What's behind higher food prices?

Ben Collins, Dollars & Sense

Since 2003, prices of basic agricultural commodities such as corn, wheat, soybeans, and rice have skyrocketed worldwide, threatening to further impoverish hundreds of millions of the world's poor.

Shifts in fundamental supply and demand factors for food grains have undoubtedly contributed to higher food prices. Prominent among these shifts are the increasing diversion of food crops for biofuel production in the United States and Europe; sustained drought and water scarcity in Australia's wheat-growing regions; flooding in the U.S. grain belt; rising prices for oil and fertilizer worldwide; and the adoption of European and American meat-rich diets by the growing middle classes throughout Asia.

On top of these recent developments, long-term threats to worldwide agricultural output have eroded the world food system's resilience in the face of changing supply and demand. Although decades in the making, a loss of agricultural capacity worldwide caused by soil depletion, climate change, water scarcity, and urbanization has begun to take its toll on food production. Moreover, half a century of import restrictions and cheap agricultural exports by wealthy countries has devastated domestic food production capacity in poorer countries, forcing many countries that were once self-sufficient to rely on imported food from the world market.

More...

This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them.

Robert Scheer, TruthDig.com

Sen. Barack Obama meets with his economic advisers Monday in Washington. From left: former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, Obama, Service Employees International Union Chair Anna Burger, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine. AP photo / Jae C. Hong

Robert Scheer, TruthDig.com

This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them. Yet both of our leading presidential candidates are scrambling to enlist not only the big-dollar contributions but, more frighteningly, the “expertise” of the very folks who advocated the financial industry deregulations at the heart of this meltdown.

Republican candidate John McCain even appointed as his campaign co-chairman Phil Gramm, who went from being chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, where he sponsored disastrous legislation that empowered the banking bandits, to becoming one of them at UBS Warburg. Gramm was forced to resign from McCain’s campaign only after he went public with his contempt for the financial concerns of ordinary Americans, calling them “whiners” and perpetrators of a “mental recession.”

The ethanol scam shows that corporate, market-based "solutions" to global warming and oil dependence are no solution at all.

Nicole Colson, CounterPunch

At first glance, it seems like common sense.

Unless you're delusional or in the pay of the energy industry, you know that the burning of fossil fuels is the primary cause of global warming and destructive climate change that is already wreaking havoc around the globe. Not to mention that fossil fuels are a limited resource, costly to extract and refine, and increasingly sought-after by competing nations.

So if a more environmentally friendly fuel could be derived from renewable plant-based sources, wouldn't it be logical to make the switch?

This is the justification for the recent boom in biofuel production in the U.S. and around the globe. Since biofuels (which can be made from corn, sugar cane, soybeans or other organic sources) are produced from "renewable resources," goes the argument, they can go a long way to helping break America from its 21-million-barrels-a-day oil habit and provide a more environmentally friendly alternative to fossil fuels.

More... (and scroll down)

Paul Abrams, Huffington Post

Policies founded upon lies rarely work.

The economy has deteriorated, and will continue to spiral downward, but the reasons for the vicious cycle have been ignored, and thus the cures not even discussed. That represents a victory for the radical rightwing ideologues and a major defeat for the people of the United States.

The major reason for the downward spiral is the upward spiral in the US deficits and debt. Remember, our dear leader inherited a projected surplus of $5 Trillion, and succeeded in transforming that into a debt of an additional $4 Trillion, the most spectacular case of fiscal mismanagement in world history.

The boy wanted to outdo dad, and, boy, did he!

More...