In January 2012, we sent a joint petition letter to the rapporteur for the dossier on markets in financial instruments (MiFID) in the European Parliament, MEP Markus Ferber. More than 8000 people signed the petition!
As we were writing to a policymaker in Brussels, and referring to very technical proposals, we’ve purposefully made the language in the letter technical too.
The letter essentially calls for three things. The first is for commodity trading to be done in public instead of behind closed doors (‘over the counter’) so regulators and the public, as well as big financial players, know what’s going on. This means contracts will need to be standardised instead of complex.
The second is proper reporting by traders of how many contracts they own and whether they’re betting on rising or falling prices – so we can see what’s really going on and regulators can step in when speculators start creating bubbles.
And finally limits on how much of the market can be controlled by any one type of trader (for example hedge funds) and no loopholes. Regulators should be able to step in when speculators are swamping markets with their huge bets.
Learn more about food speculation:
 |
Food speculation explained in 7 minutes: |
AlJazeera on
food speculation: |