Posted on 02/11/2011 9:09:52 AM PST by illiac
SANTA MONICA, Calif. (MarketWatch) — The riots in Cairo are the result of United States policy gone bad. In fact, we — you, me, U.S. taxpayers — are to blame.
Strategic policy, I am not speaking of. Political policy, I am not speaking of. Nor am I talking about defense policy or other such foreign relations. The uprising in Cairo is about U.S. tax dollars supporting farm programs that wreak havoc on food prices worldwide.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
Follow Up Article:
Why U.S. EPA ethanol policy caused Egypt crisis
It’s immoral to the highest degree.
Millions of people will starve to death every year going forward due to the watermelon enviros and the corn industry and cane sugar lobbies world wide for the coming decade.
We have entered into a trade oligarchy induced Malthusian framework which is artificially created to prop up the interests of a small number of very large Ag corporations.
It’s only a matter of time before the claims of ethnic genocide starts hallowing through the streets....
Ben Bernake printing dollars and exporting inflation. Guess what - those chickens are going to come home to roost too. America is gonna see it with a vengence. Ron and Rand Paul are correct about the evil and illegal Federal Reserve.
“Why U.S. farm policy caused Egypt crisis”
Now that’s a stretch if ever I saw one. Great comments to the article, by the way.
When the U.S. catches a cold, the world sneezes.
A couple milennia ago, Egypt was the breadbasket of Rome. But The Nile can’t compete with U.S.-subsidized grain. The New Deal needs to be dismantled.
I remember in the early sixties when the government began paying farmers not to farm certain crops. Initially they were supposed to set a certain number of acres aside and not plant, say, soy beans. What the farmers would do was plant cotton instead. This was the first subsidy program. Even the farmers were laughing about it back then.
Now, of course, they want their subsidies. And as the world prices go up their subsidies will go up. I graduated high school with a farmer who gets more than a hundred grand a year in subsidies.
Plenty of bad guys to go around here:
1) corporate ag
2) ethynol production from corn
3) excess farm subsidies (you need to subsidize a slight over-production to avoid shortage)
4) death taxes and the demise of the family farmer
5) land policy in Egypt
6) poor economic policy in our country and theirs
7) uneducated masses
8) dictatorships where they stick it to us on oil and we stick it to them on food
9) etc, etc (the list could go on and on- US - and me personally- should not take all the blame as the writer suggests)
I just love it when they blame the taxpayers. Seeing that we are FORCED to pay taxes whether we think it’s being spent wisely or not.
But it's quite a stretch to link Egypt’s events to ethanol.
“But it’s quite a stretch to link Egypt’s events to ethanol.”
Nobody is preventing them from planting their own corn.
Easy. Any country that subsidizes a process that consumes more energy than produced by the resulting fuel is dumb enough to have the Black Eyed Peas as a Super Bowl halftime act.
Regards
Speculators have loosely-controlled exchanges to play on now, and, given that currency policy has made a lot of other investments a matter of concern about long-term viability, much of that loose money is pouring into commodities, and jacking up prices as a result.
And I would venture that the price of fuel and fertilizer that spiked in 2008 and is spiking again this year is a larger factor towards inhibiting food production in the third world than American agricultural policy.
“Any country that subsidizes a process that consumes more energy than produced by the resulting fuel is dumb enough to have the Black Eyed Peas as a Super Bowl halftime act. “
I like that idea.
Nobody is starving because of sugar cane production. In Brazil less than 3% of arable land is producing sugar cane and of that, only a third is used for ethanol. In the IS it isn’t the enviros who are pushing EtOH - it’s ADM, Monsanto, and the RFA. There is also what is known as the “blend wall”, which limits US EtOH production, and we are about at that limit. In the next few years we’ll see Miscanthus and cellulosic EtOH take off and people won’t be able to give corn away.
Genocide sponsored by progressive environmentalists, who want humans to be extinct. It’s the poorest among us who will die first. Talk about death panels!!!!!
I’m no financial expert but how is it illegal for Congress to delegate?
>>>>We have entered into a trade oligarchy induced Malthusian framework which is artificially created to prop up the interests of a small number of very large Ag corporations.
It’s only a matter of time before the claims of ethnic genocide starts hallowing through the streets....<<<<<
I would submit that it is the socialist central planning land-reform orientated countries who have failed us and are causing the problems, not large Ag corporations - ie Zimbabwe,South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Argentina etc.
-——————————— Iowa Public TV
Sue Martin Analyzes the Volatile Commodity Markets
posted on February 11, 2011
http://www.iptv.org/mtom/story.cfm/feature/630
You have world coarse grains at 50-day supply and, of course, the tightest since 1973. U.S. corn days of supply is 18, with a stocks-to-usage ratio that’s about 4.9, 5 percent. That equals the tightest we’ve ever been in history of 1995 and ‘96. In the meantime we still have our year to go through, and you’ve got Argentina looking vulnerable because some of their crop did get hurt and they’re turning back hot and dry. So as they go through March, it’s going to be very critical to watch their weather, one for the later beans, the double crop beans, and two for the later corn as to how they end up faring out of their crops. And I think that, of course, Argentina is number two exporter in the world, a distant number two, and then Brazil is number three. But in the meantime I’m not too sure we’re going to see Argentina export corn this year.
-——example - Harvesting cotton by hand?? Hardly a winner!
The failures of Egyptian agricultural policy
Egyptian farmers collect the cotton harvest at a farm in al-Massara village near the Nile delta city of Mansura, in September 22, 2009. Egyptian cotton production is in decline, having this year reached its lowest in 100 years. (AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)
http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/development/the-failures-of-egyptian-agricultural-policy.html
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