Archive
Surging Food Prices Could Thrust Millions Into Poverty In Emerging Europe: World Bank
WASHINGTON, April 16 (Bernama) — The recent price hikes in food and energy could push more than five million people in Eastern Europe and Central Asia into poverty, reports the China’s Xinhua news agency, quoting World Bank’s official.
Yvonne Tsikata, the director for Poverty reduction and economic management of the World Bank’s Europe and Central Asia region said: “The poorest people in the region will suffer the most from the high food and energy price inflation, which reduces their purchasing power’.
She said that the region’s poor often spend half of their income on food, and Read more…
World Bank: Food prices have entered the ‘danger zone’
Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, said food prices are at “a tipping point”, having risen 36pc in the last year to levels close to their 2008 peak. The rising cost of food has been much more dramatic in low-income countries, pushing 44m people into poverty since June last year.
Another 10pc rise in food prices would push 10m into extreme poverty, defined as an effective income of less than $1.25 a day. Already, the world’s poor number 1.2bn.
Mr Zoellick said he saw no short term reversal in the damaging effect of food inflation, which is felt much more in the developing world as packaging and distribution accounts for a far larger proportion of the cost in the advanced economies.
Asked if he thought prices would remain high for a year, Mr Zoellick said: “The general trend lines are ones where we are in a danger zone… because prices have already gone up and stocks are relatively low.”
Rising prices have been driven by the changing diet of the ballooning middle classes in the emerging markets. “There is a demand change going on, with the higher incomes in developing countries. People will eat more meat products, for example, that will use more grain.
“I am not suggesting that the improved diets in the developing world are the source of the problem but it means it takes longer to Read more…
Secretive Plan For a Global Currency
Excerpt from “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century”
Michel Chossudovsky
Andrew Gavin Marshall (editors)
Help us get the word out, “like” the book on Facebook, comment, and share with friends!
Towards a New Global Currency?
Is the Group of Twenty Countries (G20) envisaging the creation of a Global Central bank? Who or what would serve as this global central bank, cloaked with the power to issue the global currency and police monetary policy for all humanity? When the world’s central bankers met in Washington in September 2008 at the height of the financial meltdown, they discussed what body might be in a position to serve in that awesome and fearful role. A former governor of the Bank of England stated:
The answer might already be staring us in the face, in the form of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS)… The Read more…
Central Banks Dump Treasuries As Dollar’s Reserve Currency Status Fades
Official inflows vs total reserve accumulation – Nomura
Demand for US assets, especially Treasuries, has been waning since the beginning of 2011, with central banks around the world increasing reserve accumulation while dumping the greenback. More signs that the dollar is dead as the world’s only reserve currency?
Nomura’s FX research and strategy team analyzed the latest numbers from the Treasury’s International Capital System. “It looks like the trend of weak central bank demand for USD assets is persisting into 2011 (after a very weak Q4),” wrote Nomura’s global head of G10 FX strategy, Jens Nordvig in an email. From November to January, central banks reduced their US dollar holdings by $9 billion; “given a fairly strong trend in global reserve accumulation Read more…
Recent droughts and floods have contributed to increases in food prices
These are pushing millions more people into poverty and hunger, and are contributing to political instability and civil unrest. Climate change is predicted to increase these threats to food security and stability. Responding to this, the world’s largest agriculture research consortium today announced the creation of a new Commission on Sustainable Agriculture and Climate Change.
Chaired by the United Kingdom’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Sir John Beddington, the Commission will in the next ten months seek to build international consensus on a clear set of policy actions to help global agriculture adapt to climate change, achieve food security and reduce poverty and greenhouse gas emissions.
There is a rich body of scientific evidence for sustainable agriculture approaches that can increase production of food, fiber and fuel, help decrease poverty and benefit the environment, but agreement is needed on how best to put these approaches into action at scale. Evidence also shows Read more…
The Oil-Food Price Shock
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.
Ethiopia will soon arise to protest
WINDS OF CHANGE CONTINUES BLOWING Major developments in 6 African countries and other Arab nations. And Ethiopians fate!
Today, the drama of utmost importance is underway in different parts of the world, specially, in the North African countries. After its beginning in Tunisia, the flammable and miserable peoples voices is fast circulating from country to country. The basic demands of peoples of these nations is clear; the quest for better living conditions, jobs, respect of human and democratic rights and so on.
What makes special the current movement in Africa and the Arab world is women’s and children’s gather out in the streets to oppose the rotten regime of their country. More of less the peaceful demonstration were carried out with fruitful results in Egypt and Tunisia. On the other way, in LIBYA and Lebanon the governments use machine guns to disperse protesters. A people went out bare handed shot by government mercenaries. Though, the protesters are still going on. as the Tunisian protests were still escalating,
What we are observing in North Africa and Middle East are the results of unfolded dramas left on the society for decades. The Bahrain and Libyan Governments uses their special forces to disperse the protesters. They come up against the protesters by hiring foreign mercenaries to fire against the peaceful demonstrators.
Let’s see the blowing winds of change in these Countries
TUNISIA: When the demonstrations started on 17 December, It wasn’t expected. Just before the December protests began, WikiLeaks released internal U.S. State Department communications in Read more…
Rising world food prices may soon hit Africa hard, but could be a future boon
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…
NATO Warns of Food Crisis and More Unrest, Prices Increase 15% in Four Months
The World Food Program’s representative in one of the countries which has seen protests, Yemen, recently stated: ‘There is an obvious link between high food prices and unrest.’
Credit: NATO
The 2008 food crisis was a warning of things to come. More recently, food prices rose by 15% in just the period October 2010 to January 2011, according to the World Bank’s Food Price Watch.
This time, the impacts have been felt more keenly in political and security circles. The President of Read more…
World Bank: Food prices at “dangerous levels”
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…
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](https://i0.wp.com/www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
crisisboom
CRISISBOOM 
You must be logged in to post a comment.