Last week, investors began trading futures on a hot commodity: California water. This one’s a little different from your typical farm commodity, though. First, it’s the source of all life on Planet Earth. Second, the traders won’t be physically exchanging the product, but instead, buying contracts that represent a specific amount of water at prices based on a NASDAQ index. The trading of water will continue, as always, between various public agencies, and “wealthy outsiders won’t be siphoning off” the supplies, The San Francisco Chronicle assures readers. But that doesn’t preclude those same investors from driving up prices, either. You call it drought—they call it fiduciary duty.
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