Hello Mike and good morning,
Our Imperial leaders have again made me mad or is that crazy….
Now being one of those citizens that like to eat, and not being of the elite 1 percent of our country that has 90 percent of the money ( my guess in a bank somewhere in the caymans) the following excerpt from the Washington post has of course caused me concerned, but first can anyone tell me when we stopped paying farmers to grow us food, I know years ago we helped them as tax payers .. anyone have info on what the dept of ag pays them now ? anyway her is the excerpt;;
In Chicago, Minneapolis and Kansas City, traders watched from the pits early last summer as wheat prices spiked amid mediocre harvests in the United States and Europe and signs of prolonged drought in Australia. But within a few weeks, the traders discerned an ominous snowball effect — one that would eventually bring down a prime minister in Haiti, make more children in Mauritania go to bed hungry, even cause American executives at Sam’s Club to restrict sales of large bags of rice.

As prices rose, major grain producers including Argentina and Ukraine, battling inflation caused in part by soaring oil bills, were moving to bar exports on a range of crops to control costs at home. It meant less supply on world markets even as global demand entered a fundamentally new phase. Already, corn prices had been climbing for months on the back of booming government-subsidized ethanol programs. Soybeans were facing pressure from surging demand in China. But as supplies in the pipelines of global trade shrank, prices for corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, rice and other grains began shooting through the roof.

At the same time, food was becoming the new gold. Investors fleeing Wall Street’s mortgage-related strife plowed hundreds of millions of dollars into grain futures, driving prices up even more. By Christmas, a global panic was building. With fewer places to turn, and tempted by the weaker dollar, nations staged a run on the American wheat harvest.

Foreign buyers, who typically seek to purchase one or two months’ supply of wheat at a time, suddenly began to stockpile. They put in orders on U.S. grain exchanges two to three times larger than normal as food riots began to erupt worldwide. This led major domestic U.S. mills to jump into the fray with their own massive orders, fearing that there would soon
Japan, the Philippines, [South] Korea, Taiwan — they all came in with huge orders, and no matter how high prices go, they keep on buying,” said Jeff Voge, chairman of the Kansas City Board of Trade and also an independent trader. Grains have surged so high, he said, that some traders are walking off the floor for weeks at a time, unable to handle the stress.

“We have never seen anything like this before,” Voge said. “Prices are going up more in one day than they have during entire years in the past. But no matter the price, there always seems to be a buyer. . . . This isn’t just any commodity. It is food, and people need to eat.”

Beyond hunger

The food price shock now roiling world markets is destabilizing governments, igniting street riots and threatening to send a new wave of hunger rippling through the world’s poorest nations. It is outpacing even the Soviet grain emergency of 1972-75, when world food prices rose 78 percent. By comparison, from the beginning of 2005 to early 2008, prices leapt 80 percent, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Much of the increase is being absorbed by middle men — distributors, processors, even governments — but consumers worldwide are still feeling the pinch.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24334375
SOOO my take on this is NOW the imperial nation has decided we can eat but at a price they decide, I am already too slim and to tighten my belt does not sound like any fun. Well now the the basturds have destroyed the banks they are out to destroy what we need to eat THANK you wall street for all you have done for America.There were just too many fat americans ??? so now they are letting the GLOBAL ec run on our food, might as well we have no money and it is going to the highest bidder ??? GOOD GOD people please pay attention.
I do have an idea for who to elect,,, buy as many Chickens as there are people in high positions,name each chicken for a person, kill each chicken as the person messes up, the chicken left is the one that gets to be the leader
What to do about the high price of fuel,, ALL truckers on the 4th of July pull over for 1 hour at noon… all of them !! and have a sign that says,,, lower fuel prices NOW…
any one in support of the truckers should go to overpasses or stand on the side of roads all over the nation in quiet protest with the same signs at the same time ;;;;
well now I am soooo tired
BUT at least this built up stress gets eased a little:) Thank you Mike for a place that really does try to get people to see…I try to talk to people and they say : I know , and then change the subject. .
. just wanted to make sure you get the food is the new gold thing
Kate
and another idea foating in my head is to have everyone turn thier backs on the fireworks this year as a protest, what’s to celebrate??

I had a friend at my house recently who expressed the sentiment “Why worry about fuel prices, or the plummeting dollar, or the economy, or what will happen in Iraq–what can we do about it, anyway?”.

I should point out that this fellow is frequently engaged in discussion about politics, considers himself a staunch conservative (yet rejected Ron Paul as a kook), and generally follows the election obsessively. I wanted to scream at him, “here’s what you do about it: ELECT DIFFERENT LEADERS”, but that would have been out of character for me.

Suffice to say I was very troubled by his remark, not because it was offensive or unexpected, but because it reflected a very common mode of thought about American politics which I feel is largely responsible for the mess we find ourselves in.

Presidential elections have become a sport. They’re no longer about the common man exerting his influence on government to mold it as he would. They’re about the race, and about beating the other side.

In the primaries, people vote for the candidate who seems most likely to beat the other team, not the candidate who best represents their views.

The most frustrating thing about it, for me, is that intelligent, successful people are pandered to just as effectively as any other group. Why are smart people so dumb? It doesn’t matter how much a candidate has flip-flopped on the issues, or how much his stated platform disagrees with his own history–as long as he tells us what we want to hear (this year) and plays the game well, he’ll have our votes.

Jaybird and BB,

Thanks for taking the time to comment and yes, many of my readers are a breath of fresh air and understand the consequences of the mess that we are in.

This is how it all starts…comments from one person and then another and like a snowball, momentum grows.

It always helps to know that you aren’t crazy, but even if you are…you have lots of company.

When I was in 6th grade at the height of the oil embargo in the 1970’s. I came up with a plan. Why not get all the grain producing nations together and form a GPAC. Let the government buy all the grain from the farmers for a high price, sell if for an even higher price and then send checks out to everyone in America like they do in some of the rich oil countries. I told my teacher this and she told me that it would be morally wrong, millions of people would starve to death and that a free market would mean that everyone would get there fair share.

It may still be morally wrong but the rich corporations and speculators have no morals. Millions of people are starving and the middle class is disappearing fast. There has been no free market on food in the US for at least 100 years. We need to end the Options markets on commodities, It just makes it to easy to manipulate prices that have nothing to do with supply and demand.