51–60 of 72 posts
Its common to see this hot money concept in a lot of farming. I cant tell you how many farmers I know who have no money in drought seasons, but they bought a Mercedes in the good years.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you want to manipulate a market that big you’d better have very deep pockets or be willing to take a very large loss. It’s easy to drive up the price of something, buy lots of it. It’s easy to drop the price of something, sell down your stockpile. The only way to make money by buying lots of something and then selling loads of it later is by successfully predicting that future demand will be higher than current de…
Or buy most of crop that is the right size for market demand. Will people pay 5p more for a chocolate bar instead of going without, for sure. So, buy all the chocolate. If there's no one else to buy from and you have no morals then you've won. I think someone did this with a large portion (several tenths) of the [European?] cocoa bean supply.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Thursday
Silver Thursday was an event that occurred in the United States in the silver commodity markets on Thursday, March 27, 1980, following the Hunt brothers' attempt at cornering the silver market. A subsequent steep fall in silver prices led to panic on commodity and futures exchanges.
Porsche makes more VW stock available to desperate short-sellers
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2008/oct/29/vw-volkswag...
I cook at home and, for comparison, I usually buy vanilla at Penzey's. A large bottle of vanilla cost $28, maybe less, and it lasts me a year or so. A month ago, I went for a new bottle and it was listed at $50.
I'm getting near the end of the half-pound of Mexican vanilla I bought just before prices went totally nuts (that packet of beans cost me $55). Not sure what I'm going to do when I run out. One factor not mentioned in the article is the increased demand from industrial users. Food processors having been trying to replace artificial flavors with natural, and there isn't enough vanilla to go around. Global production i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, but vanillin (C8H8O3) is very dominant (even in natural vanilla) and, as natural vanilla is cooked, a lot of the other compounds tend to be destroyed.
Destroyed? Broken down to other chemicals, surely. Or are we cooking at 10000K.
This is a pretty fascinating article even though it is frustratingly superficial. It seems like there are a bunch of different threads here that would benefit from exploration; the behavioral economics thread; the anthropology thread, the climate change thread ( notice how weather has changed the price repeatedly in the article ), and the producer/consumer disjunction thread. Maybe the author should do some more fiel…
It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to realize this and take appropriate action when they gain a lot of wealth. Seems like common and easily accessible knowledge at this point. I suspect it's a form of evolutionary wealth redistribution that's built in to the human genome.
This is a pretty fascinating article even though it is frustratingly superficial. It seems like there are a bunch of different threads here that would benefit from exploration; the behavioral economics thread; the anthropology thread, the climate change thread ( notice how weather has changed the price repeatedly in the article ), and the producer/consumer disjunction thread. Maybe the author should do some more fiel…
> People with a sudden access of money will often splurge on bizarre displays of wealth, sports cars and motorcycles, fancy clothing they rarely wear; etc. Often not because they have a long-held desire for the toys they are buying but because they have a cultural template of what wealth and success should look like that they are trying to act out. It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to re…
This is a pretty fascinating article even though it is frustratingly superficial. It seems like there are a bunch of different threads here that would benefit from exploration; the behavioral economics thread; the anthropology thread, the climate change thread ( notice how weather has changed the price repeatedly in the article ), and the producer/consumer disjunction thread. Maybe the author should do some more fiel…
> People with a sudden access of money will often splurge on bizarre displays of wealth, sports cars and motorcycles, fancy clothing they rarely wear; etc. Often not because they have a long-held desire for the toys they are buying but because they have a cultural template of what wealth and success should look like that they are trying to act out. It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to re…
Who says they're not self-aware?
The article explicitly mentions it's unsafe to take the large amounts of cash traveling, which it notes "are usually a day’s trek away". It's not uncommon for developing-world banks to be untrustworthy, as well.
Spending it instead of having it stolen or being murdered for it might be the right approach here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People with a sudden access of money will often splurge on bizarre displays of wealth, sports cars and motorcycles, fancy clothing they rarely wear; etc. Often not because they have a long-held desire for the toys they are buying but because they have a cultural template of what wealth and success should look like that they are trying to act out. It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to re…
> It's astounding that many people still aren't self-aware enough to realize this and take appropriate action when they gain a lot of wealth. Who says they're not self-aware? The article explicitly mentions it's unsafe to take the large amounts of cash traveling, which it notes "are usually a day’s trek away". It's not uncommon for developing-world banks to be untrustworthy, as well. Spending it instead of having it…