It's Come Time to Say It--I Don't Give a Tinker's Damn about "Investors"
Now, a Commodities Conundrum
By Steven Pearlstein Wednesday, April 30, 2008; D01
The global financial system these days is beginning to look like a giant Whac-a-Mole game -- when we think we've knocked down one speculative bubble, another one just like it pops up.
The latest is the commodities bubble -- everything from oil and natural gas to gold, copper, wheat and rice. . . . . . The difference this time, however, is that even before it bursts, this bubble is causing economic discomfort for households and businesses around the world, and misery for hundreds of millions of hungry people who suddenly cannot afford a bowl of rice or scrap of meat. The Post's eye-opening series this week on the global food crisis has provided a grim reminder that the global economic ecosystem has become so interdependent that a drought in Australia, a tax credit in the United States, French farm subsidies and export controls in India can wind up forcing a desperate African farmer to eat his seed corn. . .…