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Food Price Shock Cometh
Today, some Fed member, arguably of a Dovish persuasion, made headlines by saying that inflation was tame in all but food and energy. We are confident he is right. So for all those readers who are lucky enough to not have to eat, fill up with gas, or heat their homes, the following video from the NIA on suddenly surging prices in virtually every vertical, is probably irrelevant. All others may be advised to watch it...
And just to make sure the point of the coming price crunch is not lost, the FT has just come out with an article titled, not too subtly, "World moves closer to food price shock"
The world has moved a step closer to a food price shock after the US government surprised traders by cutting stock forecasts for key crops, sending corn and soyabean prices to their highest level in 30 months.
The price jump comes after the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation warned last week that the world could see repetition of the 2008 food crisis if prices rose further. The trend is becoming a major concern in developing countries.
While officials are drawing comfort from stable rice prices, key for feeding Asia, they warn that a sustained period of high prices, especially in grains such as wheat, would hit poorer countries. Food price hikes have already led to riots in Algeria and Mozambique.
“Stocks of corn and soyabean are at incredibly tight levels ... and the markets are surging to incredibly strong prices,” Chad Hart, agricultural economist at Iowa State University, said.
Dan Basse, president of AgResource, a Chicago-based forecaster, added: “There’s just no room for error any more. With any kind of weather problem in the upcoming growing season we will make new all-time highs in corn and soy, and to a lesser degree wheat futures.”
Agricultural traders and analysts warn that the latest revision to US and global stocks means there is no further room for weather problems. The crops in Argentina and Brazil, to be harvested soon, look fragile due to dryness.
Traders are particularly concerned about the cost of vegetable oil, key for developing countries such as China where an emerging middle class is buying more frying oil. The US Department of Agriculture said the ratio of global stocks-to-demand would fall later this year to “levels unseen since the mid-1970s, reflecting an accelerated pace of vegetable oil” consumption for food and fuel.
And yes, as we have been predicting for months, kiss those record "earnings" goodbye:
The shares of Deere & Co, the world’s largest manufacturer of tractors and combines, surged 2.3 per cent, approaching an all-time high. But food companies such as Nestlé fell as analysts said they would struggle to pass rising wholesale costs to consumers.
Struggle yes, and eventually have no choice but to do so. In the meantime, readers better familiaries themselves with the definition of stagflation, also known as 10% unemployment (12% when factoring in the collapse in the labor force), and $4 gas. And while at it, they may also look up the term "rice bubble" - in 3-6 months it will be all the world will be talking about.
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I just love Capt. Obvious:
Lack of Money leads to FRUGALITY!
Major Insight rebutted with:
Large scale unemployment leads to Castro's Cuba.
Thanks Obama, that's the type of hope and change I can use to purchase food and heat my home with.
On the other hand, that shopping mall in the video at Christmas time started to look like the malls in China.
Continuing to post hyperbolic propaganda from known pump n dump operations is very mysterious.
It amazes me how many forums you post your stupidity.
You are referring to the Financial Times obviously? Because the NIA video is a compilation of third party facts. And since one is traditionally innocent until proven guilty, now is your chance to disprove all of their "pump and dump" statements one by one.
Your hyperlinking to objective sources is enabled to make your job easier.
"Hyperbolic propaganda " = ABCBSFOXCNBC cartel
objective sources..
Very, very clever. I know exactly why you said that.
I was good at chess to.
Let me change my avatar and I'll get back to you.
You're gonna need a bigger hammer that that dude.
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=201072
1
Why did you stop being good at at chess?
Tylers - Watch this Youtube video titled
CheckMate George4title, Inflation us, Jonathan Lebed, Lebed biz"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR2nx9I8f5k
Looks to be a real punch in the gut to InlfationUS
don't disrespect the zerohedge.
I've been wondering the same thing. After the earlier post from NIA I googled them and found that they are run by Jonathan Lebed. Lebed has a history of buying penny stocks and talking them up on the internet to score big profits. He has another website Lebed.biz and in the blog section I found this:
1.9.10 Forget About Dre, HNHI could EXPLODE this week!
9:10PM H & H Imports Inc. (HNHI) as of November 12th has 202,518,595 shares outstanding and 50 Cent and his company G-UNIT owns 30 million shares (7.5 million shares and warrants to buy 22.5 million shares)!
If HNHI went to 50 cents per share, the stock would have a market cap of a little over $100 million! It is currently only 10 cents!
Click here for a picture of HNHI's 50 Cent headphones that will soon be launching.
Every time I watch my favorite basketball team the Miami Heat play, I see Lebron James and Dwyane Wade wearing Beats by Dre before and after the game. There is currently a HUGE Beats by Dre craze, they have become one of the best selling lines of headphones in world history!
50 Cent's new G-UNIT headphones promises to have just as big of potential! I believe these headphones look HOTTER than Beats by Dre and best of all, they are WIRELESS!
Many people don't understand just how good of investors rappers are. Rappers like JayZ and Diddy are some of the best businessmen in the world history. The third best businessman rapper is 50 Cent. 50 Cent made MILLIONS off of the sale of Vitamin Water, a company he helped build. Now he is investing his money wisely into HNHI stock!
I can't believe HNHI is only 10 cents! I will be so happy if it goes to 50 cents and I am sure 50 cent will be too!
Once again, here is the filing to see the shares 50 Cent has purchased in HNHI.
8:35PM Research H & H Imports Inc. (HNHI) tonight, I believe this stock could EXPLODE this week. It started to break out big on Friday on very low volume. This company is the parent company of TV Brands.
The other day I bought Beats by Dre from the Apple store and I must say they are the best headphones I have ever used! I thought to myself, why don't more rappers come out with their own brands of headphones.
Well, I just discovered HNHI and they will be coming out with an AMAZING new brand of 50 Cent headphones that are wireless! That's right, 50 Cent is one of the biggest rappers in the world today and his headphones will be BIGGER and BETTER than Beats by Dre because they are wireless!
Check out this SC13D filing in HNHI stock: click here".
Curtis J. Jackson aka. 50 Cent and his company G-Unit Brands has acquired 30 million shares (7.5 million shares and warrants to buy 22.5 million shares) of HNHI and I believe they are going to have the best brand of headphones on the market!
The Beats by Dre craze is one of the biggest I have ever seen and I believe HNHI is our chance to capitalize on it! Don't miss out! This stock won't be 10 cents for long! Although I am not making any target prices for this stock, I wouldn't be surprised to see it go to 50 cents!
Don't invest based on anything I say. I am not recommending that you buy HNHI!
This is the exact same stock 50 Cent was tweeting about yesterday and supposedly made 8+ million in one day by pumping up the stock. How is that legal? Anyway, my point is that Jonathan Lebed still seems like he actively practices his "pump and dump" methods. Why are his articles being posted on ZeroHedge?
Does anyone else here think the "NIA" has ulterior motives?
Interesting comment. I would only add that the video on the above post refers to food prices rising....which they are. Just ask the people at work who do the food shopping.
I will look into the Jonathan Lebed story though. Thanks!
I actually agree with most of what the NIA has posted here today. I'm just questioning their motives.
Watch this vid about it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR2nx9I8f5k
Motives?
I heard that 50 Cent was absent from school 9 times.
I heard that Britney Spears had a boob job.
Jim Rogers has been warning about food prices for over a year.
Try forever along with the renminbi - considering he has a vested interest in commodity prices, I would be honking that shit too.
The increasing vacancies cause US shopping malls to resemble poorly located and virtually empty Chinese shopping malls.
Outstanding comment.
Doesn't the POTUS supposedly pay for the White House grocery bill? Yeah, I believe that like I believe in EMH.
Lots of possible parabolic upward moves (in commodity-ag-mineral-oil-chemical and other non-value-added segments) continuing or accelerating today, including one of my my favorites, MOO: http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=MOO&p=D&yr=0&mn=7&dy=0&id=p73601379405
I took a shit today.
There was a large amount of Bernanke in it.
+dung
+ number 2
With the flooding in Australia in their bread basket for the world - it is only going to get worst. Guess would be a good thing for people to learn how to garden now.
They have winter crops (relatively speaking). It is not growing season there.
pan-the-ist
"They have winter crops (relatively speaking). It is not growing season there."
Isn't it Australian Summer. Isn't Summer part of the growing season, seed in Spring, grow in Summer reap in Fall.
pan-the-ist
"They have winter crops (relatively speaking). It is not growing season there."
Isn't it Australian Summer. Isn't Summer part of the growing season, seed in Spring, grow in Summer reap in Fall.
correct
Yes. It something to do with the water in the toilet circulating in the opposite direction.
Last week, the agricultural industry body AgForce forecast more than A$1 billion in lost production, with the export-oriented sugar and cotton industries among the worst affected, which will have a knock-on effect on global prices of these commodities.
http://www.financeasia.com/News/244530,the-cost-of-flooding-in-queenslan...
Thanks everyone for the detail. I thought they grew winter wheat.
That's where the phrase "Christmas in July." comes from.
PTFD.
(Pass the fuckin dip)
Sounds like George4title and now VisionVictory have not abandoned NIA for their shaky biz practices. Both NIA Jon Lebed and Gerard Adams are confirmed penny stock pump/dumpers. DYODD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r79HSi5lmY0
And yet, amazingly, here in Mexico one kilo of corn tortillas is still 12 pesos (about $1). It baffles me that these can be sold so cheaply. Corn + energy + labor for these cannot possibly cost less than the price they're being sold for, even if the corn were subsidized to zero.
The final product is likely subsidized. The Mexicans know about food riots, and will bankrupt themselves to prevent them.
cxl9
I thought the government subsidized Tortillas?
Read through the various articles
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=Mexican+government+subsidezes+tort...
I know the Beats would spend time in Mexico for the cheap smack and government subsidized cheap Tortillas.
cx19, volume, bitchez.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mN2tViXZgw
The corporation I work at is not giving raises this year, too much money had to be put in the pension fund. In the past 3+ years I received 1 raise, 2 lump sums which is typical.
Funny, the nooz said 98% of companies are giving raises, lol. They also pointed out the "terrific" growth of jobs in the health industry, of course showing montages of doctors doing surgery, consulting with a sick kids parents etc. etc. Completely ignoring that those health sector jobs that are popping up are for Carribbean immigrants wiping asses.
And no, i didn't get a raise either.
No raises for three years at my corp. Don't expect any this year either. Just got my propane tank filled last week, last year the cost was about $450 this year it was over $800. But hey Ben says there is no inflation so all is good.....wright?
Factoring in the bonuses I no longer get, I make less than I did 5 years ago. Having to postpone starting a family. And I'm actually doing better than most of my friends. We're not that young anymore either. The only boom industry right now seems to be the internet trolls. They're everywhere, and excited for $5 gas.
Perhaps they'd been underfunding their pensions for years, by half or more? That would put them in the mainstream of employers with pension obligations.
underfunding, underperformance and a very old workforce - sounds a lot like bankruptcy and dumping of the pension obligations.
Here in Nicaragua food prices are, on average, at least 15% higher over the past 12 months... and energy prices are even higher.
"One last point. Gold is a relatively benign “store of value” as opposed other commodities such as crude oil, copper, and foodstuffs, which have negative economic and societal consequences during price spikes."
Money quote.
So this means there's an up side to the old saw, "You can't eat gold."
Come to think of it, food riots are everywhere, but the last time I heard about a gold riot it was actually a Public Enemy concert.
TERMINATOR X
"You can't eat gold."
I dunno, but I did hear Santelli say, "you can print money, but you can't print wheat".
"You can't eat gold."
I dunno, but I did hear Santelli say, "you can print money, but you can't print wheat".
"You can't eat gold."
I dunno, but I did hear Santelli say, "you can print money, but you can't print wheat".
Yes, I did have to say it, three fucking times!
Americans have very low food prices to start with so an increase was inevitable. Eliminate the subsidies and your prices will be higher. Institute marketing boards and you will have even higher prices. Chicken breasts in Canada are 17 dollars a kilo while flash frozen chicken breasts, sans fillet, are a dollar and 78 cents at an American Wal*Mart.
we're busy paying people to convert food into ethanol, or not plant at all. eliminate the subsidies and the prices will collapse, which is why they were started in the first place....in the last depression.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125090314736050931.html
and ethanol is an idiotic, energy losing proposition
So glad I stocked up on seeds, ammo and silver last year. Whew!
OK, so inflation is an increase in fiduciary media...more money chasing the same number of goods.
We now have what appears to be the above (in the non-durables) with a decrease in supply.
"The world has moved a step closer to a food price shock after the US government surprised traders by cutting stock forecasts for key crops, sending corn and soyabean prices to their highest level in 30 months"
This is more statista-lying by our government, as the supply has been getting hammered for at least a year.
Oh do come along Tyler, you’re not thinking clearly at all. The only people who ever complain about food and energy prices are the poor! Give me fair reason why a CPI measure should entreat their concerns in any way? You seem most peculiarly concerned about the interests of the commoner! Have you taken leave of your senses man? Are you seriously suggesting a market should act efficiently or in the best interests of the most and the needy, rather than for the interests of the very few and wholly undeserving?
Utter poppycock!
Indeud. Pass the gray poupon over here if you don't mind Element.
here you go my good man ... I'm sure you won't be spreading that on any sort of ham sandwich ...
The only thing driving up food and commodity prices are speculators armed with cheap money and super fast computers. This is causing a havoc in the lives of rest of the population and pushing them towards poverty as they can no longer afford the basic necessities of life.
Regulators are well taken care of by the speculators and are too slow to react and take ages to identify and take measures to solve the problems.
Huge bonus for the speculating banksters who manipulate the stock and commodity markets with free money handed out to them by the Central Bankers while the rest of the population have to pay out a much higher portion of their earnings to buy stuff that they use for their existance like oil, sugar, cotton etc. pushing them towards poverty.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article24581.html
It's one thing to allow this kind of speculation in equities and gold. Quite another to allow it in consumables.
No, Agricultural commodities are facing bona fide supply shortages...really. Speculation is a red herring in this case. Do just a little bit of homework before posting mmkay?
http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/crop0111.pdf
http://www.usda.gov/nass/PUBS/TODAYRPT/grst0111.pdf
Tyrants throughout history (but most especially in the last 100 years) have invariably blamed the inevitable results of their failed and corrupt economic policies, and the currency-depreciating results of their unsustainable spending and escalating debt, on "evil and greedy speculators" --- and have in every case been wrong.
We will very soon be a third world nation.
Your watch is slow.
Here in freedumb's land we pay billions to people to **NOT** farm, whether they had any intention of doing so or not. Food prices in the usa aren't a big deal. Food stamps, the dollar menu. Things are fairly stable. The people who are getting hurt live hand to mouth. The usa could easily boost food production but the ptb want high prices. Overseas producers want that too. The real problem is poverty among the bottom 50% as it always has been.
He obviously doesn't have a kid in college or pay for his own health insurance.
I'm making this quiet post to modestly say that I was among those on ZH who predicted the coming inflation in key necessities. And it won't be limited to food. Anyone naive enough to think that the global economy including the US can sustain this is living in a dream world. Peak everything is no longer such a joke. For those of us who care about and study these things it's clear.
There's a fork in the road coming for the world: there's a responsible, realistic consumption path that is sustainable and benefits the greatest number of people. And there's the other path. We'll soon find out which path the world choses.
Time to Stock up on tons of rice .....how long does soy sauce last ?
Not opened, kept away from heat and sunlight...almost forever.
And, if properly packaged, rice can be stored for 30 years or so.
Downsizing is not so hard to do actually. Monks in monasteries, who work really hard in the day with chores, planting, harvest, clean-up etc., live really well on a basic diet of rice and legumes or wheat and legumes, depending on location.
We are truly overfed, consuming vastly more than we need as keyboard punching sitters.
This is the true rub of in-equality, globally.
Like all things though, this too will balance out naturally. Food shocks, natural herd culling, droughts, extreme weather...and they are already all around us. We've added massive war as our own twist to the tale.
Cheers. It is really all good and exactly as it is meant to be.
ORI
http://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2010/06/14/70/
Is there a food crisis? Why would there be one here in the USA? Sometimes I want to scream from my window, "everybody...drop your money on the street and move on". Why? Because most believe everything they read and hear.
Its a viscious cycle. First, they fuck up the weather cycles with god knows what...HAARP? Chemtrails? Then broadcast everywhere that shortage of food is coming. People run to store and stock up, further driving up prices. Speculation begins and churns to a deafening locomotive as everyone wants to make money on the latest rocket ride. Prices rise even more. I watched this at its onset, even before it got rolling. I saw the lies by FDA. The big bets placed by our elitists. And the unexplainable adversity of the weather take hold of large growing portions of countries. And then, the public media spigots were turned on....and the frenzy began.
We don't need to worry about food shortages, we are all dooomed regardless. I think greed and stupidity will win out first. Now shut the fuck up and give me that week old biscuit or I'll smash your head like a pumpkin!!
I don't have the biscuit, but I did just make chocolate chip cookies. Yours for the paltry price of one ounce of silver.
Here we go again (sigh!)
High prices are not -- in and of themselves -- inflationary. Prices of some items are increasing such as fuel and some food items. Wages and real estate -- houses, office/commercial real estate -- are declining.
High commodity prices are bid by money printing and speculation ... in China. It's China that has spread the 'good news!' of selling more automobiles in that country than in the US.
China buying commodities with F/X is highly inflationary.
China's exchange rate is set by its 'unofficial' or loan shark economy which exchanges 50% of the dollars that flow to that country. This capital flow is unsterilized and puts Chinese savings into circulation. Hyperinflation is taking place right now in China, not America.
Tips to avoid unnecessary suffering:
- get rid of the car and the TV.
- buy food not processed 'food'. No McDonalds: put them out of business!
- use coupons.
- buy staples such as beans, rice, cooking oil, bag onions, potatoes, flavorings/spices and canned vegetables.
- become a vegetarian, do not buy meat of any kind.
- don't buy processed or foods with refined carbohydrates or sugars. Read the labels on the packages.
- buy fresh fruit and vegetables. Learn how to cook.
- exercise and thereby avoid doctors.
- quit smoking and drinking, don't drink sodas, tea or coffee. Be abstemious with alcohol.
- do not use any recreational drugs of any kind.
- buy clothes @ second hand shops or use clothes abandoned on the sidewalk. This is why washing machines were invented.
- Eat a balanced diet.
A large component of the human race spends 80% of income for food. Americans generally spend 4% or less. Increasing that to 5% is not a tragedy. Americans need to spend more on food, to support non- industrial agriculture that relies overmuch on petroleum.
Unlike the opinions of 'some posters' here, ours is an energy not a finance crisis. Our economy cannot support by way of output the economy's input costs. The outcome is system- wide bankruptcy and increasing unemployment.
define "recreational drug"
Rohypnol
-- pharmaceutical cocaine, Peruvian flake please.
Exercise is a good idea. We can begin by marching to the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building in Washington, D.C. After a lunch of government cheese we can practice rock throwing at the faux Greco-Roman architecture, designed to resemble some sort of government edifice. No time to waste, we skip afternoon tea, and move right on to a game of dodge ball with the patrolmen's association. Following the tar boiling...well enough for today. I'm exhausted.
The fly in the ointment of that "happy misunderstanding" of the 'real' problem Steve is there are people all over the developed world now spending 60% to 70% of incomes, on a place to live, every pay packet, before they spend the remainder on anything else.
That may be impossible for you to grasp but I assure you, it is happening here in Australia. Pretending increases in food and fuel and electricity do not matter (much) is not convincing my wallet.
I wish it would.
But unfortunately, my literally tribal-owned real-estate property manager, the largest in OZ, rips-off the lions-share every single fortnight and increases it every year, well above the CPI. They set the rent “upon fair value” in comparison to rents in the surrounding area’s rent levels.
Well guess what happens when you are the biggest, and ignore affordability and average incomes, and simply do that instead? Yep, you raise all the rents, according to the prices of the rents in the area that YOU - already raised!
Works a treat!
Meanwhile, the tribe keep funding ‘Green’ candidates in local council elections to prevent the release of sufficient lands for new housing constructions on enviro grounds.
And then keep using the tribe’s media mouth to keep lobbying the politics for more immigration, on the basis of the “economic benefit” of a higher population.
These two together means a severe housing shortage in Australia, AND sky-high house prices are maintained, so the banks are ‘secured’, so that more people can’t afford a house.
So they must … rent. But the tribe is also ripping off the renters!
And immigrants keep flooding in, relentlessly, plus we have a rapid domestic baby-boom on top, and rising interest rates, and these factors just keep pushing up the rents to unaffordable levels that eat more and more of your income.
So any rises in food, and fuel, now seriously hurts, and the poorer you are, the more acute the pain and deprivation and health issues.
So now everyone is 'off' immigrants, and migration policy, and want it stopped. But the “media” keep telling us what a boon they are for "the economy"!
While the slavers keep telling us the immigrants are essential because they are facing a massive skills shortage, because these greedy SOBs NEVER invested in the real citizens to develop these, they just relied on immigration to "fix it" via pillaging the expensively developed skills from other countries.
And this is the real kicker;
We currently have a domestic housing construction index at ~43, were a sub-50 number is a sector recession. And it has been below 50, for 7-months of data. And we have a massive undersupply of houses!
This, in country where the economy is “doing so well”. Or so the credit myth goes.
And what has the Govt done about it?
NOTHING! Absolutely nothing! For years now, same problem – zip done about it.
It’s because the tribe always controls the political agenda, via the media and via elections funding and counter funding, as “business donations”. They have played us like a grand Symphony!
Rupert was one of “ours” you know, or at least he pretended to be. Now he’s pretending to be one of yours - lucky you!
Don’t tell me this was not or rather, is not a complete tribal set up of the whole country. They own the lot!
Rio Tinto is not ‘Australian’, it never was. It is a tribe-owned and controlled corporation, but pretends to be “one of us”, simply to get the easy access to the Australian resource base. They did the same with their rural trading company “Elders”, who after screwing the farmers and miners for decades then took over real estate and rental management. They have never ceased to buy up and centralize the media into tribal hands. They have never ceased to infiltrate the State Treasuries, and senior public service. They have never ceased to gouge us into oblivion. They have been doing this for over 100 years, but now they have it down to a fine art.
Don’t pretend to me that rises in food and energy are not a significant problem, either in the US, or elsewhere. This is the end game, the final wringing out of the wallets of the developed world, and the excuse of ‘inflation’ is the weapon.
If it were a big nothing, the USA would not have record food stamp usage every month. It’s not hard to work it out.
If you WANT to know that is.
Another Australian who has a Fine Brain.
You might be able to buy a slightly smelly Home in the Premium markets of Brisbane for about 70% off the pre flood price. That Flood made a lot of paper millionaires see that Mother nature is the Great unraveller of Ponzinomics,
Thanks. What a mess. I have see a few of the US reports on the flooding and you guys aren’t getting any of the extreme footage of what happened. The damage is genuinely on an epic scale, unbelievably violent, especially well to the west of Brisbane. When they say it was like an "inland tsunami", it's no exaggeration. Whole towns no longer exist out there. The Queensland economy was toast financially, long before this flood, and the previous record one last year. (after the greenies told us their Global warming computer models said our dams “may never fill again in our lifetime” , and Australia would get drier and drier, when Aeolian landforms amd geo-history of Australia indicated the exact opposite would occur)
The QLD debt is the highest of all states and the deficits are the highest also. I calculated back at the last state budget that Queenslanders owe the state Govt debts about $22,000 AUD, per head (Greece was about $36,000 per head at that time), then there’s the 13% of GDP Federal Debt and the massive personal debts of a swish aspiring place like Brisbane.
The Queensland deficit and debt growth projections through 2016 were already horrific. And now this comes on top, even as tourism has taken a huge hit from the high AUD and weak developed world.
Keep in mind, the 'wet season' traditionally starts in the second week of January. All of what we have had so far was just the build-up to ‘the wet’, which continues into mid-April.
QLD now has only about 12 out of ~52 coal mines operating (rail lines are severely damaged and/or mines are flooded, with debt repayments suspended) and most of those operating are at about 60% of capacity. The economic damage is almost sure to throw the state into a sharp V-recession, and possibly Australia with it, as National GDP was already going south, with sectors in recession.
The 'good news', for the bandits, is that so many destroyed homes and businesses is going to support rents and house prices again. Well, unless the economy breaks because no one can afford it anymore.
Oh look, lots of distressed assets. What a boom!
<makes cookie-monster eats cookies noises>
Some good ideas but why no coffee!?
Virtually everything in the modern grocery is either made indirectly or relies directly on fossil fuel. For me, these days it is nothing short of surreal to stand inside my local grocery store and contemplate that. It's starting to feel sort of like hanging out on the Titanic - in a biophysical reality that's doomed, an inevitable death growing.
Has anyone on this board bought food and stored it?
I'm pondering the idea, but I think it will only be good if there is NO food...who knows.
if you bought and stored food - for how long would you plan for?
Started storing food about 16 months ago. One year's worth of food. You need to look at calories, too. A can of tuna may taste good, but there are cheaper foods that provide more calories to get you through the day. Plus, we grow our own fruits and veggies & put them up. It's not that hard, just takes time and discipline. Our neighbor had started saving food, then lost her job. At least she could feed her kids until she got another job.
Frankly, everyone needs to go a little Mormon when it comes to food and preparedness.
You can buy standard boxes of beans, wheat,, etc from the LDS pantry.
http://providentliving.org/channel/0,11677,1706-1,00.html
I could type for hours, but I again direct everyone over to Zombie Squad.
http://zombiehunters.org/forum/
Sure its a little nutty, but if you prepare for a Zombie Apocalypse well you are prepared for anything. Very friendly place too.
Apart from food, storing water or accessing water when the water is off or contaminated can be a little more tricky.
Good luck to everybody.
You couldn't pay me to eat Mormon beans. I can only imagine the consequences.
I agree on preparing like zombies already walk the earth. They basically do.
Haven't you read any postings?
Are the wannabe-bourgie commies gonna go 'Tank Man' for lack of fried wonton?
Biflation news:
-Import prices surge 1.1% Dec. Ag prices surge on inventory revisions. Oil surges on lower inventories and Alaska pipeline repairs. Riots erupt in multiple countries over unemployment and food prices.
Last week WSJ reported that for 12months ended in September, wage growth barely kept pace with headline CPI. When necessities of middle class life are factored in, prices outpaced incomes. Latest reports reconfirm sagging housing prices and slumping purchase componenet of mortgage apps.
Get it yet?
SPX is only 15 points away from 1300, which is taking profit zone.
gonna love it.
I don't use energy or require food. I only consume DVD players...therefore, deflation for ME bitchez
Like no one saw this coming. I've been saying for a while that crop projections for the US are going to be overstated and sure enough, they've been revised down at least once.
Looks like it's time to take delivery of some canned goods, now if I only had that diesel storage tank I could stockpile some fuel...maybe it's time to think about that.
Too bad, WSJ already pulled the original Supervalu article, I would have liked to see it.
cooking oil pice jump freaking out the third world bitchez!
ramen noodles bitchez!
The longer I live, the less I understand about economics. The US enjoys one of the highest per capita incomes in the world, if official figures are to be believed. Food prices are relatively low, especially for healthy foods (not organic, but healthy...as in beans and rice). Gasoline is cheaper than in just about any country outside of the Middle East, running about half the price in most of Europe, Japan or Hong Kong. Home and land prices are amongst the lowest in the world, certainly the lowest in the "developed" world, and cheaper than in most developing countries. Car prices are lower in the US than anywhere else, sometimes half the price (due to taxes or road permits in places like HK, Thailand or Singapore). I can buy arable farmland in the US ($45K per capita GDP) cheaper than in Burma ($250 per capita GDP). I can buy a home in Greenwich, CT for about the same price as a three bedroom, 1200 sq ft apartment in Hong Kong. I can buy a Japanese camera in the US for about 60% of what I would pay at the best discount shop in Akihabara, and about 20% less than what I'd pay in Hong Kong, Bangkok or KL. Somehow, the American savings rate ranges from 0-5%, while in Asia it runs 10-20%.
The only way I can explain it is that Americans must pay way too much for healthcare, needed as a result of buying those expensive processed foods in bulk, consuming too much of same, then plopping themselves in front of any one of their ten 52" LED's instead of hitting the weight room or track. I think one of the reasons Americans don't riot is because they are too fat and out of shape.
We are already paying ~$8.50 per gallon in uk...err, and there is a VAT increase comming down the pike(from 17.5% to 20%). So, i think you folks need to sit back and think about how lucky you all are.
TOTAL AND COMPLETE MAYHEME IS COMING! Protect (Silver+Gold)
That being said... Lot's of positive changes too!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpjVDea6UGg
See you in the streets! FIGHT FOR LIBERTY! (Make OLD HICKORY PROUD ;)
Has FED been abolished or not yet??
Hammy sticks his head out again ... http://marketcyclesresearch.blogspot.com/2011/01/imho-we-are-very-close-to-next-sell-off.html
Complex societies do not last forever. They break down from internal stresses as often as from external. A society must maintain its system, with more energy expended when more complex. The reserves can be tapped repeatedly if crisis is not averted from regulatory machinery. In time, neglect enters the picture, as stresses break the fabric. Joseph Tainter is well-known for his classic book entitled "The Collapse of Complex Societies" despite his expertise as an archeologist. He must have done much thinking about the collapse of societies whose ruins he unearthed in massive digs. Tainter is on record with his developed thesis, born out of his dissatisfaction with prevailing collapse theories. His argument is straightforward. Human societies are problem solving organizations, which supply the necessities along with entertainment, as well as training to ensure continuation. The over-arching Sociopolitical systems require energy for their maintenance. If left without proper tending, they fall apart like a garden without attention. Increasing complexity carries with it increased cost per capita. Simple monarchies need much less maintenance than democracies, as voices are heard and justice grinds slowly. Investment in sociopolitical complexity often reaches a point of declining marginal returns, as time passes, interest wanes, justice disappoints. When debt saturation occurs, like today, the cost of maintenance and decline can be overwhelming. The complex system becomes vulnerable to collapse after great stresses and what Tainter calls perturbations, better thought of as disruptions or disturbances.
Stress and perturbation are a constant feature of any complex society, always occurring somewhere in its territory. The developed operating regulatory machinery is designed to deal with unplanned changes. Imagine spotty agricultural failures, border conflicts, large scale accidents, social eruptions, and disease outbreaks. Such localized stress tends to recur with regularity, and thus can be anticipated with preparations. To meet major unexpected stress surges, the society must have some form of net reserve. It can take the form of excess productive capacities in farm output, stored energy, or stockpiled minerals, or hoarded surpluses from past production, even reserve savings. Stress surges of great magnitude cannot be accommodated without such a reserve. A society beset by regular self-inflicted crises will be forced to draw upon its stored reserves too quickly. As declining marginal returns are experienced, the society must contend with rising systemic risk. The costs outweigh the yield put in reserve. Excess productive capacity will at some point be exhausted, and accumulated surpluses allocated to current operating needs will be used up. Even when the adversities are met and the surges are dealt with, a detriment to the system as a whole occurs. The society is weakened in the process, and made more vulnerable to the next crisis. Once a complex society develops the vulnerabilities of declining marginal returns, collapse might require the sufficient passage of time to render probable the occurrence of an insurmountable calamity.
More importantly, declining marginal returns make complexity a less attractive goal to maintain. The problem solving strategy takes a secondary role to instituting simpler systems. The society tends to accept the option for less costly and less sophisticated social forms. The alternative embraced eventually is an endorsed level of disintegration. This has occurred to the United States in grand style. As marginal returns deteriorate, tax rates rise with less benefit to the local level. Irrigation systems go untended, bridges and roads are not maintained, the frontier is not adequately defended, product liability is not protected, and fraud prevention is compromised. Notice in the US how cities exhaust their funds with pension programs, unable to provide proper services like police protection. Notice how the US has countless bridges and pipelines (water, sewer, energy) that have gone without proper care. The nation has turned too much attention to war.
As the process degrades, many of the social units that comprise a complex society no longer pursue the increased general advantage, and instead pursue a strategy of personal independence. Then begins a different pursuit of their own immediate goals rather than long-term goals of the networked hierarchy. They see little benefit coming from systemic contributions. Behavioral interdependence (constructive groups) yields way to broader independence (working on one's own). Shrinking resources are strained even more, as control slides away and is lost. The investment in regulatory systems is crucial, as efficiency devices. When they degrade into support systems for corruption, the system falters from its own rotten moral fabric and invites the seeds of rebellion. Eventually, perturbation occurs from within, as civil disobedience takes root. The lack of justice, the apparent predation by the upper hierarchy levels (bankers), and public frustration breeds anarchy like thousands of microdots within the society. See the home mortgage voluntary defaults. Justice is a delicate factor within a society. When justice is dealt, order tends to be preserved. When justice is absent, like for the big US banks, like for military aggression, the people object and depart from norms. The presence in the last two decades of bigger amplitudes in the crisis pain and cost, together with greater frequency of events in cycles, has combined to deplete the reserves of the nation. The Rubin Doctrine of surviving today even if taking aware reserves from tomorrow has assured much greater risk of systemic ruin. In my view, it has guaranteed ruin and collapse. And to speed things up, the crowd only needs to grow hungry once.
I enjoyed reading this post, very thoughtful.
When you refer to "complex society" are you referring to the current "global society" or just the US, or perhaps both?
This article demonstrates that the world population has grown "almost" to the point were it cannot feed all of humanity within this "global society structure".
Humanity will have to deal with these complex issues. To do otherwise, given the "global society", WMD's etc, is to risk extinction, not just the "collapse of a society".
Nice post. You might also appreciate the Resilience Alliance and Jane Jacobs, if you haven't already found their work.
Relax people. Bernenke is working on a way to print wheat. It's called Agro-subsidies.
$ 6.00 gas bitchez!
Thing is if some US states and european countries default we are back to square one with commodities floored, dollar strengthened and interest rates lowered, the way I see it the housing bubble of 2000-2007 was due to Japanese money printing, with some making it into oil futures causing interest rates to rise and mortgage delinquincies, this round of money printing is probably inflating bubbles in the emerging countries and commodities and will ultimately result in making it harder for governments to pay back debt at their costs increase resulting in another round of deflation from defaults
Just think of all those poor dopers who will be forced to cut back as the price of zig-zags skyrockets!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
got pipe?
The next Oil Shock is here.
As indicated Steve from Virginia, this is an
energy issue not a financial crisis.
Came across this:
"I believe the limit on how much oil will be supplied is not the amount of oil in the ground; rather the limit is how high a price economies can afford. This in turn is tied to the true value of the oil to society–whether oil can really be used to produce goods and services to justify its price. The problems we experienced in 2008, and may experience in the not-to-distant future, suggest that we may be reaching this limit."
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7302#more
Food storage suppliers are also having shortages. A few weeks ago, after ZH posted info about shortages from a single supplier, I spend the weekend checking supplies at various suppliers. Of the 20 companies I checked, ALL had shortages and delays in shipping. ALL of them!
And one of the largest, after the ZH posting, two weeks later updated their website to indicate that the delay would be 30-45 BUSINESS days! 45 business days is about TWO MONTHS!
Corn production was down 4 percent this year from last. I conveyed this from memory when I checked. We stopped planting corn when it cost more than our 400 acre farm as much to put in. For those who missed the agri issue of the seventy's and before the bottum line was you could not make a profit unless you had over 4000 thousand acres or so. Please do your homework on agrarian cultures and the trends inclusive to these thoughts that some have endured and are. Short but to the point as are decades planned to control scarce resources at your expense since price is competion.