Food Prices Leaping Sky High
by Ian Mosley
Not only are Americans defaulting on their mortgages, soon they won’t be able to pay their grocery bills.
According to the Associated Press, “The U.S. is wrestling with the worst food inflation in 17 years, and analysts expect new data due on Wednesday to show it’s getting worse. That’s putting the squeeze on poor families and forcing bakeries, bagel shops and delis to explain price increases to their customers.”
AP goes on: “U.S. food prices rose 4 percent in 2007, compared with an average 2.5 percent annual rise for the last 15 years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the agency says 2008 could be worse, with a rise of as much as 4.5 percent. Higher prices for food and energy are again expected to play a leading role in pushing the government’s consumer price index higher for March….For the U.S. poor, any increase in food costs sets up an either-or equation: Give something up to pay for food. For some, that means adding an extra cup of water to their soup, watering down their milk, or giving their children soda because it’s cheaper than milk….”
The AP article notes “The higher U.S. prices seem eye-popping after years of low inflation. Eggs cost 25 percent more in February than they did a year ago, according to the USDA. Milk and other dairy products jumped 13 percent, chicken and other poultry nearly 7 percent. Soybean prices have gone up as farmers switched more of their acreage to corn. Drought in Australia has even affected the price of bread, as it led to tighter global wheat supplies.”
A large part of the problem is the huge amount of corn now being earmarked for ethanol, although that doesn’t seem to be helping lower gas prices at the pump any. Most of these government ethanol subsidies are simply boondoggles to bribe big agribusinesses and are not seriously intended to relieve the energy crisis, but they do have the effect of diverting millions of tons of corn and soybeans and other grains away from fodder and human consumption and shoveling them into cost-inefficient ethanol distilleries. No one seems to quite know just what is being done with whatever ethanol is actually being produced. Many Americans don’t know that much of the oil from the Alaskan pipeline (which we paid for) wound up being sold to Japan. These mega-corporations have absolutely ZERO loyalty to the American consumer. If the ethanol produced isn’t going into fuel for our cars, maybe its being exported too.
But the problem also lies in the fact that several generations ago America decided to destroy our railways and transport everything by diesel-guzzling, eighteen-wheel trucks, so as to pay off the gangster-controlled Teamsters Union and also to bloat the profits of America’s oil companies still further. Large parts of rural America are now completely dependent on having all their groceries and other supplies trucked in from the outside world at $4.00 or more per gallon of diesel fuel. Needless to say, these prices get passed on to the consumer.
As if all this corruption is not enough, we will soon have our first Black president. Despite the wide-eyed, naive enthusiasm for Barack Obama, there’s something people should keep in mind: Blacks and mulattoes have proven themselves over and over to be among the most corrupt, incompetent and sleazy politicians in world history. We’re about to slide into a depression, and the president will be a liberal mulatto with virtually no real world experience.