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POPSAmerican Policy Elites Do Not Care About the Starving
World food prices grew 22% from June 2007 to June 2008 and a significant portion of the increase was propelled by the $175 billion invested in commodity futures that speculate on price instead of seeking to feed the hungry. The result is wild food price spirals, both up and down, with food insecurity remaining widespread. For a family on the bottom rung of poverty a small price increase is the difference between life and death, yet neither US presidential candidate has declared a war on starvation. Instead both candidates talk about national security and the continuation of the war on terror as if this were the primary election issue. Given that ten times as many innocent people died on 9/11/01 than those in the World Trade centers, where is the Manhattan project for global hunger? Where is the commitment to national security though unilateral starvation relief? Where is the outrage in the corporate media with pictures of dying children and an analysis of who benefits from hunger?
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POPS Oil Falls Below $64 As Economy Outweighs OPEC News that Japan's Nippon Oil plans a 15 percent cut in November crude oil refining, from a year earlier and data showing China's September oil demand growth was its slowest in 10 months also weighed on oil prices. Despite OPEC's Friday decision to cut back on production, oil prices have continued to slide. Kuwait's oil minister said OPEC was concerned about an oil price fall after it cut output but it would take time to decide if the cut was sufficient, while Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said OPEC should create a crude price band between $70 and $90 per barrel. Separately, crude oil speculators on the New York Mercantile Exchange shifted to a net long position while open interest dropped in the week to October 21, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission reported on Friday.
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POPSSalt Comes In Gourmet Flavors & Designer Colors 
Mahatma Gandhi used salt to launch his first major campaign of non-violent civil disobedience. By picking up a pinch of salt left by the tide, he broke the British law making it a crime to possess salt not obtained from the government monopoly. Salt wasn't always readily available or cheap. In medieval Europe it represented a third of the income of Poland's kings. The ancient Egyptians salt-cured their fish. The Romans were big salt-users. They paid the soldiers in salt." Which is apparently where the term "worth his salt" came from, and the word "salary" and "soldier. You may not know this, but salt is used in the manufacture of some 14,000 different products. "SALT, A World History" is a book that shows how an item of food becomes a commodity of trade, so it becomes economically important, then it becomes politically important and eventually it becomes culturally important" I Highly recommend Kurlansky's book . It put history into a different perspective for me & I enjoyed
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POPS Another Bubble Bursts Subprime mortgages were just the beginning. The dollar also plunged along the way against most global currencies, notably the euro, as the bottom chart illustrates. The dollar price of oil and the dollar-euro exchange rate are probably the two most important prices in the world. They represent a huge share of global commerce, sending signals that shape trade and capital flows. When those two prices move up and down so sharply in so short a time -- based more on fear and expectations than on economic realities -- they distort price signals and can lead to a misallocation of resources. Commodity prices have now fallen back to Earth, as the reality of global recession hits home and the Fed can't ease much further. Meanwhile, the euro has fallen from the stratosphere as Europe heads into recession and the dollar becomes a safer haven in a world of fear.
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POPSA President whose time has come! Ex President Clinton is about to shine and not before time; like Al Gore and Bill Gates these guys have the ability to really lead now. The World needs their wisdom.
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POPSSumatran robusta growers suffer from price drop The global financial crisis will impact all coffee farmers. In this case, the price of robusta is dropping. Here in Sumatra, this means many farmers may rip out their coffee and plant less eco-friendly crops. Also look for the big multinational companies to stock up on this low-quality coffee and pit growers against each other to further depress prices.
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POPSThe Bailout, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, The Fed and Monetary Policy The Cato Institute has been following the crisis in financial markets since the very beginning. From the sub prime crisis to Fannie and Freddie to the $700 billion bailout, the recent financial events have given our analysts and experts plenty to talk and write about. We decided to pull together the op-eds, podcasts, reports, and publications from our scholars on this issue, so all these resources can exist in one place. We hope it’s a useful tool for your research. "The Bush Legacy: Deflation or Inflation?," "The Greenback and Commodity Prices," "Milton Friedman: Float or Fix?," "Washington Is Quietly Repudiating Its Debts," "The Greenback and Commodity Prices," "Polluted Markets," "The Fed Plays With Fire," "Greenspan's Bubbles," "Keep Complaining about the Economy, "Asset Bubbles and Their Consequences," more op-eds, podcasts, reports, and publications at link: http://www.cato.org/special/financial_crisis/
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POPSSoo what's the diff again? I keep hearing how democrats are socialists that want to "ruin" the free market. So what have the republicans been doing these last eight years?
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POPSBush does not deserve credit for our security continued from source.... by ANY government and has severely weakened the US dollar... leading to catastrophically high oil and commodity prices. US presence in the world has been diminished by the struggle in Iraq. Russia and Iran both see the US as a toothless tiger, and Russia basically proved it recently in Georgia.. Putin basically said (without saying it) , the US can't touch me.. they're in debt, their military is stretched thin, and I'm running the biggest oil producing country on the planet.. they wouldn't dare.. and he was right.. and Iran knows pretty much the same thing.. and this is a DIRECT result of the fiasco in Iraq. The Bush years have weakened the US while strengthening our most dangerous enemies.
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POPS Iran Says Oil Price Is Right At $100 A Barrel Pressure for a cut in oil output at next week's Opec meeting in Vienna stepped up today when Iran’s Opec governor said an oil price of $100 per barrel was “appropriate” Robert Laughlin, analyst at MF Global, said today that Opec had played a good hand in its actions — or lack of them — this year, when prices rose aggressively. "But will be alarmed at the downturn in demand and the deteriorating economic backdrop of the global economy." "Western leaders will be urging the cartel to remain unchanged in production strategy but I fear there is growing feeling in the ranks of price hawks that a cut in production is required and now," Mr Laughlin said Even the most moderate Opec member, Saudi Arabia, which has indicated that it would prefer output to be left unchanged, has been cutting the discount at which it sells Arab heavy, a poor-quality crude that it uses to calm the oil price, offering large quantities at big discounts.
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POPSFed's Yellen: Crisis "ongoing and perhaps deepening"
Second, export growth alone contributed one-half of the total real GDP growth registered in the second quarter. This element has been an important source of strength in our economy for over a year, being buoyed by strong growth abroad and by the weakening of the dollar. However, as I discussed, in recent months the dollar has risen somewhat and economic growth in many of our industrialized trading partners has slowed or even turned negative, suggesting that we can no longer count on exports as an important source of strength. Third, the problems in the housing markets, financial markets, and labor markets continue to be a drag on growth and employment. Fortunately, the recent fall in commodity prices should help to cushion some of this downward pressure on activity. Overall, I anticipate that real GDP growth in the second half of this year will come in below the growth of potential output which implies that the unemployment rate will rise. On its own, this obviously is not good new
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POPSMovement Conservatism: The G.O.P. - Selling Social Policy as a Commodity indifference to learning from experience and adjusting accordingly is a central characteristic of movement conservatism. Examples: Resistance to forming a 9/11 commission (Bush administration) Resistance to learning what went wrong during Hurricane Katrina ( John McCain); The term Flip-Flopping, (one can never form a new opinion or idea based upon new experience or information;
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POPSSurge for the Dollar Despite Global Fears The dollar surged to a two-year high against the pound and a six-month peak against the euro on Friday, as fears about spreading economic gloom triggered a sell-off in commodities. Against sterling, the US currency notched up its 11th consecutive day of gains – its longest uninterrupted rise in more than 35 years – as markets became increasingly convinced that the US was best-placed to weather the global downturn. The Reuters-Jefferies CRB index, a benchmark for commodities, fell more than 2.5 per cent to its lowest level since late March. The index has fallen almost 20 per cent since an all-time high in July, but is still 22 per cent higher than a year ago.
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POPSUS Best Place to Put Your Money Seems our economy is better than the Euros or the Japanese... Don't look for the MSM to report that, though, it interferes with their narrative that only the O-mentum can cure our ills... maybe the world isn't so infatuated with Obama after all...
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POPSCurrency problem! Quids, Bucks, Euros... u name it, we need it! I know this may sound lousy, but I really don't know where this "scenario" is going to take us. (I didn't want to use the words crisis or recession on pourpose!!!) Any suggestion???
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POPSPelosi Invests In Energy Scheme and Water Grab By T. Boone Pickens Ken Kramer, director of the Texas Sierra Club said, “Water is a resource, yet in some respects it is a commodity. It’s as essential to human life as air. That puts water in a different class.” Pelosi #dontgo Bombshell: MONEY Money. It would appear that the driving force behind Madam Speaker’s quick and forceful adjournment of Congress is money. According to Michigan Taxes Too Much blog, Madam Speaker has a substantial amount of money invested in Clean Energy Fuels Corporation. Clean Energy Fuels Corporation is a business venture started by none other than T. Boone Pickens. Clean Energy Fuels Corp, stands to gain substantially from the higher prices of gasoline and are even flaunting it on their website. http://dontgomovement.com/2008/08/11/pelosi-dontgo-bombshell-money/
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POPSOil "Jump" Dow "How High"? But more notable than the recent consistency of the general counter-trend (i.e. stocks move up when oil moves down and vice versa) is the strength of the magnitude correlation. If you were to predict that stocks would move in perfect opposition to oil prices (offset downward by 1%), you could map the price movement of the Dow fairly well over the last two weeks. This is particularly interesting if you think the commodity fever has finally broken and the oil bubble has plenty more deflating to do. Bear in mind that at $121 per barrel, we've receded to May 2008 levels, but we're still more than 50% higher than we were just a year ago, so there may be a lot of room below.
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