Harvesting Profits and Power Despite the Human Toll.
In Roman society, just before the birth of Christ, lived the richest Roman of Julius Caeser's day. His name was Marcus Licinus Crassus; his passion for wealth rivaling even that of modern day banksters. How did he amass his millions? Well, to quote Plutarch, "he got [his riches] by fire and rapine, making his advantage of the public calamities."
You see, there was no such thing as a fire department in the Rome of Crassus' day. Once a fire started, it could level a whole neighborhood. So, Crassus took it upon himself to organize a fire brigade. Once the call of fire was heard, his men would rush to the blaze; however, once they arrived, the stood idly by while Crassus haggled with the frantic owners. If the owners agreed to sell cheaply enough, he ordered his men to stop the blaze. If the owners wanted a better price, he and his fire fighters left.
That's just one of the many calamity-induced schemes Crassus created, making him the wealthiest, and one of the most, if not, thee most powerful men in Rome.
Fast forward to present day, and Crassus looks like Mother Theresa in comparison to the greedy corporate bastards in power. Well, at least Crassus didn't start the fires (as far as we know). The same can't be said for those who think they rule the world in 2011. That's right...some say the Army Corp of Engineers flooded the land to drive down prices. Remember, because the floods were man made, insurance companies are refusing to insure these people, or they're claiming June 1, as the start date; therefore, anyone who bought flood insurance after May 1, 2011, are not covered.
Some river bottom property owners say they received a letter from the Army Corps of Engineers' Kansas City district office asking them if they want to sell their land.That's not all. Ann Barnhardt of Barnhardt Capital Management, Inc. reports that George Soros, through Ospraie, is buying up farmland, too.
KMBC's Micheal Mahoney reported that the letter is angering some of the people who received it because some of them are fighting for their land from a flood they believe the Corps caused.
The letter reads: "The Corps is currently seeking willing sellers." It is part of a 15-year-old corps plan to buy up river property or obtain easements.
1. File this one under “Now It All Makes Sense”. A Missouri farming and ranching contact just got off a conference call wherein he was informed that the federal government is sending out letters to all of the flooded out farmers in the Missouri River flood plain and bottoms notifying them that the Army Corps of Engineers will offer to BUY THEIR LAND.Links:
Intentionally flood massive acreage of highly productive farmland. Destroy people’s communities and homes. Catch them while they are desperate and afraid and then swoop in and buy the ground cheap. Those evil sons of bitches.
2. Speaking of evil sons of bitches, George Soros appears to be “investing” in farmland through the same puppet company that he used to get into the grain elevator and fertilizer business. The company is called Ospraie Capital Management and is buying up farmland in a joint venture with Teays River Investments as a partner.
Okay. Here’s the connection. This Ospraie outfit was a hedge fund specializing in commodities that was started and run by some cocky child who didn’t know how to trade bear markets and got his butt kicked into next week in the grain market of 2008. He also lost a fortune trying to trade RARE EARTH METALS. In fact, it was so bad that he had to shut his fund down because he had promised his investors that he would give them all of their investment money back if the fund lost more than 30% in one year.
But it appears that Soros swooped in and saved the day because this Ospraie is the “co-investor” with Soros that bought the remnants of ConAgra’s trading operation and renamed it . . . Gavilon. In the industry, it is widely acknowledged that Ospraie IS Soros.
As you probably remember, Gavilon just recently bought both DeBruce Grain out of Kansas City and the biggest grain elevator company in the Pacific Northwest, thus making Soros (who is the money behind Gavilon through both his own Soros Fund Management AND his de facto control of Ospraie) the third-largest grain company in the U.S. with 280 million bushels of storage capacity, behind only Archer Daniels Midland (542 million bushels storage capacity) and Cargill (344 million bushels storage capacity).
Bottom line: . Please also note that the hotlink citation above is dated June 26, 2009. My contact says this has been going on for two years – and also remember what I told you about farmland prices inflating wildly, especially in Illinois. I have personally confirmed farmland in Illinois selling for $13,000 per acre within the last month, whereas that same kind of ground in Illinois was going for $5500 per acre the day Obama was inaugurated.
Ospraie launches JV Agricultural Fund.
Rogers & Soros: Farmland “One of the Best Investments of Our Time”
Betting the Farm
3 comments:
Don’t you think it odd that the greater part of Texas is experiencing drought? I have worked with the Army Corps of Engineers during Katrina and Rita. The incompetence is found at every level within the system. I’ve witnessed massive fraud perpetrated on the taxpayers concerning the Corps. They are top heavy in management and short on intelligent workers.
In some cases. I observed people in mini-vans with a Corps placard on the door driving around with a ladder strapped to the top making assessments for non existent homes from Katrina/Rita.
While the people of Mississippi survived in tents. Thousands of FEMA trailers sat north of I-10. The trailers could not be used until proper areas were cleared and utilities ran for the trailers. This was the job of the Corps. Which it failed miserably.
While the Corps of Engineers are conducting diversity and sensitivity training the people languish.
The Corps could have invented a system to divert flood waters to drought stricken areas at any given time. And if there is no drought. The floodwater could be channeled into the dwindling Colorado. It’s rather simple. But the Powers that Be wish for the people to suffer until “rescued” by them.
Soros Management Fund Increases Stakes in Petrobras, Potash
By Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam and Christian Schmollinger
Feb. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor George Soros’s hedge-fund firm bought more shares of Petroleo Brasileiro SA and Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. in the fourth quarter, almost doubling its holdings.
Soros Fund Management LLC bought 16 million shares of the Petrobras’ U.S. traded shares, bringing its stake to 1.45 percent, according to a filing yesterday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The New York-based firm increased its holdings in Potash by 2.6 million shares to 2 percent in the fourth quarter. Petrobras and Potash are now the firm’s two biggest reported U.S. stocks.
“As long as you see through the current crisis there are a few compelling reasons to buy,” Hernan Ladeuix, the head of oil and gas research at CLSA Ltd. in Singapore, said in an e-mail. “Oil prices should go up, probably strongly in coming years. Petrobras is the only large international company where you can have confidence that production can grow 5 percent per annum.”
The purchases made Soros the second-biggest shareholder in the U.S.-traded shares of Petrobras, Brazil’s state-controlled oil company. Petrobras preferred shares fell 5.4 percent in Sao Paulo yesterday, the most since Jan. 12, driven by a drop in oil prices to below $35 a barrel.
Potash, the biggest maker of crop nutrients, also fell by the most since Jan. 12, declining 7.4 percent yesterday. Soros Fund is the eighth-biggest holder in shares of the Saskatoon, Saskatchewan-based company.
Soros Fund added 9 million shares of Best Buy Co., bringing its stake to 2.3 percent of the electronics retailer. The firm also started a new position in Desarrolladora Homex SA de C.V., the Mexican homebuilder, bringing its holdings to 4.9 percent of U.S.-traded shares, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The firm bought 5 million shares of R.R. Donnelley & Sons Co., North America’s largest printer, representing a 2.4 percent stake.
Soros’s hedge-fund firm sold 3 million shares of Wal-Mart Inc., bringing its stake in the discount retailer to 0.01 percent. The firm also sold all of its 2 million shares in Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the Blackberry phone.
Money managers who oversee more than $100 million of equities or more must file, within 45 days of the end of each quarter, a Form 13F with the SEC that lists their U.S. exchange- traded stocks, options and convertible bonds. The filings don’t show non-U.S. securities or how much cash the firms hold.
Soros’s firm oversees $21 billion. Its Quantum Endowment Fund returned 8 percent last year. That compared with an average loss of 18 percent by hedge funds, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. of Chicago.
To contact the reporters on this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam in Boston at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net; Christian Schmollinger in Singapore at christian.s@bloomberg.net.
February 3, 2009 (LPAC)– Whereas nations lacking sufficient farmland might have a legitimate interest in developing agriculture elsewhere, things stand differently for private players such as George Soros and hedge funds. The latter are getting hold of vast territories of Kazakhstan, Sudan, Uganda, Indonesia, Madagascar, and even of starving Ethiopia, since most of these countries are hopelessly bankrupt and eager to get cash, wrote France’s Nouvel Observateur weekly of Dec. 23, 2008. The “farmland rush” taking place on a world scale was denounced by FAO’s Director General Jacques Diouf as “agrarian neocolonialism.”
Nouvel Observateur noted that George Soros’s former business partner and co-founder of Soros’s Quantum Fund, Jim Rogers, is encouraging investors to go for this land-grab policy. “George Soros is heavily implicated in bio-fuels and owns land in Argentina. But in the last couple of months, with the financial crash, it’s the rush. Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs have massively invested in Chinese meat farms. Morgan Stanley bought 40,000 hectares in Ukraine, nothing compared to the 300,000 ha bought by Renaissance Capital, a Russian hedge fund.”
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