Upon hearing those words my tears begin to flow. What a bunch of wankers. Food for the moon...those lunaticks
Onion farmers demanded that futures trading in onions be outlawed and in 1958 Congress passed the law (public law 85-839) making futures trading in onions illegal. The law is still on the books and there have never been any efforts to repeal it.
Take note free market geeks. Onions are still CHEAP. You are being reamed by speculators and can't even see it. No wonder they get away with it.
Um, that the price of onions was too CHEAP was the reason onions farmers got onion futures banned. The fact that onions are still cheap after 50 years must mean the the futures market had nothing to do with the cheapness after all.
Yes, it's hilarious. Basically the onion trade figured if price was obscure, they could gouge their customers more easily since the latter would not know the true price as well. There was also a knee-jerk reaction to a price collapse that year, with an alleged market manipulation. They came up with some baloney about the evils of speculators etc and managed to get the law passed. It's stayed on the books mostly due to inertia and the fact that there is no real lobby for transparent onion-pricing or hedging. And the ignorance, corruption and nepotism of legistlators, of course. The funny thing is that the volatility of the spot price actually *increased* after the futures market was outlawed. So much for the evils of speculation. Farmers got fucked for 50 years by bigger, more unpredictable price swings. No surprise to see economic illiterate corrupt non-entities Gerald Ford and Hubert Humphrey involved in this farce. http://blog.risk.net/2008/04/mr_paulson_tear_down_this_wall.html http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,891311,00.html
All hail the mighty onion, unshackled from the chains of the market manipulators, it let us towards the glorious revolution. The capitalists were crushed underfoot and a bright dawn of egalitarianism arose shining before us. Next the arugula and cauliflower freed themselves from the capitalist yoke. Then the guava and the kumquat. Hand in hand we marched towards freedom. Prices dropped, parsnips rolled freely in the streets, the people never had to pay for food again. We realized food prices had all been a scam of the evil speculators.
Pure speculation, proven in numbers and actors (read it and see the light): http://seekingalpha.com/article/782...ulation-exposed
If there was no futures market for the scammers to pike oil and gold, they would never get to these levels you #$%#$. The excuse the thieves use is 'well thats the market price' when they rip you a new one. Giant game, and they obviously have many of you fooled.