14 April 2012

The Criminal Manipulation of Food and Commodity Prices



Michael Greenberger of the University of Maryland has been an outstanding spokesperson for financial reform.  I have carried his interviews before.

He served on the CFTC with Brooksley Born in the late 1990's. This is how I first became aware of his opinions about regulatory matters.

I had hoped he, among some notable others, might have found a place in the Obama Administration if it had been truly interested in financial reform. And we all know how that went, and how it still goes today.



h/t via Yves

See the entire story at the Real News Network here.


Since July 2001, Michael Greenberger has been a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, where he teaches a course entitled "Futures, Options and Derivatives."

Professor Greenberger serves as the Technical Advisor to the United Nations Commission of Experts of the President of the UN General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. He has recently been named to the International Energy Forum’s Independent Expert Group that provided recommendations for reducing energy price volatility to the IEF’s 12th Ministerial Meeting in March 2010.

Professor Greenberger was a partner for more than 20 years in the Washington, D.C. law firm of Shea & Gardner, where he served as lead litigation counsel before courts of law nationwide, including the United
States Supreme Court.

In 1997, Professor Greenberger left private practice to become the Director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where he served under CFTC Chairperson Brooksley Born. In that capacity, he was responsible for supervising exchange traded futures and derivatives.

He also served on the Steering Committee of the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, and as a member of the International Organization of Securities Commissions' Hedge Fund Task Force. After service at the CFTC, Professor Greenberger served as Counselor to the United States Attorney General in 1999, and then became the Justice Department's Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General.