IF you thought food prices are bad NOW, look at this :

[dixiegrrrrl]

TODAY corn futures 330 -> 508 today, a fifty four percent increase.
Wheat, 425 -> 694, a sixty three percent increase
Soybeans, 893 -> 1125, a twenty-six percent increase.
Rice, 9.55 -> 12.55, a thirty-one percent increase.
Oats, 188 -> 344, an eighty-three percent increase.

All of this, of course, is food. Both directly, in what you eat, and indirectly in what you eat eats.
It's feed for poultry, beef and pork, along with your direct consumption.
And all of it is up at inflation rates that are in pure hyperinflation territory - all of these changes in price are over the last TWO TO THREE MONTHS! Annualized that rate of change and you see terrifying numbers - from clean doubles to quadruples.

Those who claim that "all that will happen is that oil will go up a bit" are dead flat wrong.
The move has already happened.
The debasement of the currency that Bernanke has foisted off on you as "good" by "supporting" the stock market has in fact led to some small support in the stock market.

But it has added anywhere from 20-80% to the cost of the materials that go into your food in the last three months alone, most of it due to speculation - exactly as was OIL when it went to $147 and drove gas to the moon a couple of years ago.

For those in the middle class and better, this won't kill you. But for the "less fortunate" - that is, the middle class and below, this is ruinous.

It may, in fact, cause literal starvation.

More, and worth the read:
be sure to see the comments at end of the post.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=167724

[OHdem10]

1. Think about it---(1/2) ONE HALF the country earns under 36,000 dollars a year.

These are families.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. almost one in four families earned less than $25,000, an increase of one percentage point. "

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/28/AR2010092800465.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert

[FirstLight]

2. I've noticed something already

the grocery prices are already climbing...slowly, though, so as not to cause any notice. 20 cents here, 15 there, a dollar more for OJ..
we are on foodstamps now and i don't even want to think about what's coming next :scared:

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. A can of coffee that was 4.00 last year is heading to 10.00. at WalMart!

All thru the summer I watched coffee prices jump from 5 to 6 to 7 to 8, and last week saw Maxwell House and Folgers priced at 10.00. The big ground coffee plastic containers most of us buy.
( I don't drink it, Mr. d does)

10# of rice at the Dollar store was 4.00 this spring, it is now 5.25 and climbing.

As soon as these futures contracts hit the processing plants, prices will jump.

And it is ALL due to hedge fund speculation, NOT shortages.

[glinda]

12. I freaked last time I went shopping at one place. The prices were CRAZY HIGH.

[bluestateguy]

3. And yet I keep hearing all of this Echo Chamber about deflation

Sooo.....where's my cheaper ground beef and milk at the grocery store?

[n2doc]

6. The only deflation is in paychecks n/t

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. and NO COLA in retirement checks.

Rice, beans, hamburger and gardens, folks.
We have given up milk in the family, rarely use eggs, I can't eat wheat, so that alone is a huge grocery savings,
So now corn, rice, oats, are climbing in price.

Tell you one thing: people will find processed foods expensive and lay off them. Some good news in that.

[elocs]

11. It's too bad about the milk and eggs because they are cheap where I live.

I can get milk for around $2 a gallon and eggs are 79 cents a dozen.

[dixiegrrrrl]

16. Milk is 3.58 gallon here, eggs around 2.29 if you look hard.

[girl gone mad]

20. and housing..

and many discretionary consumer goods.

[Art_from_Ark]

25. Don't forget interest on savings

Barely more than 0% for regular passbook savings-- sometimes even less than 0% if the bank charges a maintenance fee for the account. :crazy:

[xchrom]

4. speculation rears it's ugly head again to interfere in the everyday lives of people.

well -- what can you do?

[grasswire]

5. quote in the comments section

"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -George Orwell

[Larry Ogg]

9. Nobody thinks about inflating the dollar as a hidden tax

which drives the cost of everything up because the dollar is worth less, eventually the dollar will be worthless. It's not rocket science... It's just a predatory monetary system that's doing what it was designed to do.

[Po_d Mainiac]

14. There is a name for those that see the current FED actions as disastrous

They are dubbed 'goldbugs'.....And them 'bugs' are looking pretty frickin smart now.

[Blue Meany]

22. I buy almost all of my food from local sources and the prices

remain stable (though they fluctuate by season).

[golfguru]

24. You nailed it....most people are dunces in economics n/m

[Art_from_Ark]

27. Even most economists are dunces in economics

[madrchsod]

13. the midwest is sitting on a bumper crop of beans and corn

the rise is the demand from china and other nations who are having short crops.

civilations rise and fall on their ability to feed it`s people.

[jtuck004]

15. This should be a real wake-up call...and in your post

the line "And it is ALL due to hedge fund speculation, NOT shortages." is the real issue. There is a lot out there, but people manipulating the markets are going to cause more problems. A gift that keeps on giving from our friends at the investment banks and now commodity brokerages.

Thank you for this.

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. Well, actually, Russian wheat is short, due to fires.

Many recent articles around tho, pointing to hedge funds gambling their money on commodities, there is NO shortage big enough to explain one day ginormous rises in so many of the grains.

[jtuck004]

18. Yea, I had read about that, but it doesn't explain

everything else, which is why I'm glad you posted the article.

Came across an article a while back, here... which points out that the commodity ETF's are stuffed with derivatives similar to the situation in the mortgage market that brought us such tragedies over the past few years. Now we could see those same toxic assets leveraging risk to unimaginable proportions in the commodity market. And as you pointed out above, the result isn't losing jobs, it will be very real interruptions in our food supply.

Saw a sign the other day "Do You Have Salmonella In Your Nest Egg"?

The whole place is infected...

thank you for the OP

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. The ETFs are derivatives too?????

Good god .....infected indeed. Layers of debt gambling, essentially.
Nothing is sacred. Price and value have no intrinsic meaning anymore.
Scary.Very scary.

[Wednesdays]

21. Well, now here's a REAL example of "letting the market decide."

:eyes:

[golfguru]

23. The 3 Billion people in China & India

have much more money now than 20 years ago. Their economies are
growing at 8-10 percent. All those people now have money to buy
better food. So, expect food & gasoline to go inflationary.

[Dover]

26. +1 - And with their growing and disproportionate wealth, wall street has to speculate.

It's madness. We are going to see a much more serious 'round two' of the 2008 situation except this time who will bail them out?
Even fewer and bigger international banks will take us all down with them.

[CanonRay]

28. Good thing there's no inflation

:sarcasm: or we'd really be screwed.

[NickB79]

29. UPDATE: Crop Report 'Shocker' Ripples Through Agriculture Sector

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20101008-707955.html

" The U.S. Department of Agriculture projected a national corn yield of 155.8 bushels an acre, well below last month's projection of 162.5 bushels and lower than analysts' average forecast of 159.9 bushels per acre.

The USDA was projecting a record crop a couple months ago. But farmers have largely been disappointed as harvest progresses. The crop faced problems from excessive rains early in the season that washed away supplies of nitrogen, a crucial nutrient, and was also stressed by unusually hot night-time temperatures all summer."