These are completely unregulated markets now.  Bushco has screwed up the whole financial system to benefit their favorite free marketeers.  "Arrrrh thar be free marketeeerin' to be done."  It's in that vein.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no- ...

Yes, we can surely see what the Wall Street whiz kids are wearing under their tailored, twenty-five thousand dollar, dark pin stripe suits from Barney's?

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/

the source of the differential is speculation in the commodity markets.

The speculation that prices will rise more than they actually did caused the positive price differential.
The reverse price differential occurs when speculating that prices will fall more than they do.  If the speculator is on the wrong side of this transaction when the option is exercised, he loses money. Like a bet. Not terribly mysterious.

Eliminate the insider trading and maybe markets could actually respond efficiently to human needs?  It's possible.

Maybe even worth a try.  Look at the big headlines about regulation today.  is it more lipservice?  That's my guess.  Until real human leadership returns, replacing the shaved chimp and his darth cheney handler, real reform can't happen.

No more organ grider acts please!  This time vote for a human.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

If the us will let the price of grain rise to where it needs to be, and quit giving it away we can adjust this balance of trade with the Middle East.

A bushel of corn or wheat for a barrel of oil, I will make a promise we won't cheat as Saddam did.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

Translation: President George W Bush and Vice President Richard B Cheney.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

In the Book of the Apocalypse, or the Revelation, the revelation is proceeded by some horrifying, earth-destroying visions, including the ride of the Four Horsemen.

But "apocalypse" is itself a good thing, a way to learn the truth.

Let us understand what we are saying, when we use certain words.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

It must be nurture that is to blame.  Hehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?

By Dana Milbank
    The Washington Post
    Friday 04 April 2008

    Meet Alan Schwartz, welfare recipient.

    As the chief executive of Bear Stearns, he's getting rather more public assistance than your typical welfare mom - specifically, $30 billion in federal loan guarantees to help J.P. Morgan Chase take over his firm. But then, Schwartz has had rather more than his share of suffering of late.

    As his firm collapsed, he was forced to forgo his entire 2007 bonus, leaving his compensation for the past five years at a paltry $141 million, according to Business Week. Things have become so bad that, the Wall Street Journal discovered, Schwartz has had to rent out his 7,850-square-foot home on the ninth green of a suburban New York golf course - leaving the poor fellow with only his 17-room, seven-acre home in Greenwich, his condo in Colorado and the athletic center he built for Duke University.

    Schwartz's tale of woe tugs at the heartstrings all the more because he and his colleagues at Bear Stearns were, he believes, blameless for the bankruptcy of two hedge funds and the subsequent collapse of the 85-year-old investment bank. "I am saddened," Schwartz told the Senate banking committee yesterday. He was saddened that Bear Stearns was undone by "unfounded rumors and attendant speculation," despite its impeccable balance sheet.

    "Due to the stressed condition of the credit market as a whole and the unprecedented speed at which rumors and speculation travel and echo through the modern financial media environment, the rumors and speculation became a self-fulfilling prophecy," Schwartz told the senators. "There was, simply put, a run on the bank."

    Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) asked the corporate-welfare recipient whether he shares any blame for his indigent circumstances. "Do you believe that your management team has any responsibility for the company's collapse?"

    Schwartz could think of no missteps - not even his decision to remain at a conference at the Breakers in Palm Beach while his firm was imploding. "I just simply have not been able to come up with anything, even with the benefit of hindsight," said the blameless chief executive, escorted into the hearing room by superlawyer Robert Bennett.

    Fortunately for Schwartz, he had a sympathetic audience in the banking committee, whose members have received more than $20 million in campaign contributions from the securities and investment industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. "I want the witnesses to know, and others, that as a bottom-line consideration, I happen to believe that this was the right decision," Chairman Chris Dodd (D-$5,796,000) said before hearing a single word of testimony.

    "You made the right decision," Sen. Evan Bayh (D-$1,582,000) told the regulators who worked out the loan guarantee.

    "The actions had to be done," agreed Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-$6,162,000).

    Only a minority of senators, particularly those with smaller pieces of the campaign-cash pie, dissented. "That is socialism!" railed Sen. Jim Bunning (R-$452,000). "And it must not happen again."

    To the extent the lawmakers objected to the Bear Stearns bailout, they worried that the Fed's actions would create a "moral hazard" - an economic term of art - that, as Shelby put it, "encourages firms to take excessive risk based on the expectations that they will reap all the profits while the federal government stands ready to cover any losses if they fail."

    Shelby's notion was a curiosity for the senators, who don't often spend a lot of time worrying about moral hazards. No fewer than five other senators invoked the phrase. "I think the moral hazard was minimized," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, one of the witnesses, reassured the senators.

    No moral hazard, however, would interfere with the lawmakers' compassion for the beleaguered Schwartz and his fellow witness, J.P. Morgan Chase's Jamie Dimon, who had given a combined $260,000 in political contributions in recent years - a small part of the $1.7 million their co-workers contributed in this election cycle alone. That's a sizable handout - but a good investment compared with the $30 billion federal hand-up.

    "On behalf of all of us here on this dais, our sympathies go out to your employees," Dodd told Schwartz after his opening statement. "There's no adequate way we can express our sorrow to them for what happened. Obviously, shareholders, same sort of feelings, but obviously the employees particularly. It's a particularly hard blow."

    Of course, some might consider $30 billion an adequate expression of sympathy, but Dodd was apologetic as he gently probed Schwartz. "You both will have forgotten more in the next 10 minutes than I'll ever probably understand about all of this," he told the witnesses, but didn't the irregular trading at Bear Stearns mean than "more than just rumors" were behind Bear Stearns's demise?

    "You could never get facts out as fast as the rumors," Schwartz explained. "It looked like there were people that wanted to induce panic."

    Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) reminded Schwartz that two of the firm's funds went bankrupt in 2007. "It caused concern, not only here but on Wall Street," the senator said. "Did that dramatically alter your behavior?"

    Evidently not. "I'm not sure I understand the question," Schwartz