why 2013 will be a year of crisis

[bcbm]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/03/opinion/frum-food-price-crisis/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Well, food prices are as high as they were last year. Wheat is 1% off of what it was in the February spike last year. Sufficient food is un-affordable for hundreds of millions of people a year, the difference with crises of course being that it is a sudden drop in living standard. The cause for these food price inflation peaks, over 400%(!) of normal costs as in 2008, is not only extreme global warming weather, not only cheap central bank interest rates, but speculation. Speculation on food commodities is not bad as such (it in fact secures a bit of security for farming companies), but the speculation on a speculation on food, and then the market trends that come with production differences, are disastrous.

You have to see like this: the speculators set a bet with the producers of commodities, in this case the vital resource of food. The one side says it bets so and so much money that the production of the commodity will dip and the other bets it will rise. There is an equilibrium of bets that in the end weigh each other out. But with deregulation you have exponential bets on an original speculation. This, along with the typical "market trends", means that when production of the real commodity dips, the whole capitalists (who have borrowed so much money from the central banks at such low [and even negative!] interest rates) bet on the failing of production. They *win* the bet and need to be paid. But the other side of the bet, the producer, has just now lost, and the winners of the bet need to be compensated. So the producer capitalists simply raise food prices and the poor get to pay. It's not jsut me who says that speculation on food should be banned, the UN, World Food Organisation, and many many other mainstream NGOs have publicly scrutinized this mass murdering practice and are protesting it.

[ckaihatsu]

So the Mayans were a year off, huh -- ?


= D

[fug]

Mind the fact that even in this critical food situation, a good part of grains and such from the most developed countries will still end up as bio fuel.

[Ele'ill]

updated link since that one doesn't work anymore (http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/03/opinion/frum-food-price-crisis/index.html)

[Collectorgeneral]

Rising food prices are bad enough but my country is "forced" to privatize both its energy and gas markets as well, this constitutes in an additional overall 20-40% increase in the cost of pretty much everything here (because gaining points from Brussels is obviously more important than then welfare of the people)

[ckaihatsu]

Rising food prices are bad enough but my country is "forced" to privatize both its energy and gas markets as well, this constitutes in an additional overall 20-40% increase in the cost of pretty much everything here (because gaining points from Brussels is obviously more important than then welfare of the people)


Is there any chance that the 'in-crowd' appeal of the EU will be tarnished due to its own current economic stalling -- ?

[fug]

I never understood why is Estonia so reactionary. I mean you're less developed than Poland or Slovakia, still there is almost no communist presence there.

[Rafiq]

You know, with the still winds of 2012, I've had a feeling that 2013 will resemble 2011 in some way...

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[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

You know, with the still winds of 2012, I've had a feeling that 2013 will resemble 2011 in some way...

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Interesting you say this, because while i was just reading in the news how the conservative government has pledged spending cuts for 2013 and 2014, I found this hilarous as who knows what the next two years will bring, given that the NeoNazi Fascists and Radical-rhetorical Syriza keep rising in the polls.

[Collectorgeneral]

I never understood why is Estonia so reactionary. I mean you're less developed than Poland or Slovakia, still there is almost no communist presence there.

That's because the way the people see it right now is that we've already had a quote unquote "communist" presence here not 20 years ago. Of course this demonized image of what was left of the former soviet union is still shoved into the minds of the masses on a daily basis by the ruling classes that rose to power five to ten years after we "re-gained our independence". The fact that the estonian communist party is illegal doesn't help matters either, oddly enough such a thing doesn't even exist but the law is there. On the matter of development however we are actually one of the more advanced countries when compared to the other baltic states but this progress has been achieved at the expense of the people. I'm not even going to tell you how low the average wage or pension is here.

[Synergy]

Every year has been a year of crisis for most of the world. But now all the damage we've done is finally making its way back to the US which means we have to actually talk about it now (well excluding any of the true reasons like imperialism and exploitation).