Sell Monsanto! List Of Top Mutual Funds To Ditch Because They Own Monsanto Shares

February 17th, 2012

 

Natural News

 

By: Ethan A. Huff

 

If the natural health community really wants to get serious about hitting evil corporations like Monsanto where it hurts, then it is time to start boycotting the companies that support, invest in, or otherwise have a relationship with Monsanto and its partner companies. And this includes dumping mutual fund and investment companies that hold a significant amount of shares in Monsanto.

Monsanto is a publicly-traded company, which means members of the public, including other large companies and investment firms, can buy shares in said company for investment purposes. This, of course, is one of the primary ways publicly-traded companies are able to raise needed funds and capital to keep on doing business.

While some investors make decisions on which securities to buy purely for financial reasons, others invest more consciously based on respect for a company and its products, for instance, or because they really want to see it succeed in the long-run. In either case, there are a number of investors in Monsanto that you may be interested in knowing about, if for no other reason than to pull your funds out of them because of their partnership with the world’s most evil and sinister corporation.

According toYahoo! Finance, 83 percent of Monsanto’s shares are held by institutional and mutual fund owners. The top ten institutional holders and mutual fund holders in Monsanto as of the writing of this article are as follows:

Top Institutional Holders

•The Vanguard Group, Inc.– 21,361,249 shares
•State Street Corporation– 20, 096, 055 shares
•T. Rowe Price– 17,442,437 shares
•PRIMECAP Management Company– 14,933,282 shares
•Jennison Associates LLC– 14,526,041 shares
•BlackRock Institutional Trust Company, N.A.– 12,775,828 shares
•Davis Selected Advisers, L.P.– 11,426,858 shares
•FMR LLC– 11,118,244 shares
•Marsico Capital Managements, LLC– 11,079,586 shares
•AllianceBernstein, L.P.– 9,876,978 shares

Top Mutual Fund Holders

•Vanguard / Primecap Fund– 6,707,060 shares
•Market Vectors ETF Tr-Agribusiness ETF– 6,624,107 shares
•Davis New York Venture Fund– 6,600,196 shares
•Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund– 6,204,474 shares
•Fidelity Growth Company Fund– 4,789,978 shares
•Vanguard 500 Index Fund– 4,771,300 shares
•Vanguard Institutional Index Fund – Institutional Index FD– 4,378,112 shares
•SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust– 4,182,071 shares
•College Retirement Equities Fund – Stock Account– 4,045,420 shares
•Mainstay Large Cap Growth Fund– 3,857,600 shares

The top fiveMajor Direct Holdersin Monsanto include Hugh Grant, the company’s chairman, president, and CEO; William U. Parfet, chairman and CEO of MPI Research, a pharmaceutical company; Brett D. Begemann, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Monsanto; Robert T. Fraley, Monsanto’s executive vice president and chief technology officer; and Carl M. Casale, president and CEO of CHS Inc., a cooperative that supplies energy, crop nutrients, grain, livestock feed, food and food ingredients, and business solutions.

If you or any one you know holds investments in any of these companies, be sure to ditch them as soon as possible in protest of their support for Monsanto. Doing so is a practical way to get the ball rolling in bringing about real grassroots change, and ending Monsanto’s reign of agricultural terror.

You can also view a more extensive list of Monsanto’s stockholders here:
http://investors.morningstar.com

For The Full Report Go To Natural News

 

As Fed Policy Sinks the Dollar, Prices of Essentials Soar

November 9th, 2010

Daily Finance

By: Charles Hugh Smith

Intended or not, the Federal Reserve’s policy of quantitative easing has crushed the U.S. dollar. (The second round announced Nov. 3 is called “QE2″ because it’s the second round of easing since the financial crisis of late 2008.)

Intended or not, the Fed’s destruction of the dollar’s value has pushed prices of commodities that Americans need — such as instance food, cotton and oil — higher.

Whether the Fed’s QE2 policy will actually spark renewed growth in the economy is not yet known, but what is known is that the producer costs for essential commodities such as grain and cotton are skyrocketing, and those increased costs will soon appear on store shelves.

Tragic Irony

Just as pernicious for the stock market, higher commodity prices mean manufacturers’ profit margins will contract as companies seek to limit the cost increases passed on to recession-battered consumers.

It may be the ultimate — and ultimately tragic — irony: While the Fed’s policy is supposed to help the economy by encouraging more borrowing, the actual effect is to raise prices for companies and consumers alike, and to squeeze the very corporate profits that have been driving stocks higher.

These charts of the dollar, the S&P 500 (reflecting U.S. stocks) and three commodity ETFs (exchange traded funds) show the dramatic effect of the weakening dollar. While stocks have risen as overseas earnings for U.S. global corporations are boosted by the weaker dollar, commodities that end up in consumer goods have exploded higher.

The pass-through of higher input costs to consumers isn’t theoretical — it’s real. For example UPS just raised its shipping prices by 4.9%. Since shipping-box dimension charges are also being changed, the effective rate increase for lighter, larger boxes could be as high as 16%. This is significant in an economy that’s officially currently experiencing near-zero inflation. (Officially, the annualized inflation rates is 1.1%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)

According to the BLS, the cost of finished goods is rising at an annualized rate of about 4.8%. Since some low-demand commodities such as lumber (demand fell along with housing construction) and electronics (prices of TVs have been dropping) are declining, the price increases for essential goods may well be masked by a lower rate calculated for all finished goods.

For instance, wheat has jumped from $158 per ton in June, when the dollar began falling in response to the Fed’s QE2 chatter, to $271 per ton in September. That’s a 71% increase. You may not need a load of 2x4s or another flat-screen TV soon, but you certainly will be consuming wheat in bread, pasta and other foods.

Creating “Hot Money”

Many economists and market watchers think QE2 is bad policy: It’s unlikely to work as intended and could further damage the economy. How? By funneling a new flood of cheap credit into speculative bets in emerging markets and commodities while the Main Street economy withers under the onslaught of higher prices unleashed by the same Fed-powered speculative binge.

As I reported last month, the Fed’s “trickle down” policy of creating wealth for the top 10% who own most of the nation’s financial assets has been a failure. The rise in emerging markets like Brazil and in commodities like wheat suggest that speculative “hot money” is the result when the Fed opens the floodgates of liquidity. Brazil’s stock market, the Bovespa, has more than doubled since early 2009.

The semi-official reasoning behind weakening the dollar is that a lower greenback will boost exports. But since exports are a mere 7% of the U.S. economy ($1 trillion, compared to a GDP of $14.14 trillion), it’s difficult to see how a modest improvement in exports could offset the dramatic price increases that are occurring across the board in the rest of the economy.

Maybe all the financial speculation enabled by the Fed’s easy money, zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP) easing will enrich a few trading desks and hedge funds, but the price increases triggered by the Fed’s policy will certainly reduce the net income of every American household as prices for essentials climb.

If you have any doubts about that, just take another look at those charts of cotton, sugar and grain.

Click here for the full report from Daily Finance

Farmers in Brazil Declare War on Monsanto

February 11, 2010

Organic Consumers Association

EXTRACT: When it arrives at the warehouses the grain is tested and identified as GMO or non-GMO. The problem occurs when, in many cases, conventional oleaginous seeds are contaminated and the growers end up having to pay royalties [to Monsanto] without having acquired any GMO seeds in the first place.

War against Monsanto
Marcondes Maciel and Tania Rauber
Diario de Cuiaba [Brazil], 29 January 2010

http://www.diariodecuiaba.com.br

• In Cuiaba, Aprosoja is preparing a court action against Monsanto, and in Sinop, steps are being taken to follow suit

[English translation courtesy Cert ID Brazil and GM-free Ireland]

Growers in [the Brazilian State of] Mato Grosso have declared war against Monsanto, the multinational corporate owner of the GMO soya technology known as RR (Roundup Ready). After exhausting all attempts to engage the company in dialogue, the growers are now considering legal action. In Cuiaba, Aprosoja (the Association of Soya and Corn Producers Association of the State of Mato Grosso) is preparing a lawsuit. In Sinop (500km North of Cuiaba) the growers are looking to sue the company as well.

Aprosoya wants to determine if the [patent] royalty fee paid by the soya growers is actualy due. “We want to know what sort of patent is generating this type of fee, because depending on the type, the company does not have the right to charge us anything at all. We also need to know the patent’s validity period,” explains the President of Aprosoja, Mr. Glauber Silveira.

In Mato Grosso, growers increased the cultivated area of GMOs from 2.6 million hectares (2008/09 crop) to approximately 3 million hectares in this year’s crop. The expansion of the area will increase Monsanto’s profit from R$39 million (*15.2m) to R$45 million (*15.6m), an increase of 15.38%. According to calculations made by the producers, the fee Monanto charged for the use of its patent amounts to R$15.00 (*5.85) per hectare.

Aprosoja intends to issue a notification demanding that Monsanto provide proper justification regarding the royalty fees. “We have been informed that Monsanto is inducing the seed producers of Mato Grosso to provide only GMO seeds”, denounces Mr. Silveira. In Mato Grosso the GMO plantation now occupies half of the entire cultivated area of soya, comprising about 6 million hectares.

SINOP – Following several meetings without any positive results, the Sinop Rural Union is also planning to sue Monsanto. Approximately 50% of the crop fields in the Northern Region of Mato Grosso are currently cultivated with GMO varieties. These differ from the conventional because of their resistance to herbicides containing glyphosate, used in desiccation before and after planting to eliminate all kinds of weeds.

This kind of resistance enables the growers to apply the herbicide on the soya only, thus reducing their production costs and the number of herbicide applications. But the sectors’ questions concern the royalty fees imposed by Monsanto for their use of the seed.

The president of the Union, Mr. Antônio Galvan, explained that two collections are made: The first one being when the seed is bought (by bank order). “In January they charged R$0.45 per kilo of seed, which is equivalent to 30% of the price of each sack.

The main questioning lies on the second collection which is made when the product is leaving the fields. When it arrives at the warehouses the grain is tested and identified as GMO or non-GMO. The problem occurs when, in many cases, conventional oleaginous seeds are contaminated and the growers end up having to pay royalties without having acquired any GMO seeds in the first place.

This contamination occurs in the fields by means of pollination or at the time of planting, as well as at the time of stocking the harvest. “Cross pollination may take place if there’s a field of GMO soya next to a Non-GMO one at flowering time. Contamination can also take place if the machines are not well cleaned at harvest time, and some GMO beans remain. In this way, they will be considered GMO when they are tested”.

Click here for the full report