The big problem with inflation is that people get low blood sugar when they are
hungry, and soon their moods turn sour. I know this for a fact because if
breakfast or brunch or lunch or coffee break or dinner or any snack is five
minutes late, I involuntarily turn into a screaming monster from hell demanding
to know who stole my food and vowing bloody revenge. I can only imagine the
anger when hunger is caused because someone can't afford to buy food!
This "inability to buy food" is one of the problems with inflation, and that
ugliness is now here, as we read from Bloomberg.com, "The World Bank in
Washington says 33 nations from Mexico to
Yemen may face 'social unrest' after food and energy costs increased for six
straight years." Hahaha! No kidding?
World Bank chief Robert Zoellick says, "Thirty-three countries around the world
face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy
prices," and that since 2005, "the prices of staples have jumped 80%".
Like what? Like corn and wheat, which are making the news by rising like crazy,
and the latest food emergency is that "Rice, the staple food for half the
world", is now double the price of a year ago, and a fivefold increase from
2001. Yikes! - 100% inflation in the price of rice in one year! And 500% in
seven years! Yikes again!
No wonder that Jody Clarke at MoneyWeek.com reports, "Since January 2005 the
average price of a loaf of bread in the US has risen 32%. Overall, US retail
food prices rose 4% last year, the biggest jump in 17 years, says the US
Department of Agriculture. Meanwhile restaurant owners have been even harder
hit, with wholesale price increases of 7.4%. That's the biggest jump in nearly
three decades, according to the National Restaurant Association."
And worse yet for us alcohol-besotted worthless lushes out here, heroically
keeping bartenders and comely barmaids gainfully employed year around, the
price of hops, an integral ingredient in beer making, has soared from $4 a
pound to $40.
The Marketbasket Survey, conducted by the American Farm Bureau Federation, says
a basket of things like bread, milk, eggs and pork chops will cost you $3.50,
or 8.9%, more this year than last. Both a five-pound bag of flour and a dozen
eggs are up over 40% since January 2007.
And speaking of pork and yummy pork products, there is a pig crisis in Britain
because the government mandated that pig farmers institute some reforms to make
the rearing process more humane, and that means that "costs rose and farmers
fled the sector. The UK's breeding herd has fallen to about 425,000 - half the
size it was in 1990. Now, soaring feed prices have tipped the industry into
crisis."
And food prices, and the resultant anger, are rising around the world, as we
glean from a reader of George Ure's Urbansurvival.com who has been using the
Google search engine for references to "food riots." He has submitted these
returns:
278 on March 22
289 on March 23
330 on March 24
380 on March 26
970 on April 2
1,330 on April 5
1,698 on April 7
Mr Ure has some data of his own; "Meantime, the word 'shortage' is hanging
around 33,000 hits a day, up from the 11,500 a day" back when he first started
tracking it back March 15, 2006.
Larry Edelson at MoneyandMarkets.com says, "Over the past eight years, the
price of food worldwide has increased 75%; the price of wheat has gone up a
dramatic 200%."
And regardless of what idiots at the US Federal Reserve or their toadying
hangers-on say, inflation in prices follows inflation in the money supply,
which brings up the terrifying fact that it is all going to get worse and
worse, as from Bloomberg.com we read that "Federal Reserve officials signaled
the central bank will keep lowering interest rates because financial markets
remain distressed even after the fastest reduction of borrowing costs in two
decades".
This goes along with another Bloomberg article that reported, "New York Federal
Reserve Bank President Timothy Geithner said capital markets are still
'substantially impaired' and policy makers and financial industry leaders must
'act forcefully' to stem the crisis." Translation: You ain't seen nothin' yet.
Too bad it will be all for naught, as Jason Hommel of the silverstockreport.com
is exactly right that "the Fed is doomed. Printing more will not work. Printing
less will not work. Printing nothing will not work. All the inflation of all
the years from 1913 until now is beginning to crash down on our heads, and it
will keep crashing until it stops."
I am not even from this planet, and I understand that something has to keep
going "until it stops", but when will that be? The answer, says Mr Hommel, is
simplicity itself: "Until bonds start paying more each year than gold is going
up each year."
So what does one do about the collapsing economy? Nothing! You can't do
anything! Your only freaking hope is to not get into this kind of mess in the
first place! Ergo, the constitutional requirement that only silver and gold can
be money, which brings up chartoftheday.com, from whom we get the Quote of the
Day, which reveals how we can prevent the damned Federal Reserve and the
Congress from destroying us with inflation.
It is Ludwig von Mises himself who states, "The gold standard makes the money's
purchasing power independent of the changing ambitions and doctrines of
political parties and pressure groups. This is not a defect of the gold
standard; it is its main excellence."
And as a guy who is not excellent in anything, I can still recognize it in
something that keeps us from being destroyed by inflation. And so when it comes
to gold, if you ain't buyin', prepare for dyin'.
Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group,
serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo
Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those
who desperately deserve it.
(Republished with permission from
The Daily Reckoning. Copyright 2008, The Daily Reckoning.)
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