Tag Archives: Economics

How Goldman Sachs gambled on starving the world’s poor – and won

Johann Hari
If columnists came in colours, Hari wouldn't be of a grey hue
By now, you probably think your opinion of Goldman Sachs and its swarm of Wall Street allies has rock-bottomed at raw loathing. You're wrong. There's more. It turns out the most destructive of all their recent acts has barely been discussed at all. Here's the rest. This is the story of how some of the richest people in the world – Goldman, Deutsche Bank, the traders at Merrill Lynch, and more – have caused the starvation of some of the poorest people in the world, just so they could make a fatter profit.
Compare this to the more banker-friendly analysis in The Evening Standard
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The Men Who Ate The World

Evening Standard
Simon English brings a subject which we’d all rather ignore because life’s just too short…to life.
Two years ago there was a Christmas lunch in one of those trendy boutique hotels near Smithfield Market, a gathering of traders and others of ill repute with a collective urge to behave badly. The hedge fund guy sitting beside me was asked about his next plan for global domination. He’d done houses and gold – what was the new new thing? “Food,” he said between mouthfuls of lobster. “We’re piling into food. Weather’s getting weird, so there’ll be crop failures. There won’t be enough to go around.” His words turned out to be prophetic. Last week world food prices surged to a peak for the seventh month running, according to the United Nations. The bets were placed a while ago. Now it’s collection time.
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