Brace yourself for the next big food shortage. Okay we in the US probably won't be starving but prepare to pay more, perhaps a lot more. Russia is still in the grips a major drought and has extended their ban on grain exports. Normally the fourth largest exporter of wheat in the world, not a kernel will be crossing the border for at least another year and they aren't promising anything after that.
A good deal of what the Russians export goes to countries where many people spend more than half their income for food. A thirty percent increase in the price of bread has already caused widespread rioting in Maputo and Mozambique leaving many dead and hundreds injured. Prices have surged 70% on European markets since January and have already exceeded the peak during the last food crisis that toppled governments in Haiti and Madagascar.
The truth is there is no shortage, not even close. Food will rot in the warehouses while people starve because Wall Street bankers and similar scum around the world want to suck piles of money out of hungry people and out of the rest of us too. Seeing starving people rioting will motivate the rest of us to not haggle over the price of canned goods and will increase the demand as those who can afford it will stock up. The last artificial shortage put a billion people into slow starvation and resulted in untold deaths.
The bankers don't even need to hoard the food themselves until it rots, they just need to control enough of the supply with contracts. This will panic various governments that can afford to buy food ahead of time to do the hoarding out of fear they won't be able to get food when they need it. If you want to stay in power you need to make sure the bread is on time and the circus is entertaining.
Wall Street bankers make out like bandits up and down the line. Not only will they reap huge rewards on commodity trading including derivatives that require nothing but pieces of paper to generate billions in profits, but they will make loans to governments and NGO's that are trying to deal with the "crisis" that Wall Street created. These loans are often backed by the taxpayer and the NGO's must waste money paying double or triple for grain and cut other worthwhile projects. Plus the more food they distribute the more this disrupts local markets and this cripples food production making a phony problem into a real problem.
In theory the world has twice as much food as it needs with obscene amounts wasted by gluttonous Westerners and from losses to rats and insects in the third world that eat or spoil half the food. But the greed of the "free" market is the biggest waste of food by creating uncertainty in the markets that constantly interferes in production. The same mega food corporations then uses the mess they've created to push out small producers in order to create efficiency in production further concentrating their control. There is far less objection to their Franken Foods if people are hungry or can be panicked into thinking they will be. The corporate model requires that a fairly high percentage of people are hungry all the time or they aren't maximizing profits. But the circuses are great aren't they? www.prairie2.com
A good deal of what the Russians export goes to countries where many people spend more than half their income for food. A thirty percent increase in the price of bread has already caused widespread rioting in Maputo and Mozambique leaving many dead and hundreds injured. Prices have surged 70% on European markets since January and have already exceeded the peak during the last food crisis that toppled governments in Haiti and Madagascar.
The truth is there is no shortage, not even close. Food will rot in the warehouses while people starve because Wall Street bankers and similar scum around the world want to suck piles of money out of hungry people and out of the rest of us too. Seeing starving people rioting will motivate the rest of us to not haggle over the price of canned goods and will increase the demand as those who can afford it will stock up. The last artificial shortage put a billion people into slow starvation and resulted in untold deaths.
The bankers don't even need to hoard the food themselves until it rots, they just need to control enough of the supply with contracts. This will panic various governments that can afford to buy food ahead of time to do the hoarding out of fear they won't be able to get food when they need it. If you want to stay in power you need to make sure the bread is on time and the circus is entertaining.
Wall Street bankers make out like bandits up and down the line. Not only will they reap huge rewards on commodity trading including derivatives that require nothing but pieces of paper to generate billions in profits, but they will make loans to governments and NGO's that are trying to deal with the "crisis" that Wall Street created. These loans are often backed by the taxpayer and the NGO's must waste money paying double or triple for grain and cut other worthwhile projects. Plus the more food they distribute the more this disrupts local markets and this cripples food production making a phony problem into a real problem.
In theory the world has twice as much food as it needs with obscene amounts wasted by gluttonous Westerners and from losses to rats and insects in the third world that eat or spoil half the food. But the greed of the "free" market is the biggest waste of food by creating uncertainty in the markets that constantly interferes in production. The same mega food corporations then uses the mess they've created to push out small producers in order to create efficiency in production further concentrating their control. There is far less objection to their Franken Foods if people are hungry or can be panicked into thinking they will be. The corporate model requires that a fairly high percentage of people are hungry all the time or they aren't maximizing profits. But the circuses are great aren't they? www.prairie2.com
