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.
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...