The casino table is rigged to favour the global gamblers and it’s us who pay

Malcolm Parkin is angry about fat profits made by a financial elite at the expense of working families

Contrary to what they might think, governments do not control their own economies. Neither can they act together to control the world economy.

In all matters of finance, whatever happens is decided by global brokers and traders, and the bankers who finance them.

They are in a position to make money no matter which way the markets move and their fiscal power overwhelms any government actions. What the traders and their money men do has more effect on the hapless electorate than any legislation.

The world of commodities – the derivatives market if you like – ensures that the price of everyday foodstuffs is heavily influenced by the global speculations of traders, who make money in the rising or falling of those markets, whose movements they can control by the sheer size of their trades.

Other essentials, such as building materials – metals, cement and even timber – suffer a similar fate. Sometimes these trades are orchestrated so that the rise and fall of prices allows groups acting in collusion to make money from what amounts to a sure thing.

Oil in particular is a speculator’s paradise. It has been reckoned that diesel and petrol pump prices are 10 per cent higher than they need to be because of the meaningless and unproductive activities of those traders, who make so-called profits for what amounts to no more than gambling on certainties. In