The latest (Gold)man-made food crisis

Johann Hari writes:
"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 that 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."

Those of us who come from societies which have suffered under the yoke of imperialism are of course reminded of the all too many occasions when needless mass starvation and death have resulted from blind free-market economics and a failure to check speculation and hoarding, coupled with a disregard for the lives of the oppressed peoples. Two of the most prominent examples were the Irish potato famine of 1845-52, when about a million people died, and the Bengal famine of 1943, when nearly 3 million are estimated to have perished. Of course, in many ways the circumstances of these two tragedies were quite different, but they shared in common an attitude of complete callousness on the part of the British administration; even as masses in the colonies were dying of starvation, food exports to richer markets such as England continued unabated. Winston Churchill, British Prime Minister at the time of the Bengal famine, responded to an urgent request for food on the part of the Indian authorities by asking why, if food was so scarce, had Gandhi not died yet.

However, it is shocking to see that similar phenomena persist even into the 21st century: and the new imperialists are the financial oligarchs whose recklessness has caused such misery. Dr. Jayati Ghosh, an economist at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi and a prominent advisor to the Government of India, is one of the leading authorities on the causes underlying the recent 'global food crisis' (remember how George W Bush blamed the increasing appetites of the Indians and Chinese?). She has noted how there were no massive bailouts for the starving, and demonstrated how financial speculation was the fundamental driver, rather than any dramatic shift in actual demand or supply (interview: part 1, part 2).

The World Development Movement has more information, and is leading the campaign against food speculation. For those in the UK, please take action to help end this lunacy.