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Created on Friday, 13 April 2012 06:42
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Written by The Real News
Speculation and Criminal Manipulation of Food and Commodities Prices
by TRNN
We're
continuing our discussion about the price of gas and the price of
commodities, and we're going to continue digging into this question of
the commodity traders and their relationship to speculation and
manipulation of the markets.Now joining us again is
Michael Greenberger. Michael is a professor at the University of
Maryland School of Law, where he teaches homeland security and financial
law. He's a former division director at the U.S. Commodity Futures
Trading Commission. He's also a founder and director of the Center for
Health and Homeland Security.
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Michael Greenberger is a
professor at theUniversity of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches a
course entitled "Futures, Options and Derivatives."Professor
Greenberger serves as the Technical Advisor to the United Nations
Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on
Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System.
He has recently been named to the International Energy Forum’s
Independent Expert Group that provided recommendations for reducing
energy price volatility to the IEF’s 12th Ministerial Meeting in March
2010. Professor Greenberger was a partner for more than 20 years in the
Washington, D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner, where he served as lead
litigation counsel before courts of law nationwide, including the United
States Supreme Court.
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PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington.
Thanks for joining us again, Michael.
MICHAEL GREENBERGER, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND SCHOOL OF LAW: You're welcome.
JAY:
So we talked a bit about this in an earlier interview, but there are
about a dozen major commodities companies we've—Glencore is one that's
come into the news recently 'cause it went public, I guess, a year and a
half, two years ago and kind of opened up a window into this world of
these major commodities traders. The Koch brothers are another group.
Cargill we know of, are big commodity traders and players in
agricultural products. But also JPMorgan, for example, apparently is the
biggest commodities traders now, and Goldman is a big player, Barclays
bank, all the big financial institutions, where they seem to have
different departments playing different sides of this question. One
department actually goes out and buys the physical commodity. Glencore,
for example, owns mines all over the world. They own, apparently, 9
percent of the Russian wheat crop. They're just about to buy a major
French company that owns a major piece of Canadian wheat, actual land.
Plus they hedge. Plus they're accused of speculating, although Glencore
denies they play derivatives. But they certainly hedge. The big
financial institutions are playing all sides of this. So where
does—first of all, I guess, from a regulatory, legal point of view, is
these guys all claim what they're doing is legal, even if it does wind
up manipulating the market. So is it?
GREENBERGER: Well, I
think you have to—there's two kinds of speculation going on here, both
of which were intended by the passage of the Dodd–Frank law in July 2010
to be limited and constrained. The place that there is vulnerability
here is in the futures market, where you actually hold a contract for
future delivery rather than own the underlying commodity. Now, if that
market gets overwhelmed by speculators, it will drive the price of the
commodity up, and therefore not only will people benefit from having
futures contracts that pay off big-time, but if they correspondingly
hold the physical—the aluminum, the copper, the wheat, the oil, that
price goes up as well. Dodd–Frank recognized that speculators in extreme
can overwhelm these markets and asked the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission to limit the participation of speculators so those markets
adhered to supply-demand fundamentals. Unfortunately, in the
implementation process, that rule was weakened to almost no effect, and
then, once the rule was finalized, the weak rule, it was challenged by
the banks in court. So the limits on speculation have essentially been
wiped out despite Congress's best efforts.But there's
another problem here, and that is some of these participants—and I'm not
saying who they are, but I'm sure there are enough there doing this
that they are adversely affecting the price—are actually not just
swamping the markets with investments, but they're working with each
other to drive the price up. That is a criminal problem. That is called
criminal manipulation of the price. And that is why the president of the
United States has now twice asked the Justice Department, once in April
2011 and once in March 2012, to please, please investigate these
markets to see if there is criminal wrongdoing.Now, those
of us who watch these markets believe, despite the innocent flooding of
these markets of speculators, which was supposed to be stopped by
Dodd–Frank but has not, there are speculators out there who, with a
criminal intent, are driving the price up. And my view and the view of
many academic experts is if the Justice Department would just seriously
investigate that kind of criminal manipulation, the price would come
down dramatically, not just of oil, not just gasoline, not just of
heating oil, but of agricultural products as well, 'cause the same
things are happening in those markets.We had one remedial
process fail by Wall Street lobbying, and that is limiting speculation
to a reasonable part of the market. And the second part is failing
because of prosecutorial laxity, which is going after people who are
criminally working with each other to drive the price up. And the
quickest way—within a matter of weeks, if there were a serious
investigation undertaken, if the FBI was called in, if records were
subpoenaed, if market participants were interviewed and the Justice
Department at least gave an indication, as they did when they went after
the Enron conspirators in the early 2000s, that they were serious about
this, just the appearance of a serious investigation would cause the
criminal speculators to scatter like cockroaches scatter when lights are
turned on.
JAY: Well, maybe part of the problem here is
that the commodity traders and big banks are making such fabulous
profits out of all this. The top commodity traders are making more money
than the biggest telecoms. They're netting more profit than the
Microsofts and the Apples. I don't think it's—unless you read the
financial press, where you see some of this, in the popular press you
get no sense of the extent of money that's being made by the big banks,
commodity traders, on commodities and speculation, the two together. I
mean, is that part of the problem is that—is part of the problem here is
the political power that comes from that is what's paralyzing this
process?
GREENBERGER: The banks have already checkmated one
of the principal limits in Dodd–Frank, which didn't require showing
criminal intent, just said that speculators' participation in these
markets should be drawn down from 80 percent of the markets to about 30
percent of markets, the historical average. The lobbyists on Wall
Street, and because of the lack of attention of the public, have run
roughshod over that.Now, you cannot run roughshod over a
prosecutor. And the thing that is now missing is that the Justice
Department began a serious investigation here because there is doubtless
criminal conduct here. I'm not going to name names, I'm not going to
call anybody out, but I have every confidence that the appearance of a
serious investigation would bring commodity staple prices down. That is
not happening.You say there's a lot of profits here. If we
didn't investigate bank robbers, there would be a lot of profits made
from going in and holding up banks. But we enforce burglary laws and
theft laws in bank robberies. The same thing is happening in the
commodity markets, and the prosecutors and de facto police have
blindfolded themselves, stuffed their ears, and hold their noses, and
appear to the public as if nothing is going on. If indictments were
brought down, the public would be educated about this. It's the total
laxity here that is causing us not only to have a situation that will
break the back of the recovery, but may walk the Republicans into the
White House, control the Senate, and an increased representation in the
House of Representatives. It is the only argument they have that gas
prices are going up right now.
JAY: Thanks for joining us, Michael.
GREENBERGER: You're welcome.
JAY: And thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.