DIFFERENT IDEAS

By Ed Fashing

During WW II, U.S. food was rationed, scarce, important, and expensive:  corn kernels were replaced by plastic circles or even pennies to cover numbers when playing BINGO.  Now, since corn is $2 bushel, corn kernels should again be used in BINGO games played in Churches as a sign to protest the low price of corn.  Over 300 kernels cost 1 cent.  Rice should be thrown at weddings because with the low price of rice in the U.S., farmers don’t get fair return for their work.  The wheat in a pound loaf of bread or box of  Wheaties yields farmers 4 cents. 

Some farm activists want the word PARITY  not used to express farmers needs.  They are embarrassed at AAM’s continuing demand for PARITY for farmers.  Sometimes doing things the old way is best.  For some time I believe:  70% of PARITY  would be a good start with an increase of 2% every three years.  Never be embarrassed seeking justice as extreme as it seems!

If the number of contracts for commodities approached the actual number produced, the opportunity to manipulate commodity markets would lessen.  Farm-gate prices would be higher, if traders were forced to go to racetracks or casinos to gamble or fix races.  If contract numbers were increased 6 fold in the past, then they can be decreased 6 fold now.  I don’t follow the markets since I believe it is all bullshit designed to rob investors, fellow traders and producers.  Soybean contracts have been 14 times actual the amount of real beans available.  That makes manipulation easier.  In the past, if traders got stuck with a contract, they had to take delivery.  That kept a trader with a Chicago Marine Dr. Apartment or North Shore home more honest.

Why has no attempt been made by USDA to restrict a few conglomerates or vertically integrated corporations from controlling several markets?  Why are oligopolies not controlled

I believe the concept of puts and calls is absurd.  They are a guaranteed way to loose money.

I believe that dealing carbon greenhouse gas pollution contracts is one of the dumbest things of which I ever heard.  ENRON was a pollution contract trader.  If traders want to gamble, let them go to a racetrack or bookie.  Gambling with real peoples’ future to me is unacceptable.

The CFTC, SEC, Attorney General, and GIPSA (Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyards Administration) must start doing their jobs.  I do not think that the new GIPSA administrator Donna Reifchneider has the background and proper attitudes to enforce control of the packing industry.  Her background as a President of the NPPC, a board member of the Meat Export Federation, and lack of complaints when hogs were $8/cwt.in 1998-9 make her a suspect appointment.  This is another example of how G.W. Bush has not cared about his power base:  those who elected G.W. are from rural America.  The switch from Clinton to Bush means rich oil conservatives rather and rich liberal extremist green now set energy policy.