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’Let them eat wheat price inflation
An interesting, vaguely Easter-themed chart by Barings Asset Management, via Paul Mason’s Idle Scrawl blog:
It shows the changes in wheat prices in the years before both the 1848 Spring of Nations and this year’s Arab Spring.
Inflation indices – and bond markets – wheat themselves
It seems like the grain puns — and Russian export ban — only started yesterday, but the world’s month-long wheat price crisis is already starting to affect inflation indices.
And that means an impact on bond markets everywhere from European linkers to foreign holdings of emerging-market debt.
And the winner so far in the wheat crisis is …
It could have been very bad for the world’s largest commodities trader. But if you thought for a moment that the escalating wheat crisis might hit the middle-men in the hot seats of the global grain trade,
Stock up on bread now— at least until it rains again
The most well-known wheat crisis to date is the 1972 “Great Grain Robbery,” in which the Soviet Union combated a catastrophic drought that depleted their wheat supply by buying all the available surplus of wheat in the United States. This Soviet spending spree triggered food price hikes worldwide.
An Atkins diet for the world
One man’s famine is another man’s feast — though in this case, it looks like many of us will have to take another look at the Atkins diet.
With soaring demand from key regions of the world and supply problems such as Russia’s drought and India’s grain storage crisis,
It’s a zero-sum game Mr. Hari
In case you missed it, the Independent’s Johann Hari has done a Matt Taibbi — yes he of Vampire Squid fame.
But this time the author doesn’t just accuse the bank of gross financial manipulation, he accuses the institution of single-handedly starving millions around the world 2006 onwards.
Charts du jour, commodities edition
The thinkers over at Bespoke have produced some nifty charts showing ten major commodities, ranging from gold to oil to frozen concentrated orange juice.
According to Bespoke, while gold is all the range,
China cools on the commodity front
You know how China has bolstered hopes for global growth, with its command-stimulus programme sucking in raw materials, supporting commodity prices and generally making the world feel better?
Well, it’s over.
Whatever happened to Deutsche’s ETN liquidation?
Petromatrix’s Olivier Jakob evaluates CFTC weekly trader data on a regular basis, and one thing he was quite looking forward to analysing was the liquidation of Deutsche Bank’s exchange-traded-note — the PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Long (DXO).
How effective are speculative limits in commodities anyway?
As has been well-publicised, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is considering increasing position limits in energy commodities trading, on the perception that large speculative inflows may have contributed to last summer’s epic oil price-moves.
That commodity ETF effect, in grains
There’s been a spate of commotion this week in the world of commodity ETFs, or ETPs (exchange traded products) as they are fast becoming known.
It comes in the shape of a CFTC ruling that resulted in two Deutsche Bank PowerShares commodity funds,