It was only three years ago we posted '
International Gefilte Cartel Blames "Weather" For Price Increases':
The real tale is in-situ storage of the whitefish, probably related to
some sort of inventory financing deal which, similar to the eventual
release from bondage of LME aluminum, can only have the effect of
crashing the market as the extent of the inventory hoarding scam becomes
apparent.
From The Chicago Reader's Bleader column:...
..."We should have 200 pounds," explains Burhop's manager Ademola
Olurotimi. "Ten or 20 pounds is what we do have. We've been promised a
few tomorrow, but that's not even guaranteed."
Even if you can get your hands on some whitefish, you'll be paying
for it: prices have spiked to $18 a pound, up from the usual $12....
Now the suppliers will say the winter of 2016-17 was much warmer than 2013-14 and that accounts for the abundance of whitefish and carp but I think it was the full-on attempt to break the fishy plunderbund that did the trick. From the same 2014 post:
Apparently there is a seasonal pattern* to the trade:
Bnei Brak rabbi calls for gefilte fish boycott
Rabbi Shmuel
Eliezer Stern issues unusual halachic ruling in bid to prevent stores
from charging exaggerated prices for carp fish ahead of Passover....
*More accurately it is
a quasi-periodicity as the Holiday has arrived as early as the
second-to-last week of March and as late as the last week of April due
to the calendar calculations to set the lunar date.
I'm told that last week's sale of Manischewitz by Phil Falcone's hedge
fund to Bain Capital is a non-story, nothing to see here.
