Chapter 780 Food Problem
785. Food problem
Food has always been the biggest problem in the world. Although there is no food crisis in China at present, according to the survey of the World Health Organization, the number of hungry people in the world has reached 1.02 billion.
What does this mean? According to the global population of 7 billion, one in seven people is still hungry, which means that one in every seven people is hungry.
Most of these people are in war-torn or "third world" countries. Although they have abundant resources, they are constantly exploited by ruthless capital, so countless people are in poverty.
International grain merchants don't care about the lives of these people. What they care about is whether the price of grain can rise sharply, and then continue to cooperate with the shorts to harvest. The grain market is up to them.
In 2008, they planned to do it on such a large scale. Unfortunately, Asia happened to have a bumper harvest at that time, so they had to stop their plan halfway through.
But this time is different. This time it is the global food shortage announced by the World Health Organization, so they think this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so international food traders united with international shorts and longs to plan a "washout".
First of all, they targeted the polar bear.
Polar bears have a vast territory and a sparse population, and food reserves have always been a weakness. So their first target is this "polar bear" that is already in its twilight years.
International food traders and international crocodiles first began to buy a large amount of polar bear food. In just one day, the food futures on the polar bear market have been swept away.
Corn, wheat, soybeans and other European staple food futures were pulled up by 15% in one day, and there was no selling order at one time.
The polar bears quickly started to "stabilize" the market. They sold a lot of reserve food to stabilize the market price, but the gains were minimal.
Take corn as an example. In just one day, the price of corn has risen from US$6.97 per bushel to US$8.5, and there is not even a single selling order in the futures market.
Seeing this, many investors also began to go long in the grain market. At the closing time of the evening, the price of corn had reached 9.87 US dollars per bushel, which made countless people taste the sweetness and continue to go long.
At this time, Liu Changcan in the company was dumbfounded. The 10 million US dollars of corn he bought had risen to more than 13 million US dollars in just a few hours. At this time, he was already trembling with fear.
This time he invested more than 30 million US dollars in corn, wheat and soybeans. Now the profit has reached 7 million US dollars. After thinking about it, Liu Changcan did not hesitate to sell it all.
Just when he cleared his position, the price of all grains began to plummet.
Before everyone reacted, the price of grain in the market had fallen back to the previous price, and corn fell even worse, directly to 5 US dollars per bushel.
The longs in the futures market were liquidated one after another, and international grain traders opened their mouths and began to cooperate with international crocodiles to eat these "leeks".
This grain fluctuation has made many countries alert, and they are planning to enter the market to stabilize their local markets.
But what they didn't expect was that the grain price rose again when the market opened the next day, which made countless people who wanted to get out of the trap cut their losses to stop the bleeding.
But this time, the grain futures fell back again when it was still 1 US dollar away from the previous price, and even fell 0.5 US dollars from the opening price.
Everyone with a discerning eye knew that this was the "banker" starting to wash the market. Although they knew it was a wash, no one dared to stay in this market. After all, this thing was too exciting and people with bad hearts couldn't stand it.
So after three repeated washes, except for the grain reserve bureaus of some countries, almost all retail investors and some institutions sold.
There was no way, the next situation was not something they could bear. Of course, there were also "daring" people who wanted to stay in and get a share, but whether they could persist depended on them.
In the Tang Mansion Villa, Zhou Xu was reporting today's situation to Tang Wen.
"Boss, today there are six major grain merchants, including 32 international crocodiles, with more than 1.8 trillion US dollars in funds, and the leverage is unknown."
Tang Wen laughed and said, "These people are really brave. They dare to play with trillions of US dollars." The madness of these people was beyond Tang Wen's expectation.
Although the grain market seems to be worth hundreds of billions of US dollars, if it needs to be fully controlled, it will require too much money.
Even the people on the European Union side have a hard time fighting against such a behemoth. Except for the crazy money-printing guy in the United States, others who want to play with such a market will undoubtedly be courting death.
The most eye-catching thing is that the six major grain merchants have all been dispatched this time. These six major grain merchants control the grain prices in Europe, North America and Africa. Except for Asia, the grain prices in other countries are basically played by these people.
These people are united, and they are not ordinary people.
The grain futures market has been completely "broken" by their manipulation. The first to collapse are the prices in Europe, America and the polar bears, which have begun to soar.
In particular, a cabbage in the polar bears can be sold for 2 US dollars, and a bag of bread has doubled. The prices in the United States and the European Union are even worse. Not only have the prices of vegetables doubled, but the prices of staple foods have at least tripled.
These international grain traders hold a large number of futures but do not put them on the market, and they also control the export of grain, causing the entire North America and Africa to fall into a "panic".
In order to survive, everyone began to hoard food, resulting in a large number of shortages and out-of-stock food on the market. Although the government has been selling reserves to stabilize the market price, many countries cannot survive for three months without imports and relying on existing reserves.
Europe and the United States have no choice but to find grain merchants to ask them to import grain, but these people insist that this year's harvest is poor and the import reserves are insufficient. Anyway, there is only one sentence "no food".
Because of the "east wind" of the World Health Organization, everyone thought that this year's global grain harvest was poor, which led to the continuous rise in grain prices.
The trade departments in Europe and the United States helped "publicize" this year's poor grain harvest because they were "taken care of" by grain merchants in advance. They are really birds of a feather.
After this group of people "harvested" in Europe and the United States, they gradually turned their attention to Asia, which is far away on the other side.
This is their biggest battlefield, but what they don't know is that coming to Asia may be their biggest mistake.