Derivatives Schemes Shift from Grain to Cattle, Stock Market Speculation Drives Meat Prices Up Worldwide

The fix is in in cattle markets worldwide.

The ethically-corrupt deregulated derivatives schemes have shifted from grain to cattle.

Cattle prices have almost doubled in 2014, and we can expect prices to continue to rise - for a time, anyway. This will create higher beef prices in grocery stores.

After more than a decade of artificially-depressed cattle prices (via trumped-up reports of BSE or "mad cow disease"), that market was prime territory for parasitic derivatives action.

The Western Producer is reporting that meat prices are rising worldwide.

The only way meat prices would be rising all around the world at the very same time is through stock market speculation and derivatives trading. This is not related (at least not primarily) to supply and demand. Rather, it is the manipulated perception of supply and demand fueling speculation.

This same stock market speculation and derivatives trading have created spikes in grain prices worldwide since 2008, which in turn caused the starvation of hundreds of millions more people around the world who could no longer afford dietary staples.

From August 8, 2010: Ceres Direct in Sagittarius on Its Way to Pluto in Capricorn and Benefiting Financially From the Starvation of the People

"One of the things coming to light under this transit is how food has become part of the derivatives scheme, creating a massive speculation bubble based on wild gambling on agricultural commodities prices. In 2008, this speculation drove food prices up (wheat by 80 percent, maize by 90 percent, rice by 320 percent) driving 200 million more people into starvation.

Finance schmucks are gambling on the price of food rising which fuels rabid speculation. And as their money games and various manipulations cause food prices to rise unnaturally, people around the world starve, suffer horribly, watch their children and loved ones withering and dying - all to keep the scam going and the bucks rolling after the mortgage scheme crashed and burned...

A lot of things have been blamed for the rising cost of food - fuel costs, supply problems, overpopulation, cash crops, diverting food crops to create ethanol. These all contribute.

But a major factor, probably the major factor, not often mentioned is the derivatives scheme on food and resulting price jumps. It was really this that spiked prices to the point that 200 million more people could not afford to fill their stomachs. This was the basis for the 2008 food riots in 30 countries. Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, Mozambique...

When Haitians were eating biscuits made from clay and lard to stop their gnawing hunger, they had these speculators, their clients and the people who allowed (and continue to allow) the deregulation of the financial system to thank...

Ceres in Gemini, the Heat Wave, and Media Manipulation of Grain Futures

Ceres, the dwarf planet associated with grains, cereals, and the fertility of the Earth, is transiting Gemini (media), and news stories about food and agriculture need to be on our radar screens.

With Ceres currently conjunct Jupiter and the South Node of the Moon in Gemini, understanding the ways in which these news stories are shaping, directing, and manipulating public opinion is important throughout the transit. Ceres entered Gemini June 24 where it will remain until September 26. It will retrograde back into Gemini December 4 until April 25, 2013.

With the current nodal axis, manipulated news stories (Gemini South Node) can too easily become truth (Sagittarius North Node).

The media campaign pushing for public acceptance of genetically modified alfalfa is currently underway, as is a series of heat wave-related crop failure/food price increase stories.

A record heat wave swept across most of the United States and Canada from the end of June through the first week of July, continuing in Canada to mid-July. This has resulted in widespread speculation on crop failures in the U.S. Midwest, particularly of corn and soybean crops.

The United States is the world's primary producer of corn, and it's big business, used in many different food products, for livestock feed, and for ethanol production for which there are mandatory quotas that must be filled. 

It is estimated that one-third of the corn crop has been damaged or destroyed in 18 U.S. states by the June/July heat wave and a lack of precipitation at pollination time, a crucial point in the corn's development.

This Saskatchewan corn survived the heat.

Photos: Willow

News stories across mainstream and alternative media are declaring that these crop failures will result in already-inflated food prices rising even higher.

The truth is, the media is manufacturing cause and effect.

Crop failures of this magnitude will not create an immediate rise in the price of food and groceries. The world has grain and food stores in reserve. No matter how devastating the current corn crop loss in the U.S., no matter how the reserves may potentially take a hit, the early failure of a crop - long before it is time to harvest and sell - will not cause an immediate rise in food prices. As far as the physical supply is concerned, it would require a longer-term trickle-down effect.

What a major crop failure will create, with the media's help, is an immediate psychological state among the public and among those playing the stock market that will create higher prices. This is a psychological bubble, an expectation that prices will rise, which creates that very effect.

The primary driver in stock markets around the world these days is not the supply and demand of physical commodities. It is mass psychology and the manipulation of that mass psychology, often through media. If people believe the price of something is going to go up - due, in this case, to media reports of heat and drought causing crop failures in the U.S. Midwest - they will be primed for price increases. They will act as if the price is going to go up, buying and selling accordingly, and this activity will then drive the prices up, no matter if the physical supply is in imminent danger of being decreased substantially or not.

Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer in T-Square Lock Down within the Uranus-Pluto Square Series - Part Two

I’ve written about the importance of the upcoming Uranus in Aries – Pluto in Capricorn square series in relation to Canada's corporate chart, as well as this June's Venus Transit in Gemini falling exactly on Canada’s Venus placement:

From March 8, 2012: Canada's Uranus-Sun in Cancer in T-Square Lock Down within the Uranus-Pluto Square Series

Transiting Uranus and Pluto acting intensively on the Uranus-Sun in Cancer in Canada's astrological chart are forging deep, fractious changes in this country while the astrological transits are used by those in positions of power to continue toward a vision that I do not wish to see become a reality in this country. The agenda of the current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, and his government, merged within broader global agenda, lead in a direction that, despite the government's claimed majority, most Canadians do not wish to follow.

Harper-Style Restructuring and Global Governance

In October, 2011, Conservative agriculture minister Gerry Ritz introduced a bill that would strip the Canadian Wheat Board of much of its power, making it a voluntary institution for farmers. Though the bill was challenged in court as illegal, it was passed in December, 2011.

The Canadian Wheat Board was established by Canadian Parliament in 1935 to help offset the devastation of Canada’s farmers by the Great Depression. Since then, the Wheat Board has marketed and sold all the wheat and barley in Canada for Canadian farmers, providing a stable and guaranteed price from year-to-year.

Harper sold the bill as an increase in individual choice for farmers, who can now choose to market and sell their own grain rather than going through the Wheat Board, and it's true that some farmers welcome this - at this point.

In effect, though, what Harper and his government have done is bust the union. Without the collective power the Wheat Board had on the global market with the pool of Canadian wheat and barley, it will likely not be able to secure the same level of prices. The Harper Conservatives’ hog-tying of the Wheat Board at this time leaves both the Board and individual farmers open to the wild fluctuations of price within the global grain market.

Canada’s grain industry has just been served up on a silver platter to multi-national agribusiness.

The global grain market is currently destabilized. From August 8, 2010: Ceres Direct in Sagittarius on Its Way to Pluto in Capricorn and Benefitting Financially From the Starvation of the People After the U.S. mortgage collapse in 2008, investors were looking for a place to move their money. What they found was the relatively stable grain market, and soon grain prices were on the roller coaster that is the derivatives market. Investors were betting on the rise in the price of grain, and as speculation grew, prices rose. As the price of basic grain staples skyrocketed worldwide, people could no longer afford food and began to starve and riot.

Coincidentally, flooding of the world breadbaskets over the past three years, including in the Canadian prairie provinces two years running, has ensured dips in supply (or at least the appearance of dips in supply) in order to further push grain prices up. This year, it will likely be drought creating grain shortages after Canada experienced a surreal winter of record-breaking high temperatures and little snowfall.


- Flooding of farmland near Estevan, Saskatchewan in the spring of 2011 (Photo used with permission) -

For the short-sighted, a single farmer selling his wheat for the inflated prices created by a speculation bubble sounds great - for a year or two. But without the stabilized prices and collective power provided by the Wheat Board, that same farmer will have no protection from the “free” market once prices take a nose dive.

As we are now officially entering a Uranus in Aries square series to Pluto that we last experienced during the Great Depression - complete with wildly destabilized and deregulated markets - now is probably the worst time to reduce the stabilizing clout of the Canadian Wheat Board. Well, it’s the worst time for the country and its farmers. It’s a great time for agribusiness corporations who now find the Canadian grain industry ripe for the plucking and for the manipulating.

Swiss-based commodities trader Glencore PLC and U.S.-based agribusiness corporation Cargill have already been sniffing around Canadian grain handler Viterra in potential takeover position. This follows the hostile takeover bid of the Saskatchewan Potash Corporation (used to make fertilizer) by English-Australian mining corporation BHP Billiton. That takeover bid was blocked by the Feds, though Saskatchewan Liberal MP Ralph Goodale recently called the Harper government negligent for not fulfilling a promise to clarify foreign investment rules after that potash battle. From November 13, 2010: Ceres and Pluto in the Headlines: You Only Want Me For My Potash

Cooperation has always been a major aspect of the survival and success of independent farmers. Now, Harper and his government have set up individual farmers, many blinded by the dollar signs of an inflated, derivatives-fuelled grain market, against huge multi-national corporations. Guess whose interests prevail over the long run in that set-up?

But these prices are going to last forever, right? Just like the housing bubble.

The Canadian housing industry is currently experiencing inflationary real estate prices with most Canadians in urban centres paying more than 50% of their incomes to maintain their mortgages and related costs. Interest rates are being kept unnaturally low to entice new buyers with rates that will often increase after three to five years (sound familiar?). As was the case in the U.S. housing market, which was intentionally set up to collapse and pay off in hedge fund insurance policies, inflated Canadian mortgages are also now being hedged to the teeth.

The Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, a Canadian Crown corporation, is currently hedging $541 billion in mortgages, nearing its ceiling of $600 billion. This ceiling was only recently raised from $450 billion in 2008 in response to the mortgage crisis and economic collapses worldwide. The Canadian banks handing out loans for mortgages have now moved en masse to buy CMHC insurance so they can then bundle and sell the mortgages to investors – a practise that was common in the United States in the lead-up to the housing collapse but relatively rare in Canada up to this point.

The Harper Conservatives have floated the idea that, with the release of its upcoming budget March 29, Canadians should get ready for sweeping, transformative changes. We all know what “sweeping, transformative changes” the Global Governor set bring, particularly the neo-conservative branch.

The upcoming budget is being likened to a Brian Mulroney-style vision. Mulroney is the ex-Progressive Conservative Prime Minister who signed the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, one of the first steps in carving up the country, its resources, and its people in offering to One World Government.

Canadians can expect the slash-and-burn erosion of social programs, which has up until now been kept somewhat in check via minority governments, to move into high gear with this budget. From erosion, we move to grand-scale, undemocratic, semi-legal dismantling, as has been seen with the Canadian Wheat Board.

The two-tiered health care system Harper has ushered in will be cemented into place with more privatized care creating one system for the rich and one (underfunded) system for the not-so-rich.

Remaining protection of national industries will be gradually dismantled, opening Canada to more foreign ownership. Resources will be divvied up to the highest international bidder with no view of conservation or stewardship, and water will probably now officially be put on the table.

And of course, the war machine will roll on, mostly unhindered.

Already, Harper is angering the provinces by making unilateral decisions that affect them without consultation. His "tough on crime" bill has dumped billions of dollars in extra costs on the provinces with, of course, little focus on addressing the actual roots and cycles of criminal behaviour.

Harper is also currently working to raise the age of retirement from 65 to 67 to reduce costs - but don't worry, Baby Boomers! This doesn't take effect until 2020 when most of you will be safely on the Old Age Security rolls, so you can keep voting for old Steve. The passing of bucks to the younger generations continues.

The conditions stemming from the orchestrated economic collapses worldwide will be used to implement the vision.

This has been the trajectory for decades, though Bilderberg-approved Harper was unable to fully bring about his part of the Grand Vision within the minority governments he won in 2006 and 2008, and it has been simmering, simmering, biding its time. Now, Harper gets to work the Uranus-Pluto squares to push full speed ahead in choreographed lock-step with the plans being unfurled worldwide. The majority government Harper and his Conservatives won in May, 2011 ensures that Harper is now free to do exactly as he sees fit. The inconvenience of Parliament and the democratic process can officially be shaken off his pant leg, and he can implement the Grand Vision like a good middle manager of the Global Government would.

The hatred and contempt Harper holds for both the Canadian people and Canadian institutions, apparent throughout his stymied run as leader of minority governments, can now come out full force. This is a man used to making unilateral decisions, following the buck, following the global leaders. The will of the people is a quaint concept to “leaders” like him.

Oh, but about that majority.

The Harper Conservatives have one little problem on their hands, one little hitch.

It seems that their majority win is suspect. A scandal is a-brewing. There are calls coming from all corners of Canada for an independent inquiry into the possibility of election fraud.

Tens of thousands of complaints have come in to Elections Canada related to robocalls – automated telephone calls – made on behalf of the Conservative party around the time of last May’s election. The calls gave voters misleading information, telling them their polling stations had been changed.

The Conservatives have pleaded ignorance. Ex-Reform Party leader Preston Manning has spoken out publicly in indignance, too, about this type of fraud - which leads to an interesting connection. Preston Manning was once leader of the uber right-wing Reform Party, which morphed into the uber right-wing Canadian Alliance. Harper became leader of the Canadian Alliance in 2002, forming the Official Opposition in Canadian Parliament. The Canadian Alliance and the slightly more right-of-centre Progressive Conservative parties then merged, and that merger spawned the current Conservative Party, of which Harper is now leader.

On March 5, as Mercury and Uranus formed the initial conjunction in Aries that will be repeated March 18 and April 22, one of Canada’s national newspapers, The Globe and Mail, published a letter from John Fryer, adjunct professor at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Administration, talking about a campaign school he attended in 2010 at the (Preston Manning-founded) Manning Centre for Building Democracy:

“Intrigued, I signed up for the three-day event. Topics covered included voter identification. Discussion ensued about suppression techniques. Instructors explained voter suppression tactics were borrowed from those used by the U.S. Republican Party. Many kinds of suppression calls were canvassed. Another instructor gave detailed explanations of how robocalls worked, techniques for recording messages, plus costs… He distributed his business card upon request.

Instructors made it clear that robocalling and voter suppression were an acceptable and normal part of winning election campaigns.”

During the cardinal Grand Cross of June 2011, Brigette DePape, a young woman participating in the Canadian Senate Page Program, held up a sign during the throne speech that read, “Stop Harper!” In a later interview with CTV, DePape said, "Harper's agenda is disastrous for this country and for my generation."

DePape spoke for the majority of Canadians with this action.

Canada is set up under a form of democracy that is not truly representative of the people's political will. This form of democracy is referred to as “first past the post,” meaning whatever candidate wins the most votes in a riding wins that seat in Parliament. If the Conservatives win 40 percent of votes in a riding, the New Democrats win 35 percent, the Liberals win 20 percent, and the Green Party wins 5 percent, the winner takes all, and it is a Conservative seat, despite the fact that only a minority of people voted Conservative.

A truer form of democracy, proportional representation, uses the total percentages of popular vote to determine the make-up of seats within Canadian Parliament. If you win 40% of the popular vote, you receive 40% of the seats in Parliament.

Considering the merger of the ultra right-wing Canadian Alliance with the generally more moderate Progressive Conservatives, my guess is that even some conservative-minded people within that party do not support the current Harper agenda. What this man, what this government, what all the lock-step governments worldwide are steamrolling ahead with is disastrous. It’s happening at both warp-speed (Uranus in Aries), before Canadians can really get their minds wrapped around what is going on, and also as a slow motion train wreck unfolding before our eyes (Pluto in Capricorn).

And again, the awareness and sustained action of the people who oppose these agenda is required and will be required acutely throughout the Uranus-Pluto square series.

Ceres Stationing Retrograde in Aries and Why the Armies Aren't Fighting the Famine

“If only armies could fight famine.”

This was the segue between two news stories on one of Canada’s private broadcasters, CTV, a couple days ago. These words were spoken in that practised, low and authoritative “anchor voice” by the carefully coiffed and dramatically rueful news anchor. The first story was about Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan. The second was about the famine in East Africa.

Here’s a big news flash that didn’t make the broadcast: they can. Armies can fight famine. There's no reason why troops around the world could not be dropping massive quantities of food, water and medical supplies right this minute to the hundreds of thousands of people starving to death in Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and other African nations including Djibouti, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda.

Instead, Somalia is one of the six countries currently being bombed by the United States.

This famine has not come as a surprise. Many areas have not had rain for two years. Food has been scarce for two years. This was a long time coming, and the failure to act at every possible juncture up to this point is what has pushed it to the verge of catastrophe. It’s the lack of direct action from our so-called leaders that has allowed people to slip into misery and hell and starvation, and it’s a continued lack of action that is causing people to die.

And instead of direct action (Aries) now, we have the mainstream media manufacturing a reality for the viewing public where the hands of the Armed Forces and those who give their orders are tied, where nothing can be done in time.

It’s the same manufactured helplessness that is worked up after all humanitarian crises these days, and it’s false.

Armies can fight famine. Armies can get food and water to starving people. But it takes strong will and decisive action, and those handing down their orders choose not to deploy them in these ways. This is the Plutonic point that needs to be driven home for the viewing public. As long as the mainstream public swallows the story that there is nothing that can be done, nothing will be done.

Asteroid of agriculture, grains and fertility of the Earth Ceres is stationing retrograde (July 26) at zero Aries - that very potent first degree of the zodiac. It just passed through the anaretic (29th) degree of Pisces – related to the cyclical famines and plagues brought down on and allowed to happen to humanity. Ceres will be back in Pisces August 10 until January 19.

Ceres on the first degree of Aries requires direct action. Move. Take action. Do something effective. Hit your mark. It requires quick decisions and basic actions to get the food to the people. In Aries (soldiers), it requires an army.

But Ceres in Aries is square Pluto in Capricorn right now within Cardinal Grand Cross formation. Pluto in Capricorn relates to the rotten-to-the-core corruption of our hierarchical power structures. It relates to a top-heavy bureaucracy so bloated, dysfunctional and out of touch that quick, direct, effective actions (Aries) are just not a product of its machinations.

The hierarchies (Capricorn) are deadly (Pluto) in their illegitimacy.

Instead of food and water drops, the mainstream media broadcasts news of Canada’s useless "International Co-Operation Minister" Bev Oda making a useless official visit to Kenya complete with useless photo ops and useless clichéd statements spoken into the cameras.

Oda spent her time announcing the $50 million aid package that will ostensibly show up sometime while starving children take their last breaths.

The failure of leadership is so extreme it has taken on an Orwellian flavour as the propagandists on the nightly news continue to prop up its authority, manufacturing a reality that holds nothing and no one accountable.

Jupiter in Aries Square Pluto in Capricorn: Uprisings Are Expected. The Global Governors Are Waiting. Freedom is a Complex Dance.

In the thick of last fall's Venus retrograde in Scorpio, we had a very important conjunction of the North Node, Ceres and Pluto in early Capricorn. This conjunction flew under the radar for many astrologers, but in fact, these two dwarf planets coming together with the North Node was pretty big news.

Ceres and Pluto have a long and hardcore history between them. Pluto kidnapped Ceres' daughter and dragged her off to the Underworld to be his forced bride. Ceres responded by making the Earth barren and cold. And things have been pretty rocky ever since.

Ceres, asteroid of cereals, grains and the fertility of the Earth, coming together with Lord of the Underworld Pluto on the successful forward path (North Node) in October 2010 dug up plenty of information about the way our food sources and the growing of food, in general, are being manipulated. This remains a potent theme for the entire 18-month Venus cycle.

At the root (Pluto), the advance of the corporate oligarchy is coming about to a large extent through the manipulation of our food (Ceres). This relates to the implanting of genetically modified material into our food supplies by massive chemical corporations more at home producing chemical warfare for the military industrial complex than staples for your kitchen. And it also relates to the purposeful inflation of food prices through manufactured shortages and rampant speculation.

Here is the real Plutonic dirt: the exorbitant inflation on food is, in big part, a result of criminally deregulated derivatives markets and the stampeding of capital, beginning in 2008, from the collapsing U.S. mortgage scheme into a generally much more stable arena: food.

From an August article on the subject:

"One of the things coming to light under this transit is how food has become part of the derivatives scheme, creating a massive speculation bubble based on wild gambling on agricultural commodities prices. In 2008, this speculation drove food prices up (wheat by 80 percent, maize by 90 percent, rice by 320 percent) driving 200 million more people into starvation...

A lot of things have been blamed for the rising cost of food - fuel costs, supply problems, overpopulation, cash crops, diverting food crops to create ethanol. These all contribute.

But a major factor, probably the major factor, not often mentioned is the derivatives scheme on food and resulting price jumps. It was really this that spiked prices to the point that 200 million more people could not afford to fill their stomachs. This was the basis for the 2008 food riots in 30 countries. Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, Mozambique...

When Haitians were eating biscuits made from clay and lard to stop their gnawing hunger, they had these speculators, their clients and the people who allowed (and continue to allow) the deregulation of the financial system to thank...

Once the mortgage scam collapsed, the ticks had to go looking for a new dog. They found one with our food supply. These speculators bet on the price of food rising, and the higher the price of staple goods like wheat, rice, corn, soybeans the bigger the profits for the speculators and their clients...

From an article by Johann Hari "How Goldman Sachs gambled on starving the world's poor - and won":

"Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldman's pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market, and they were looking for somewhere else to make their stash of cash swell. They started to buy massive amounts of derivatives based on food: they reckoned that food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded onto this ground and decided to buy, buy, buy.

So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for contracts based on food massively rose - which meant the all-rolled-into-one price for food on people's plates massively rose. The starvation began.

The food price was now being set by speculation, rather than by real food. The hedge fund manager Michael Masters estimated that even on the regulated exchanges in the US - which take up a small part of the business - 64 percent of all wheat contracts were held by speculators with no interest whatever in real wheat. They owned it solely to inflate the price and sell it on.""

Now, in early 2011, following massive flooding and crop failures in the spring and summer, prices have been pushed even higher than 2008 levels.

The recent uprisings in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt are pretty simple, really: people can't afford to buy food. Or anything else. They're hungry. They're unemployed. They're desperate. They see little future.

It's a common refrain, a pre-planned sociological theme across the globe.

And the people are rightfully fingering corrupt government structures - more corporate interests than representatives of the people.

Jupiter in Aries is squaring Pluto in Capricorn, exact February 25, blazing the same trail Uranus will follow when it enters Aries March 11. At that point, we will have the planet of rebellion, revolution and sudden change (Uranus) locked into a series of seven squares to Pluto in Capricorn (consolidation of power among the corporate-sponsored Global Governors) until 2015.

There's only so much pressure and deprivation that can be tolerated. Those applying the pressure and deprivation know this. It's a matter of survival.

Uprisings of the people are expected. And the Global Governors wait to use them to their advantage.

As the mainstream media-imbibing public looks on, talking about the spread of democracy in Egypt (ha) or humanity standing up and saying no more, we are prescribed the usual solution brought to us by United States fighter planes, helicopters, tanks and artillery.

The Canadian and U.S. middle managers Harper and Obama bleat the same interchangeable words into the cameras. We no longer have even the appearance of two separate countries.

The Global Governors ride the wave of public revolt up to the peak and take their places atop the same corrupt hierarchies with a slightly new cast of characters.

Freedom is what we're here for, it's true. But it isn't happening overnight. We grind it out, wriggling out of the shackles together, step-by-step, each revolt injecting fresh energy, inspiration and movement for the longer-term dynamics of Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn. We wiggle through the cracks and make them wider.

It's exhausting, devastating to know what is going on, to live accordingly amongst people who go on as if nothing is amiss, who don't really give a good Goddamn unless it directly affects them and their's. They don't see that it already does. That a pre-set history is in danger of repeating. That the last time Uranus in Aries squared Pluto we had the rise of the Third Reich leading into the second World War. That their willful ignorance gives it all a pass.

But we have to stay with it. We have to maintain the Plutonic X-ray vision, make the connections, share them and gain strength from the body of knowledge, from the spirit rising from it. We find our openings within the vise-like Pluto in Capricorn grip - and take them.

And we thank our fellow human beings in Tunisia, Algeria, Egypt and around the world for doing just that.

We'll be ready when it's our turn.

Ceres Direct in Sagittarius on Its Way to Pluto in Capricorn and Benefitting Financially From the Starvation of the People

Asteroid Goddess of agriculture and grains Ceres has just completed a retrograde period and turned direct in Sagittarius. From this point, she hitches up her skirt and starts on a steely-eyed mission to conjunct (and confront) Pluto Rx in early Capricorn October 19, during this fall's Venus in Scorpio retrograde.

The dirty Pluto in Capricorn dealings being pushed up into collective awareness related to Ceres' territory of grains, cereals and food production are enough to make her hair stand on end, let me tell you. And we've only just begun.

Ceres came within one degree of a conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn in April of this year. Getting that much of a whiff of what Pluto was uncovering in that sign was all the nefariousness she could stomach at the time, going retrograde for three months and re-entering Sagittarius to get some distance. Now at 20 degrees, Ceres turns direct and gathers all the Sagittarian faith and courage about her she can for the unpleasant trek and meeting with Pluto this October.

One of the things coming to light under this transit is how food has become part of the derivatives scheme, creating a massive speculation bubble based on wild gambling on agricultural commodities prices. In 2008, this speculation drove food prices up (wheat by 80 percent, maize by 90 percent, rice by 320 percent) driving 200 million more people into starvation.

Finance schmucks are gambling on the price of food rising which fuels rabid speculation. And as their money games and various manipulations cause food prices to rise unnaturally, people around the world starve, suffer horribly, watch their children and loved ones withering and dying - all to keep the scam going and the bucks rolling after the mortgage scheme crashed and burned.

This is the world we're living in.

A lot of things have been blamed for the rising cost of food - fuel costs, supply problems, overpopulation, cash crops, diverting food crops to create ethanol. These all contribute.

But a major factor, probably the major factor, not often mentioned is the derivatives scheme on food and resulting price jumps. It was really this that spiked prices to the point that 200 million more people could not afford to fill their stomachs. This was the basis for the 2008 food riots in 30 countries. Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, Mozambique...

When Haitians were eating biscuits made from clay and lard to stop their gnawing hunger, they had these speculators, their clients and the people who allowed (and continue to allow) the deregulation of the financial system to thank.

The helplessness of being starved for the financial gain of other people. The cruelty of it. The injustice. It makes me go weak. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this level of corruption. I can never quite get myself to that level of deviousness, and I'm sure I'm not doing this subject justice. I was never a fan of economic theory.

From an article by Johann Hari "How Goldman Sachs gambled on starving the world's poor - and won":

"Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldman's pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market, and they were looking for somewhere else to make their stash of cash swell. They started to buy massive amounts of derivatives based on food: they reckoned that food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded onto this ground and decided to buy, buy, buy.

So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for contracts based on food massively rose - which meant the all-rolled-into-one price for food on people's plates massively rose. The starvation began.

The food price was now being set by speculation, rather than by real food. The hedge fund manager Michael Masters estimated that even on the regulated exchanges in the US - which take up a small part of the business - 64 percent of all wheat contracts were held by speculators with no interest whatever in real wheat. They owned it solely to inflate the price and sell it on."

The idea originally behind the futures market for crops was a hedging of investment for farmers and others directly involved in agricultural production. A farmer could agree to sell his crop in a future month at a certain price, thus locking in a price. If the farmer had a great year and the price was very high, he might lose some money. But if he had a poor year, the contract ensured that he would still earn a certain price, hedging his investment.

Because of an absolutely criminal level of deregulation, people who have no stake in agriculture at all - Wall Street suits who have never gotten a speck of dirt under their manicured fingers - can now buy these contracts, then upselling them to someone else who then upsells them to someone else, etc.

Once the mortgage scam collapsed, the ticks had to go looking for a new dog. They found one with our food supply. These speculators bet on the price of food rising, and the higher the price of staple goods like wheat, rice, corn, soybeans the bigger the profits for the speculators and their clients.

Floods, droughts and hailed-out crops create further shortages in supply, and although there seems to be only the slightest connection between the real, physical supply of food and the pricing schemes (apparently, only about two percent of commodities futures now end with a real exchange of goods), this also causes prices to rise.

If you are a person who believes weather is being manipulated, it is not much of a stretch to see a connection between so-called natural disasters and the manipulation of food supply and pricing, ensuring the speculation pays off - at least for now.

Pakistan's breadbasket has now been flooded. Sixteen hundred people are confirmed dead, and 650,000 homes have been destroyed. Four million people now face homelessness.

On a smaller scale, Saskatchewan and Alberta (Canada's breadbasket) have been flooded and hailed this summer causing massive crop failures.

By artificially inflating food prices through speculation and manipulations of supply, the price for the crop no longer has any relation to what it is worth in a real-world marketplace - or to what people can pay. There is no consideration of the fact that these are staples that people need to live.

And it sounds as if the food derivatives game has been pushed to its limits at this point.

Paul B. Farrell at MarketWatch is warning that this bubble is going to burst in the very near future:

"Commodity ETFs are rapidly becoming a malicious virus breeding chaos in the global markets pricing all commodities: food, farm lands, metals, oil, natural gas, livestock, water and other natural resources are the assets under commodity derivatives and their ETFs, pricing that's now controlled more by Wall Street speculators than the weather, adding wild swings in volatility and trillions in global derivative risks."

As is generally the case these days, there is a "get your's while the getting's good" ethic. This is a parasitic system that has been designed to collapse after the speculators have made their money and drained their host. The fact that they are playing with people's lives never enters the equation.

We're seeing the same speculation bubbles being overinflated to their ultimate conclusions that we saw sustained for so long during Pluto in Sagittarius.

This speculation in food (Ceres) will more than likely build during Ceres' transit of the last ten degrees of Sagittarius, but once it re-enters Capricorn and conjuncts Pluto in October, things will be stripped to the bare reality on this front.

I'm thinking about the Ethiopian woman in the Johann Hari article who said her children stopped growing and she felt that someone had poured battery acid in her stomach as she starved.

"We can't go through that another time. Please - do anything you can to make sure they never, never do that to us again."