Paul B. Farrell: Super Rich love to bet on commodity inflation

[marmar]

Super Rich love to bet on commodity inflation
Commentary: 12 reasons rich get richer, poor get poorer

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch


SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Nobody wants to hear the truth. Not Big Oil. Not Big Ag. Not Wall Street. Not the Super Rich. Not China’s billionaires. Not Washington insiders on the take. They do not want to hear the relentless warnings of a Cassandra Chicken Little Crying Wolf about the “End of the World as We Know It.”

Forget the truth. In their minds all that matters is that they’re getting more powerful and richer and richer.

Nothing else matters in their upside-down world: Wealth increases at the top. Global poverty balloons everywhere else where living on $2 a day is it for a third of the world. Easy pickings. The rich only see more opportunities to make more money when they read in Foreign Policy Journal that “in the United States, when world wheat prices rise by 75%, as they have over the last year, it means the difference between a $2 loaf of bread and a loaf costing maybe $2.10,” warns Lester Brown in “The New Geopolitics of Food … Inside a Hungry Planet.”

But if “you live in New Delhi, those skyrocketing costs really matter: A doubling in the world price of wheat actually means that the wheat you carry home from the market to hand-grind into flour for chapatis costs twice as much. And the same is true with rice. If the world price of rice doubles, so does the price of rice in your neighborhood market in Jakarta. And so does the cost of the bowl of boiled rice on an Indonesian family’s dinner table. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/super-rich-love-to-bet-on-commodity-inflation-2011-05-03?link=home_carousel

[nonperson]

1. Yep, today we're all at the mercy of "Duke & Duke"

The greedy brothers from "Trading Places".

In a remake the firm name could be updated to "Koch & Koch".

[marmar]

2. 'In a remake the firm name could be updated to "Koch & Koch"'

And hopefully it has a similar ending. :)


Welcome to DU, BTW! :hi:

[nonperson]

3. YES, I'd love to see those two down and out on Skid Row

Now that's what I call justice.

Thanks for the welcome!
:hi:

[nonperson]

4. The closing line of the article mystifies me

"So ask yourself, can you really get rich off what’s left of the commodity crumbs falling off the Super Rich dinner table? Or is it too late?"

So the paradigm shift toward using commodities like a weapon to gain wealth isn't a problem. The problem is whether smaller investors are too late to profit along with the super-rich.

We are doomed. Capitalism is the cause.