Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World by Rupert Russell

Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World by Rupert Russell

PART I
PRICES

1
Chaos: Why Societies Boil at 210
As the dust settled and the “I Survived 2016” T-shirts sold out, I realised
that the populist explosion was far bigger than Donald Trump and Nigel
Farage. They were just the English-speaking insurrectionists of a
reactionary revolution that had already swept across Europe. Starting in
2015, populist parties racked up double-digit gains throughout the
continent, came in close seconds in France and Austria, and won power in
Poland and Italy. Something had rocked the Western world all at once. It
had transcended language barriers, political peculiarities and currency
unions. But what was it? Some blamed the economic collapse in 2008, but
the Financial Crisis was nearly a decade old. It seemed to me that there
must be a more immediate reason why voters from Rome to Raleigh to
Rzeszów pushed the button marked “detonate.”
“For me, the problem is the thousands of illegal immigrants stealing,
raping and dealing drugs,” said Matteo Salvini, the leader of Italy’s
Northern League, at a rally in Rome. It was 2015, in the midst of the global
refugee crisis that saw over a million migrants come to Europe. Right-wing
populists declared it an invasion of “barbaric, Muslim, rapist hordes of
men” (AfD, Germany), “young barbarians” (Golden Dawn, Greece),
“criminals, terrorists and idlers!” (National Alliance, Latvia), and “masses
of young men in their twenties, with beards singing ‘Allahu Akbar’ ” (Party
of Freedom, Holland). On the campaign trail, Trump promised to extend his
wall with Mexico to the Middle East, with “a total and complete shutdown

Price Wars: How the Commodities Markets Made Our Chaotic World by Rupert Russell