Live data from Hacker News

CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

wsj.com

1–10 of 50 posts

Re: CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

#3
This has been somewhat of a long time coming. Water's been on the financial brain for a long time now. From 2012-2018 Harvard's $39bn endowment spent $305m on California vineyards that had reliable access to groundwater[0]. It wasn't for the wine.

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-california-vineyards...

edit: correct dates.

Re: CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

#5

Oh goody! Nothing like the financialization of life-necessities to warm the cockles of the heart of big capital.

This might make it easier to quantify the effects of groundwater depletion and climate change. If we see that futures priced further out are more expensive, that says something.

In general, by the time something gets to being turned into financial instruments like this, the actual step from whatever state it was in prior to a regulated, standardized, liquid, public contract is generally good. Light is an excellent disinfectant.

Re: CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

#6

Oh goody! Nothing like the financialization of life-necessities to warm the cockles of the heart of big capital.

Water has been financialized for years in the western US. Developers buy and sell water rights from farmers, farmers own farms where they don't grow crops because the water is going to condos. Water rights are bought and sold and traded all the time.

Re: CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

#7

Oh goody! Nothing like the financialization of life-necessities to warm the cockles of the heart of big capital.

Hunting and gathering is overrated.

Yes, hunting and gathering, the obvious result of not privatizing our water.

Re: CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

#8

Oh goody! Nothing like the financialization of life-necessities to warm the cockles of the heart of big capital.

Water has been financialized for years in the western US. Developers buy and sell water rights from farmers, farmers own farms where they don't grow crops because the water is going to condos. Water rights are bought and sold and traded all the time.

Water rights have been finacialized for thousands of years. Qanats, which are underground sort of canals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qanat) were built in Persia to distribute water to agriculture and incentivized by government

"It was an Achaemenid ruling that in case someone succeeded in constructing a qanat and bringing groundwater to the surface in order to cultivate land, or in renovating an abandoned qanat, the tax he was supposed to pay the government would be waived not only for him but also for his successors for up to 5 generations"

Re: CME, Nasdaq to Launch Water Futures Contract

#10
I'm afraid that the dispersal of responsibility among many different parties who benefit under archaic "riparian rights" laws that are totally outdated and unable to be changed because no one cares enough to build the political momentum means that this issue will fester like climate change. And even more than climate, the emotions driving the issue (such as in California) are tangible and exploitable to favor incumbent users.

In the meantime as long as it continues, the situation be taken advantage of by those who know how to find holes in the system for concentrated private gain.

Post reply on HN