Guess what? The media has caught on! Sure, a couple of years after those of us that have been paying attention already knew the answer, but HEY! at least they decided to report on it. Only because it helps corporate interests, but they did finally report on it.
Go figure.
What, you ask, did they finally uncover? The reason your food is costing more money! WHOA! Be still, my bank account.
From a story, issued from MSNBC late Friday afternoon.
If you’re fuming about how high gasoline prices have gotten, why not relax with a nice meal?
Perhaps a few beers and a turkey sandwich? Maybe a chicken Caesar salad?
Well, it’s not just the price of gasoline that’s going up. That beer, turkey and chicken are also costing more too.
Let me see. What do beer, turkey and chicken have in common?
Hmmmmmm. Nope, I can’t figure it out for myself. It must be too obvious or something…
As President Bush noted in his comments on the economy Friday, “Prices are up at the gas pump and in the supermarket.”
Welp, I wonder how that happened on Your Watch, oh enlightened Presnit?
Lets see, shall we?
World financial markets may seem remote from you; far away from from that turkey sandwich in your hands.
But chew this over before you swallow: seventy percent of the cost of raising that turkey in your sandwich was the food it ate. And turkeys eat corn and soybean meal.
Ok, I know you enlightened readers have already figured out the answer, and in fact, knew the answer about 23 words into this essay. However, there is more. Geez!
Exactly one year ago National Turkey Federation president Ted Seger told the House Agriculture Committee that the federal ethanol mandate would drive up corn and soybean prices and hurt consumers who eat turkey.
My emphasis. (Note how quickly the media got on this one).
There have long been tax breaks to encourage production of ethanol, and last year President Bush signed a law mandating a substantial increase in the use of renewable fuels, principally ethanol, over the next 15 years.
The smart money then began moving out of mostly Stock positions and into Commodities around the same time.
Gee, those rich investor types are smart! It’s like they timed the market, or something! Or they had a tip, or something!
At the Annual Meat Conference this week, a gathering of retail meat industry, economist Tom Elam reported his estimate that the ethanol mandate would result this year in each chicken raised by an American farmer costing 53 cents more to raise than it would have cost without the mandate. As for turkeys, well, it’ll cost the farmer $3.40 more to raise each one.
As Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke explained to the Senate Banking Committee last month, “a significant portion of the corn crop is being diverted to ethanol, which raises corn prices.”
And he added, there are “knock-on effects. For example, some soybean acreage has been moved to corn production, which probably has some effect on soybean prices. So there is some price effect on foodstuffs coming through the conversion to energy use.”
Can anyone say “Domino Theory?” Give me an Amen!
The thing that amazes me is that the story goes on to explain in some detail the obvious. Why? Because most Americans just don’t pay attention to anything more than sound bites and Britney.
They actually didn’t know!
Now, way up above, I mentioned that this “new news to the public” actually helped corporate interests.
It assists corporations in a simple way.
People are going to disagree and break into separate camps on this one. If you believe in assisting the earth, you want ethanol and want to get away from oil.
If you believe in not continuing to prop up Middle Eastern countries, you want ethanol and want to get away from foreign oil imports.
If you believe that BY GOD AMERICANS SHOULD DRILL THEIR OWN OIL HERE AT HOME, and all those sissies that are worried about global warming and A-Rabs are just silly little pansies, well….Drill for Oil, dammit!
Do you see the dichotemy there? (In this case, trichotemy)
The corporations make money if they are invested in commodities. Oil, grain, turkeys? Commodities.
If a large proportion of the American people are clammoring for more oil drilling here in the United States, the oil commodities win.
If a large proportion of the American people are clammoring for reducing greenhouse gases and investing in renewable fuels, the grain commodities win.
It is in the corporate interests right now to bring this difference in opinion to the forefront.
Why? Simply because they want to know if the progressive front really is taking over, and they want to move their money slowly out of oil and into renewable commodities. Vice-versa if the neo-conservative front is holding strong.
This once unheard-of-in-the-MSM issue is going to be heard from often and loudly going forward. The corporations are betting that neither the Democratic candidate or McSame are going to bend over the entire country and rape them the same as BushCo has.
They want to know how to hedge their bets.
2 comments
Those funky high tech oil drilling heads need tungsten tips to cut through all that rock. They used to make them in Pennsylvania but an artificially low Chinese wage base plus world reserves of tungsten are in China. Well, the US drill bit manufacturing company? Business is real slow.