Lumber Price Manipulation Becomes Clear to Americans

• Author: Ervin Streich
• Posted: 2024-08-10

According to Bloomberg, Yahoo!, and other financial news outlets, the lumber market is in dire straits due to the fact that the prices of lumber are dropping for normal people. Apparently, when lumber prices are too high for regular Americans to afford to build new houses, this is great news for business because it means that the market is "rallying." Yes, this is real news. The news claims that "Benchmark futures [for lumber] in Chicago rose [to $423] per 1,000 board feet," meaning that prices were soaring on lumber, and this is said to be fantastic news for the lumber market. However, they're starting to panic now because that "rally" seems to be over and prices are falling on lumber.

On one hand, average Americans might get to see a month where lumber prices for their homes and other projects don't shoot through the roof. On the other hand, huge corporations might not get to profit more and more off of people's necessities, and therefore that's a bad thing. The simple fact of the matter is that corporations reveal just how much they're manipulating the market every time they panic. They're the main reason that there are so many issues in the housing market.

Malcolm X had a famous quote where he said, "If you throw a rock at a pack of dogs, the one that hollers is the one that got hit." Of course, never throw rocks at dogs! The point here is that you always know who's affected by the way they react. So, when huge financial corporations come out and start panicking that lumber may be a little more affordable for Americans, you know right away that they're affected by this. Why are they affected? The corporations have been the ones manipulating the lumber market in order to profit.

Because of the American government's partnership with corporations (a bipartisan feature), not a single politician has ever stepped up to try to stop this price manipulation of the lumber market. In fact, Americans can consider themselves lucky that the government hasn't intervened, or things might be way worse.
 

The Curious Case of Onion Futures

Have you ever noticed at the grocery store that onions are oddly expensive compared to other similar vegetables? Carrots, celery, garlic, and other similar veggies are generally very affordable; like "pennies on the dollar" affordable. Onions, however, command a much higher price tag. This has been going on long before inflation became a huge issue, meaning that onion prices were way out of balance before groceries started to double in price. The reason is that, a long time ago, the government decided to regulate the price of onions on the open market.

Once the government decides to set these sorts of price controls, their corporate partners immediately set out to carve a higher market share into stone. Because this higher market share is now law, what you end up with is an artificially inflated market where onions are costing you 5-times what they should, and there's never going to be any competition that eases that price, because the government has manipulated that market and will not allow competition to naturally bring the prices down.

While this isn't the case with lumber, the fact is that the lumber market has still been manipulated by multinational corporations looking to profit. The government and America's mainstream media are completely supportive of this corporate decision, however, which is why the narrative is that it's a great thing that lumber prices are up over 200% in the market. You may have noticed this sort of reasoning coming from the government in recent years. They will say things like, "Higher prices just mean that the economy is strong." You might like the people who say this, and even vote for them, though you can still admit just how absurd that is.

The fact that lumber is more expensive is a consequence of market manipulation by corporate suppliers to eek out more of a profit. In doing so, this has contributed to a nationwide housing shortage, due to the fact that average people can no longer afford to build homes. Instead of a home costing $100k to build for materials, it now costs over $300k to build, based on materials alone. Once land, labor and other costs are considered, the fact is that the market has priced normal people entirely out of building homes, and now the only entities building homes are multi-billion-dollar corporations and the government.

This is entirely unsustainable and is one of the main reasons that the housing market is in such shambles now. Price manipulation is crippling the nation's housing market.