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The Oil-Food Price Shock

March 11, 2011 Comments off

thenation.com

When future historians attempt to trace the origins of the current turmoil in the Middle East, they will find that one of the earliest of the many explosions of rage occurred in Algeria and was triggered by the rising price of food. On January 5, young protesters in Algiers, Oran and other major cities blocked roads, attacked police stations and burned stores in demonstrations against soaring food prices. Other concerns—high unemployment, pervasive corruption, lack of housing—also aroused their ire, but food costs provided the original impulse. As the epicenter of youthful protest moved elsewhere, first to Tunisia and then to Egypt and other countries, the food price issue was subordinated to more explicitly political demands, but it never disappeared. Indeed, the rising cost of food has been a major theme of anti government demonstrations in Jordan, Sudan and Yemen. With the price of most staples still climbing—spurred in part by a parallel surge in oil costs—more such protests are bound to occur.

Whatever the outcome of the protests, uprisings and rebellions now sweeping the Middle East, one thing is guaranteed: the world of oil will be permanently transformed.

From crippling droughts in the Ukraine and Russia to region-shaking unrest in Tunisia, rising commodity prices and extreme weather events are already threatening Read more…

People Of Earth: Prepare For Economic Disaster

March 9, 2011 Comments off

theeconomiccollapseblog

It is not just the United States that is headed for an economic collapse.  The truth is that the entire world is heading for a massive economic meltdown and the people of earth need to be warned about the coming economic disaster that is going to sweep the globe.  The current world financial system is based on debt, and there are alarming signs that the gigantic global debt bubble is getting ready to burst.  In addition, global prices for the key resources that the major economies of the planet depend on are rising very rapidly.  Despite all of our advanced technology, the truth is that human civilization simply cannot function without oil and food.  But now the price of oil and the price of food are both increasing dramatically.  So how is the current global economy supposed to keep functioning properly if it soon costs much more to ship products between continents?  How are the billions of people that are just barely surviving today supposed to feed themselves if the price of food goes up another 30 or 40 percent?  For decades, most of the major economies around the globe have been able to Read more…

Global warming means more snowstorms: scientists

March 2, 2011 Comments off

physorg.com

Climate change is not only making the planet warmer, it is also making snowstorms stronger and more frequent, US scientists said on Tuesday.


Workers remove snow from a runway at O'Hare International Airport on February 3Workers remove snow from a runway at O’Hare International Airport on February 3, in Chicago, Illinois. Climate change is not only making the planet warmer, it is also making snowstorms stronger and more frequent, US scientists said on Tuesday. 

 


“Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet,” said scientist Jeff Masters, as part of a conference call with reporters and colleagues convened by the Union of Concern Scientists.

“In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society.”

Masters said that the northeastern United States has been coated in heavy snowfall from Read more…

Need Versus Greed

March 1, 2011 Comments off

project-syndicate.org

NEW YORK – India’s great moral leader Mohandas Gandhi famously said that there is enough on Earth for everybody’s need, but not enough for everybody’s greed. Today, Gandhi’s insight is being put to the test as never before.

The world is hitting global limits in its use of resources. We are feeling the shocks each day in catastrophic floods, droughts, and storms – and in the resulting surge in prices in the marketplace. Our fate now depends on whether we cooperate or fall victim to self-defeating greed.

The limits to the global economy are new, resulting from the unprecedented size of the world’s population and the unprecedented spread of economic growth to nearly the entire world. There are now seven billion people on the planet, compared to just three billion a half-century ago. Today, average per capita income is $10,000, with the rich world averaging around $40,000 and the developing world around $4,000. That means that the world economy is now producing around $70 trillion in total annual output, compared to around $10 trillion in 1960.

China’s economy is growing at around 10% annually. India’s is growing at Read more…

Rising world food prices may soon hit Africa hard, but could be a future boon

February 21, 2011 1 comment

Damaged rice is seen in a paddy field destroyed by flood- waters near a village in Manmunai West in Batticaloa district, about 199 miles east of Colombo, Sri Lanka, on Jan. 26. The floods inundated rice paddies, and according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, at least 15.5 percent of the main annual rice harvest could be lost.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Reuters

Johannesburg, South Africa

Global food prices reached a historic high last month, a fact that may cause even the most comfortable of Americans to cinch in their belts and cut back on spending.

But what about the world’s poor?

“Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions of poor people around the world,” World Bank Group President Robert Zoellick said Tuesday as he announced the bank’s findings that about 44 million people in developing countries have been pushed into poverty since Read more…

The Middle East and Then the World

February 19, 2011 1 comment

Tony Cartalucci
Activist Post
February 19, 2011

Beginning in North Africa, now unfolding in the Middle East and Iran, and soon to spread to Eastern Europe and Asia, the globalist fueled color revolutions are attempting to profoundly transform entire regions of the planet in one sweeping move. It is an ambitious gambit, perhaps even one born of desperation, with the globalists’ depravity and betrayal on full display to the world with no opportunity to turn back now.

To understand the globalists’ reasoning behind such a bold move, it helps to understand their ultimate end game and the obstacles standing between them and their achieving it.

The End Game

The end game of course is a world spanning system of global governance. This is a system controlled by Anglo-American financiers and their network of global institutions ensuring the world’s Read more…

Global systemic crisis / World geopolitical breakup – End of 2011: Fall of the “Petro-dollar wall”

February 18, 2011 Comments off

– Public announcement GEAB N°52 (February 16, 2011) –

GEAB N°52 is available! Global systemic crisis / World   geopolitical breakup – End of 2011: Fall of the “Petro-dollar wall” and a   major monetary-oil shock for the United States

With this issue our team is celebrating two important anniversaries in anticipation terms. Exactly five years ago, in February 2006, the GEAB N°2 suddenly encountered worldwide success by announcing the next “Triggering of a major global crisis” characterized especially by “The end of the West as we have known it since 1945”. And exactly two years ago, in February 2009, in the GEAB N°32, LEAP/E2020 anticipated the start of global geopolitical dislocation phase by the end of that same year. In both cases, it is important to note that the undeniable interest aroused by these anticipations at international level, measurable particularly by millions of people reading the related public announcements, has been matched only by mainstream media silence over these same analyses and the fierce opposition (on the internet) of the vast majority of economic, financial or geopolitical experts and Read more…

World Bank: Food prices at “dangerous levels”

February 16, 2011 Comments off

Global food prices have hit “dangerous levels” that could contribute to political instability, push millions of people into poverty and raise the cost of groceries, according to a new report from the World Bank.

The bank released a report Tuesday that said global food prices have jumped 29 percent in the past year, and are just 3 percent below the all-time peak hit in 2008. Bank President Robert Zoellick said the rising prices have hit people hardest in the developing world because they spend as much as half their income on food.

“Food prices are the key and major challenge facing many developing countries today,” Zoellick said. The World Bank estimates higher prices for corn, wheat and oil have pushed 44 million people into extreme poverty since Read more…

A New World Order Reserve Currency

February 3, 2011 2 comments

What do the riots in Egypt and a new world reserve currency have in common?

Perhaps more than we think.

Consider the following statements from George Soros in a recent interview:

Some statements of Soros (who happens to be a Fabian Socialist):

The efficient market hypothesis has failed.

Markets are not tending toward equilibrium.

There is imperfect knowledge of regulators and market participants.

He has an economic theory that is “more relevant” than the dominant one and is supporting an institute for new economic thinking….

Inflation (in the United States) is helpful because the burden of debt was getting too heavy.

The problem is you don’t have a Read more…

Cheap food may be a thing of the past

February 2, 2011 1 comment
Vincent Kessler  /  Reuters

U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end.

U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices — which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 — will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts.

The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further.

The expectations may also strengthen importers’ resolve to build bigger inventories after a year in which stocks of corn and soybeans in the United States — the world’s top exporter — dwindled to their lowest level in decades.

Story: Global food chain stretched to the limit Read more…