By Frances Juhlin, Guest Columnist
It amazes me how so many people believe that whomever is the president can control the price of everyday consumer goods, such as gas and food.
I am willing to bet few have heard of the futures market, aka commodity market. Some may think it only applies to agricultural items, which is just a small portion of what exists.
Having worked in the futures business out of school for 10 years, working for large firms with two dynamic commodity traders, I can tell you most consumer goods as well as resources like oil, foreign currencies, precious metal and even now treasury bills, S&P 500 indexes are available for those who meet the financial qualifications and net worth to basically profit from these above mentioned categories.
Many in the agricultural world are known as hedgers; I specifically have experience with sugar hedgers. These people are owners and players in their industry. They can make money on the future price of any listed commodity for as
long as their purchased contract has not expired, and they would have already made their money and kissed it goodbye as they physically never take delivery of any traded commodity. Many traders don’t hold their contracts for even more than a day, as they have already made their profit and sold it off to someone else.
It also doesn’t matter if they have sold at a higher or lower price then when they bought it. It just is based on whether they are long or
short on their contract. So be prepared for higher food prices overall due to the ability to gamble on basic agricultural items.
Also climate change will increase the cost and availability to produce these items such as cattle, hogs.
Crude oil and other refined energy products will always have a increased demand among the public, but can be manipulated by those who produce it.
Next will be water, as it is a dwindling resource I predict will be up as a item to be commodified. Already many private individuals and venture capitalist own vast amount of land that are water rich. For example, the Saudis, France and Bush family are all waiting for an opportunity to cash in on what they own.
So people, wake up and do your homework. I know many are struggling to just make it, don’t have the time to do all this research and rely on being spoon-fed by numerous unreliable media sources. Unless the system is changed, everyday people will continue to struggle with the cost of living especially with income inequality continuing to expand.
Demand answers and change from your political leaders now.
The writer is a resident of Murphy.