food prices (1)



 

 
 
           It’s been less than two weeks since the Republican House leadership caved into President Obama and received just $392 million in real cuts for the fiscal 2011 budget; and just two days since the Standard & Poors bond rating services listed a negative outlook for the United States’ fiscal future and already the effects are being felt as worldwide distrust of the once-mighty dollar is evident everywhere:
 
Item: George Soros, “The Man who Broke the Bank of England” a.k.a. the “International Man of Misery” who’s earned his tens of billions by wrecking currencies and whole economies especially in Europe and SE Asia  . . . is moving in for the kill. Soros -- the biggest individual funder of the Obama campaign for presidency via 54 separate U.S. and foreign foundations -- claims that the U.S. Dollar as evidenced by the S&P ratings adjustment is “no longer the world’s reserve currency.” Soros added that the dollar is plunging so quickly in value, central banks and investors have no choice but to shift away from the Greenback to avoid huge losses and that oil, gold and other commodities as well as currencies such as the Chinese Yuan, Euro and Yen are taking up the slack.
Item:  The price of gold has shot up to $1,503 the highest in history; silver moved up to $44.77 zeroing-in on its all-time high price of $51.28. Gold has risen 6.5% since the New Year; silver has climbed 55% in the same period.
Item: Numerous restaurants in New York City, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles have raised their prices and some have placed easily-read signs saying they take foreign currency such as the Mexican Peso, the French Franc, the British Pound and Canada’s dollar.
Item: The U.S. dollar index is currently near a 16-month low at roughly 74.30 against a basket of other currencies. The Federal Reserve banks’ easy-money policies are now coming under heavy criticism from Democrats as well as Republicans.
Item: Ethanol subsidizing continues although everyone who understands the problem realizes that Ethanol 1) is only viable because of government subsidies and cannot stand on its own and b)Ethanol causes far more pollution in sum than gasoline does because of the huge costs required to transport corn to the ethanol plants (not quite the same as an oil pipeline). Meanwhile the price of corn and corn products, which are found in about 300-different common foods, are sky-rocketing and surprise, so is the price of food.
Item: The price of oil, which seemed to be ebbing last week, has jumped back almost $5 to $110.60 a barrel. Gasoline prices above $4 per gallon are fast becoming commonplace.
Item: There may be a bit of a silver-lining to this last item. Whenever gasoline gets above $3.30 a gallon, Methanol becomes quite an attractive alternative as does Natural Gas. Both would require about a $150-200 retrofit to be used in cars, but they’re cheaper than gas now; much cleaner; much more abundant in the United States than anywhere else. Some environmentalists claim that while it’s better than gasoline, Natural Gas is still nasty pollution-wise.   At roughly$2.20 a gallon for gasoline we have a real cheap alternative – and of course sometime soon we could see gas prices double that in this country . . . keragen a.k.a. marlstone a.k.a. oil shale (it’s neither shale; nor oil and takes a mining rather than drilling operation to free from the ground. Right now the huge keragen deposits in Western Colorado, NE Utah; and Southwest Wyoming could provide 400 years worth of fuel for the entire world. The leader in that technology is TOSCO (“The Oil-Shale Co.”) and guess who our only real competitor for Keragen dominance might become? China. So you’d better believe it would be in our interests to develop keragen quickly before China does.
An Only Casually-Related Item: Even as 53% of Americans still blame our financial troubles on George W. Bush -- Goldman Sachs has just this week received a blistering new rain of criticism for making a fortune during the financial meltdown by short-selling many of those ridiculous lumped-together-mortgage packages based upon shoddy sub-prime home loans that banks and mortgage companies had been forced to make since President Carter first passed the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977 (CRA ’77). CRA’ 77 law was expanded four times by President Clinton which Bush fought to repeal for 30 consecutive months between January, 2005 and July, 2007. Finally, a bi-partisan too-little, too-late bill passed which in August, 2010, Treasury Secretary Geithner paid respect to Bush for his efforts, by saying his law prevented a much worse meltdown and an utter collapse in home prices. Rajjpuut says, “Congratulations to Goldman Sachs! ”Isn’t it amazing how successful the left-wing is at blaming the free-markets and conservatives for every disaster caused by progressive left-wing interference in the free markets? 
After Clinton’s 1998 steroid-version expansion of CRA ’77 people without jobs; with horrific credit ratings; without rental histories; with only food stamps to declare as “income”; and even illegal aliens found it, easy thanks to ACORN, to get into $300,000 and $400,000 homes than people with good credit, etc. had faced in trying to get into $150,000 homes a decade earlier. If you’re uninformed and believe that conservatives pushed the economy into a ditch you deserve what Obama and the rest of the big spenders are giving us . . . the rest of us don’t. PS: who was the most famous ACORN attorney at getting home loan compliance forcing mortgage companies to make knowingly bad loans in Chicago?   Who was at the same time teaching night classes in self-described “Neo-Communist” Saul Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals”??? Barack Hussein Obama. In 1995 and 1996 Obama not only was successful in getting such outrageous loans repeatedly and getting promises of further compliance but also in securing large ACORN donations. Does all this make you proud to be an American?
 
Ya’all live long, strong and ornery,
Rajjpuut
 
 
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