Posted on 12/27/2009 3:28:50 PM PST by blam
Global Food Crisis 2010 Means Financial Armageddon
Commodities / Food Crisis
Dec 25, 2009 - 04:12 PM
By: Eric deCarbonnel
If you read any economic, financial, or political analysis for 2010 that doesn’t mention the food shortage looming next year, throw it in the trash, as it is worthless. There is overwhelming, undeniable evidence that the world will run out of food next year. When this happens, the resulting triple digit food inflation will lead panicking central banks around the world to dump their foreign reserves to appreciate their currencies and lower the cost of food imports, causing the collapse of the dollar, the treasury market, derivative markets, and the global financial system. The US will experience economic disintegration.
The 2010 Food Crisis Means Financial Armageddon
Over the last two years, the world has faced a series of unprecedented financial crises: the collapse of the housing market, the freezing of the credit markets, the failure of Wall Street brokerage firms (Bear Stearns/Lehman Brothers), the failure of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the failure of AIG, Iceland’s economic collapse, the bankruptcy of the major auto manufacturers (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), etc…
In the face of all these challenges, the demise of the dollar, derivative markets, and the modern international system of credit has been repeatedly forecasted and feared.
However, all these doomsday scenarios have so far been proved false, and, despite tremendous chaos and losses, the global financial system has held together.
The 2010 Food Crisis is different. It is THE CRISIS. The one that makes all doomsday scenarios come true. The government bailouts and central bank interventions, which have held the financial world together during the last two years, will be powerless to prevent the 2010 Food Crisis from bringing the global financial system to its knees.
Financial crisis will kick into high gear
So far the crisis has been driven by the slow and steady increase in defaults on mortgages and other loans. This is about to change. What will drive the financial crisis in 2010 will be panic about food supplies and the dollar’s plunging value. Things will start moving fast.
Dynamics Behind 2010 Food Crisis
Early in 2009, the supply and demand in agricultural markets went badly out of balance. The world experienced a catastrophic fall in food production as a result of the financial crisis (low commodity prices and lack of credit) and adverse weather on a global scale. Meanwhile, China and other Asian exporters, in an effort to preserve their economic growth, were unleashing domestic consumption long constrained by inflation fears, and demand for raw materials, especially food staples, exploded as Chinese consumers worked their way towards American-style overconsumption, prodded on by a flood of cheap credit and easy loans from the government.
Normally food prices should have already shot higher months ago, leading to lower food consumption and bringing the global food supply/demand situation back into balance.
This never happened because the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), instead of adjusting production estimates down to reflect decreased production, adjusted estimates upwards to match increasing demand from china.
In this way, the USDA has brought supply and demand back into balance (on paper) and temporarily delayed a rise in food prices by ensuring a catastrophe in 2010.
[snip]
Ah, point of order.
He with the food makes the rules.
There are some asian countries that got lots of rice but it’s the US that feeds the world. They would really have to pound the dollar down to out bid Americans for our own wheat.
bookmark
You forget who’s in charge of the US. He’ll give our food away and watch us starve while he gorges on wyguu beef and truffles.
One bushel of corn or wheat for ....say......10,000 bbls of oil. Problem solved.
On the upside, if there’s a food shortage are we still paying US farmers not to grow crops?
Even under adverse conditions (cold wet spring forcing very late planting, cool summer, late maturing, flooding during harvest time) the corn crop was predicted to be the second largest ever and the soy bean crop - the largest ever. Haven't heard how that panned out, but I think its close. Haven't tracked the wheat, but its price is quite low now indicating a more than adequate supply.
For more than 50 years the American Farmer has produced way more food than we could possibly eat.
We’ve been feeding the world, so to speak.
See my tagline, it’s been true for, what, a hundred years? It will be true in 2010 also.
Gee, if there’s not enough food to go around, perhaps it will be time to show the world who’s the butch, and who’s the b*tch. . .
Nevermind, I forgot Doctor Utopia is running the place right now, he’ll give it all away and force us to pay triple. . .
Oh no another disaster in the making. I guess Al Gore will be out making a new movie and cashing in on the food credits.
I’m long on lobsters given Michelle’s tastes ... ;-)
if u read the article he explains this
Seems like somebody just read Ehrlich and wrote an article about it.
We’ve been hearing this crap since the ‘70s.
end the ethonol mandate for gasoline NOW
Don’t forget the production of ethanol, which has caused a shift of food production from people to fuel.
One of the reasons the idiot won is because the people of this country have gotten so comfortable they think they deserve more and more for less and less. The forgot that comfort comes from hard work, sweat and putting away for the future. We are fast running out of what was once “put away”.
Thank heavens the US can produce more food than it can consume. (Remember, in the 1930s depression the government bought food and destroyed it because of over production.)
Thank God Rhodesia can feed all of Africa! All that is left is Europe and Asia!
Oh, wait...
I beat ya by exactly a minute.
Corn ethonol being forced into the gas tank is one of the reasons. Undoing that should be the first thing we do if there is a food shortage. And stop paying farmers not to grow foods.
ObamaCare provides free treatment for malnutrition.
I dunno. It’s damn hard to find people who have money to buy food but cant do so.
“Specifically, the USDA has declared half the counties in the Midwest to be primary disaster areas, including 274 counties in the last 30 days alone.”
In the last 30 days?! Isn’t this winter? What crop is growing in the winter?
I’m pretty well “crisis-ed out” & don’t find this very believable. But no doubt Obama will find a way to utilize it.
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