21ST CENTURY’S PLAGUE: COMMODITY SPECULATION

Bro. Erle Frayne Argonza

Speculation, more speculation!

Speculation has driven food prices up, and is now driving gas prices up as well. It is a core feature of the ‘virtual economy’ based on predatory finance, the main game of the global financier oligarchs who are now in practical control of the world’s strategic economic sectors.

Commodity speculation is getting to be a ‘plague of the 21st century’ as claimed by a noblesse gentlaman from Europe, Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti. How to stump out this plague is the greatest challenge facing mankind right now, at a time of recession in the Northern economies, recession that threatens to intensify into a global financial meltdown.

Below is an article from the Executive Intelligence Review that sums up the plague of the century. You may as well participate in the debates on how to curb it and reverse the global trend of financial madness.

Writ 30 June 2008, Quezon City, MetroManila]

Tremonti: Commodity Speculation Is `The Plague of the 21st Century'

June 23, 2008 (EIRNS)—Italian Economics Minister Giulio Tremonti, an outspoken advocate of convening a New Bretton Woods conference, gave a speech in front of a meeting of the Italian trade union CISL, on June 22, calling on the trade unions to join him in the fight against the real causes of oil and food price increases: "international speculation."
According to the daily Il Messaggero, Tremonti called "surrealistic" his own government's plan, which projects a "planned inflation" of 1.7%. The reasons for that, he said, "are two. The first one is technical, the second one is political. The first one, everybody can get by calling the ECB, which demands to set an inflation rate under 2%."

Tremonti gave the real ECB telephone number. "It is wrong to speak about inflation today. For at least the last six months, we should have been talking about speculation. International speculation was first financial speculation and in the past period, after some disasters, focussed on commodities, starting with oil." Therefore, either you fight a local battle, with old methods and old perspectives, or you fight a global fight, where you fight Public Enemy Number One: speculation.

"Speculation is the plague of this century, a specter that we knew would come, but not in this way and not so fast. Inflation can no longer be explained with the simple laws of supply and demand," Tremonti continued. He then attacked the left, because "in the Left camp, there are speculation managers who have been accustomed to smoke cigars and sail on yachts, and therefore the Left does not talk about speculation." The head of the leftist CGIL trade union, Epifani, protested. If what Tremonti says is true, he was asked, why does the government write the draft budget plan based on those figures? The draft, demanded by the EU, "is a surrealistic document of no use," Tremonti said.

The Anglo-Dutch financial oligarchy is realizing that Tremonti is becoming more and more of a threat. That might be the reason why the Financial Times today published a belated review of Tremonti's book Fear and Hope, saying in its headline, "Tremonti's Best-seller on Fear Strikes Chord." The review reports that Tremonti's actions are gaining popularity and support in Italy, and profiles his book from its weakest sides (anti-China, fortress Europe, etc.), but it does say that he calls for "a new, far-reaching Bretton Woods system," for "a strong state" and "deplores the left-wing protest movements of 1968."