The Great Debate

Spikes in grain prices are regularly blamed on oil shocks, droughts and emerging markets’ hunger for meat. The real culprit in the three bubbles-and-busts of the last five years, however, isn’t the weather. It’s financial speculation.

The Midwest drought this summer, the worst in a half-century, produced a bumper crop of profits for derivatives traders like Chris Mahoney, the director of agricultural products for Glencore, the world’s largest commodities trading firm. Mahoney noted during one August conference call that tight grain supplies and the resulting arbitrage opportunities “should be good for Glencore.”

They’ve been a disaster, however, for the world’s poor.

More than 40 percent of grain futures can now be traced to financial institutions, which nearly doubled their commodity bets over the last five years — from $65 billion to $126 billion.

During that time, food prices have bubbled and burst twice — leaving millions of people to go hungry and stoking global unrest — before climbing to new heights this summer. Corn prices soared 65 percent between June and July alone, the same month the World Bank’s food price index recorded its highest rise ever, breaking the previous record set in February 2011.

What’s fueling this stunning price fluctuation is financial speculation. Our research team at the New England Complex Systems Institute built mathematical models to test possible explanations for the price spikes of 2007-2008 and 2010-2011 — including all the above, in addition to the rise of ethanol production. We could replicate a rise in prices but couldn’t explain the bubbles and crashes. When we added speculation, the model fit precisely.

By Ian Bremmer
The opinions expressed are his own.

The IMF and World Bank meet this week at a delicate moment for the global economic recovery. First, the good news: Expectations for success won’t be tough to manage, because turmoil in the Arab world, the triple disaster in Japan, and Europe’s ongoing struggles have kept the meetings from grabbing much public attention. That’s a good thing, because as capital and liquidity return to the global economy and as emerging market powers begin to assert themselves with greater confidence on the international stage, the IMF and World Bank have lost some of their prominence.

In particular, the IMF is finding it increasingly difficult to play its traditional role of global surveillance body and lender of last resort, because multinational coordination is just not that effective these days. Newly enhanced voting leverage for leading emerging powers intended to better reflect the world’s true balance of power will only add to the institution’s dysfunction, as members increasingly disagree on whether and how to correct global imbalances. Expect to hear more calls from China, India, Brazil and Russia for an end to US and European dominance of these institutions, but don’t expect any “rebalancing” of rights and responsibilities to make international consensus any easier to achieve.

For example, in advance of the meetings, the IMF has produced a framework of policy options for countries now coping with large capital inflows. Several emerging states — including Brazil, South Korea, and Indonesia — have enacted capital controls in recent months. The IMF has endorsed the use of capital controls in cases where measures to strengthen banking systems and lower interest rates have already been adopted — a fundamental reversal of previous IMF policy.

Tom Abate covers the technology sector for GlobalPost, where this article first appeared. Any views expressed are his own.

It seems like a science fiction novel: Near-starvation of much of the world’s population results in the development of patented seeds and widespread livestock cloning.

But that scenario is not pure speculation. Rather it is a possible future envisioned by analysts for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, in a new report titled “The Bioeconomy of 2030.”

The announcement by a U.S. investor that he has a deal to lease a swathe of South Sudan for farmland has again focused attention on foreigners trying to snap up African agricultural land.

A few months ago, South Korea’s Daweoo Logistics said it had secured rights to plant corn and palm oil in an even bigger patch of Madagascar - although local authorities said the deal was not done yet. Investors from Asia and the Gulf are looking elsewhere in Africa too.

Investor interest in farmland – not only in Africa – grew sharply after food prices shot to record highs last year. Although commodity prices have fallen since, there is still anticipation of long term demand growth once the world emerges from its current economic troubles.