>>Actually there's a virtually wealth. Think about you're Bill Gates. You have 100 billion of (I don't know actual pays) MS stocks. You decided to buy wheat for Africans. You sell your stocks. Value of one stock is 10$. In first step it will be 9$,8$... At last after sell all stocks you have 40 billion of cash...
Since stocks are bought and sold instantaneously by computers when price thresholds are met, you only need to shift price a fraction of a point and there can be an exponential stampede to buy or sell that moves more shares than even Bill Gates owns. Perhaps that will be the next crisis- the inexplicable stampeded price with companies defaulting on banking covenants because of sudden share movements combined with exchange requests to please explain. No doubt the taxpayer will be asked to cover the turmoil caused by computer algorithms seeking to clip the ticket on real business transactions with no benefit whatsoever to the taxpayer.
>>Actually we're living in Matrix. Tons of wheat just cost a MS Office license. That's crazy...
You're right- current price per metric ton of FOB Gulf of Mexico wheat is $245.35. Proves that prices are set to what the market will meet rather than an uplift on cost of production, now requiring subsidies if things are so distorted that price doesn't meet cost of production...
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1