标题: 泰国大米计划──作茧自缚的游戏 [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 2-7-2014 12:46 标题: 泰国大米计划──作茧自缚的游戏 James Hookway, 泰国大米计划──作茧自缚的游戏. 华尔街日报中文版, Feb , 2014
cn.wsj.com/gb/20140206/bas134505.asp
, which is translated from
James Hookway, Thai Rice Plan Goes Awry. Wall STreet Journal, Feb 6, 2014.
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304428004579352590377530118
Quote: "An attempt to set global rice prices has stripped the country of its position as the world's top exporter * * * [The] tale began two and a half years ago. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra [who assumed office on Aug 5, 2011] launched a gambit to shift more cash into the rural economy by buying up rice from farmers at about 18,000 baht, or $550, a ton, around 50% higher than the market rate. Ms Yingluck and her advisers also reckoned they could drive up global rice prices by storing the grain they bought from farmers in vast warehouses, withholding it from the global market. The plan relied on the fact that only 7% of the world's rice output is traded cross-border. * * * Ms Yingluck's rice program succeeded on one level: Many villages in rural Thailand were suddenly flush with cash [they thought the good times would continue, started borrowing and could not repay]. * * * Instead of rising, global prices for rice fell from a peak of more than $1,000 a ton in 2008 to the current level of around $390 a ton for the most commonly traded grades. Thailand was quickly priced out of the market, unable to sell its huge stockpiles for anything close to what it paid. * * * The subsidy plan [to buy domestic rice well above global market price, even while Thais smuggles rice from neighboring nations to make false clams as domectic rice] has run short of cash, delaying payments to farmers.
Note:
(a) "Attempts to steer markets seldom end well. * * * In the 1970s, the Hunt brothers, American oil billionaires, attempted to corner the world's silver market, only to see their position collapse. Sumitomo Corp's 住友 商事 chief copper trader, Yasuo HAMANAKA 浜中 泰男 [1950-; on the London Metal Exchange; sentenced to eight years in prison in 1998 and was released in July 2005, one year early: Wikipedia], in the 1990s bought up to 5% of the world's copper supply. His position also collapsed, losing $2.6 billion."
Nelson Bunker Hunt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Bunker_Hunt
(brother William Herbert Hunt)
(b) Compare
(i) paragraph 2: "In this village in northeast Thailand, Thongma Kaisuan's family and neighbors are trying to come to terms with the death of the 64-year-old farmer, who slipped out into his backyard and hanged himself from a tree late last month."
(ii) with the third paragraph from the bottom: "On Jan 27 [2014], a village headman in Sisaket, some 170 kilometers southeast of Ban Non San, hung himself after failing to secure payments for rice that he and his neighbors had deposited with the government program"