The IRE Resource Center is a major research library containing more than 23,250 investigative stories — both print and broadcast. These stories are searchable online or by contacting the Resource Center directly (573-882-3364 or rescntr@ire.org) where a researcher can help you pinpoint what you need. Browse or search the tipsheet section of our library below. Stories are not available for download but can be easily ordered by contacting the Resource Center:
Search results for "commodities" ...
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Excessive Speculation Distorts Commodity Markets, Harms Consumers
The topic of our series was excessive financial speculation in commodity markets. Throughout one year, I worked on a series of labor-intensive investigative pieces showing how the influx of financial speculators in the futures market had distorted the price of crude oil, coffee, cotton and other commodities.
Tags: fiancial speculation; commodity markets; crude oil; commodities
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Excessive Speculation Distorts Commodity Markets, Harms Consumers
The topic of our series was excessive financial speculation in commodity markets. Throughout one year, I worked on a series of labor-intensive investigative pieces showing how the influx of financial speculators in the futures market had distorted the price of crude oil, coffee, cotton and other commodities.
Tags: fiancial speculation; commodity markets; crude oil; commodities
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Dark Market
"The story examined 30 percent of the commodity futures markets for oil that trade without regulation. We examined how these markets may have played a role in bumping up the price of oil over the summer of 2008."
Tags: gasoline; Intercontinental Exchange; ICE; Trading Commission; barrel; premium price;
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Liquid Assets--Turning water into gold
Due to a unique water ownership structure established nearly two decades ago, suburban Denver communities have been forced to pay the highest water connection fees in the country. According to this investigation, this has created a competition for resources to fuel the booming population growth in the suburbs, creating an "unregulated and often untraceable commodities market in Colorado."
Tags: Big Thompson system; utilities; population growth; economic growth; Denver; commodities
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If you've got a beef with a futures broker, this judge isn't for you. In eight years at the CFTC, Levine has never ruled in favor of an investor.
According to the article, "In his job as a federal administrative law judge, Bruce Levine decides whether aggrieved investors have been defrauded by commodity dealers and should get money back. In nearly 180 cases over eight years at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, he has a remarkable record. Except for a handful of cases in which defunct firms failed to defend themselves, Judge Levine has never ruled in favor of an investor."
Tags: Bruce Levine; judges; investors; Commodity Futures Trading Commission; cases; law; trial; federal administrative law judge
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Breathing Easy. Clear skies are goal as pollution is turned into a commodity. U.S. promotes the trading of emissions certificates in global-warming pact. Worries for the 'Real World.'
This article talks about the United States' program to drastically reduce the amount of pollution in the atmosphere. It's called the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's acid-rain emissions trading program. Each certificate allows the owner to emit one ton of sulphur dioxide.
Tags: Environmental Protection Agency; EPA; sulphur dioxide; pollution; acid rain; acid rain emissions trading program; atmosphere; environment
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Energy Alley
Due to deregulation, energy became part of a full-blown commodity market. In the midst of the power crisis in California, Jurgens travelled to Houston to figure out the complex world of the energy giants that played a major part. It would be a scant few months before companies like Enron became embroiled in a financial wrongdoing controversy.
Tags: energy; energy crisis; enron; reliant; gas; electricity; commodities
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The Inmate Bazaar
Governing reports on the issue of prison privatization using the example of Holdenville, OK. Holdenville took a gamble building a $34 million prison and hoping that the state would send prisoners there to relieve overcrowding rather than sending them -- and a $41/day per diem -- to prisons in Texas. Since the prison opened in Holdenville, other private prisons have also opened up across the state, many housing overflow prisoners from across the country. The model of treating prisoners as commodities raises some problems of its own, however.
Tags: prisons; corrections
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Boone Pickens wants to sell you his water
Texas Monthly looks at the risk of depleting the Ogallala Aquifer, "a vast underground reservoir that stretches from the High Plains of Texas all the way to the Dakotas" and the "largest single groundwater source in the United States." The story exposes the plan of Boone Pickens, a former "oil tycoon and a feared corporate raider," to pump up water from Ogallala and to sell it to "cities like San Antonio and El Paso that are running out of water." The reporter finds that the dangerous approach of treating water like a marketable commodity results from a Texas law, which allows a property owner to "pump as much as he wishes ... no matter if he dries up his own water and his neighbors' water along with it."
Tags: Roberts County; farming; irrigation; draught; Panhandle; population boom; groundwater; conservation; Rio Grande; rivers; springs
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High And Dry
Farmers in Colorado have to fight for water with developers even when the weather is good. But this summers' draught has compounded the problem. The farmers along St. Vrain river can see the precious commodity flowing past their dry fields to some developer who has paid more money for the water rights. Many had to sell their farms and cattle as it was becoming tough to survive.
Tags: farm; drought; water rights; priority number; St. Vrain