Archive for the 'Collapse' Category
FLOODING TO INFLATE GROCERY BILLS ACROSS THE BOARD
June 19th, 2008Via: Des Moines Register: For consumers feeling the pinch of higher food prices, the flooding of prime Midwest farmland will bring more bad news in supermarkets through next year. By wiping out corn and soybean crops across Iowa, Illinois and other states, the flood is driving up prices that were already at historic highs and […]
Wealthy Investors Shift Funds from Global Banks to Reduce Risks
June 19th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: High-net worth individuals, those coveted financial-services customers with at least $2 million to invest, are shifting assets from brokerages and large global banks to smaller, more conservative alternatives. “For the first time in my career, I saw concern about the location of one’s assets,” said Robert Balentine, the head of Wilmington Trust Corp.’s […]
The Best Farmland in the U.S. Is Flooded; Most Americans Are Too Stupid to Panic
June 19th, 2008The best commentary I could offer is a link to a previous story: World’s Largest Maker of Crop Nutrients: Famines May Occur Without Record Harvests But I’ll ramble on a bit more about this, anyway. As soon as I became aware of the flooding situation in the American Midwest, I posted the story with the […]
MEXICO FREEZES PRICES ON FOOD ITEMS TO STEM INFLATION
June 19th, 2008Via: Houston Chronicle: Moving to stem rising inflation and civil discontent, President Felipe Calderon and Mexican industrialists announced an agreement Wednesday to freeze prices on more than 150 food items. The pact, which will be in effect through the end of the year, comes amid escalating costs of corn and other staples of the Mexican […]
Australia: Food Bowl Areas Soon “Beyond Repair”
June 18th, 2008Via: Bloomberg: Parts of Australia’s key Murray-Darling river food bowl may be beyond recovery unless a prolonged dry spell and political wrangling over water use ends by October, a leaked scientific report warned on Wednesday. “There has been 10 years at least that people have said you have got to restore the environmental flows to […]
Spain: Factories Close, Supermarkets Empty and Jets Run Out of Fuel as Truckers’ Strike Bites
June 12th, 2008Via: Guardian: Strike action by thousands of Spanish and Portuguese truckers produced ominous knock-on effects on food supplies, aviation and industry yesterday, as Lisbon airport ran out of fuel, car factories shut down and petrol stations and supermarkets reported shortages. In a worrying sign for other European countries that face rising discontent at the spiralling […]
University of Illinois Crop Scientist: Planting After June 20 May Cause Yields to Shrink by Half
June 12th, 2008Via: Grainnet: A costly deadline looms for many growers in the Midwest, as every day of waiting for the weather to cooperate to plant corn and soybeans reduces potential yields. Research indicates that Illinois growers who plant corn or soybeans near the end of June can expect a 50 percent reduction in crop yield, according […]
EMERGENCY: MULTIPLE FACTORS POINTING TO LOWER CROP YIELDS
June 11th, 2008Remember this one from several months back? World’s Largest Maker of Crop Nutrients: Famines May Occur Without Record Harvests Flash forward to today. We see problems with next year’s crops all over the world. Via: New York Times: In a year when global harvests need to be excellent to ease the threat of pervasive food […]
China’s Quake Aftershock: 5 Million Homeless
June 10th, 2008The scale of this disaster is very difficult to contemplate. Via: MSNBC: At the relief operations center in China’s mountainous Qingchuan county, government workers are still in emergency mode nearly a month after the devastating May 12 earthquake. Powerful aftershocks, heavy rains and dangerous “quake lakes” keep them from devoting all their attention to their […]
New York Fed Chief Urges Global Bank Framework
June 9th, 2008Why now? Below is a screen shot of Total Borrowings of Depository Institutions from the Federal Reserve: So, what happens after the banks default on the loans that they’ve taken out from the Federal Reserve (that unprecedented, nearly vertical blue line on the chart above)? Ah, yes. The phrase, Global Bank Framework might make a […]
