling prices, it’s just a matter of betting correctly. And we know, if they’re big enough, or close enough to one that is, they can start stories going which affect prices and then bet accordingly. Though we might have thought that was illegal. This month the Financial Times has run a series of articles on Glencore showing how they influence commodity prices for their own profit and everyone else’s loss, and how they are expected to increase their stranglehold in key areas.
Glencore, the world’s largest commodity trader, is in the news because its initial public offering of shares to the London Stock Exchange, scheduled for late May, is expected to value the company at between £60 billion and £73 billion, putting it comfortably in the FTSE100 index on its first day of trading. It may be big but the FT reports that Glencore has paid “almost no corporate taxes on its trading business for years in spite of bumper profits.” That may be no surprise since that’s how these financial sector firms are allowed to work, but the way it trades, revealed in relation to Russian wheat and corn, is more interesting.
Continue reading Glencore and their ilk are screwing the world