Wall Street, Not the Kremlin, Is Primarily to Blame for Rising Commodity Prices

Jacobin

Far Left

High Factuality

Wall Street, Not the Kremlin, Is Primarily to Blame for Rising Commodity Prices

The mainstream narrative is that Russia’s war is singularly to blame for the rise in commodity prices. This is wrong. Speculation on the part of investors, uninvolved in the production or distribution of goods, is primarily to blame for inflation. The Kremlin’s war did not create a Malthusian nightmare of too little food and fuel for too many people. But financial speculators in Wall Street and the City of London bet that it would, causing globa…