Yesterday, CNBC's Christine Tan asked Starbucks' Howard Schultz about rising coffee prices, and the CEO of our nation's number three fast-food chain (yes, Starbucks recently passed Burger King and Wendy's) gave an interesting reply. Essentially, he blamed the unfettered free market:

I think everyone in the food business is quite concerned about rising commodity costs and specifically for us, coffee. Especially when I know for a fact there's no supply problem.

[...] I met one-on-one with key suppliers. There wasn't one supplier that indicated to me that there was any supply issue. So we're living at a time right now where financial speculation index funds, hedge funds have created a rush of very, very high prices. And not only coffee, corn, sugar, cotton and obviously oil, and unfortunately it has to hit the consumer.

So, um, if there's no supply problem, and prices are simply being driven higher by speculation, then what are these financial speculators and hedge fund managers adding to our economy other than higher prices? Then again who am I, or even a billionaire like Schultz, to question the divine wisdom of the market?