Wednesday, August 26, 2009

What are they playing at?

Greetings good citizen,

Not only did the nation mourn the loss of the senior senator from Massachusetts, but the stock markets, which looked close to closing negative, rallied once more in the last five minutes of trading.

I’m sure you’ve all heard enough about the funeral arrangements so there’s no need to dwell upon them further here. On the other hand, if you blinked you likely missed the post that is tonight’s offering

Yes, good citizen, after rising continually throughout the ‘deflationary’ period of low interest rates and ‘negative’ inflation, we are now being advised that food prices are, once again, ‘on the rise’.

I’m pretty close to this issue as I ‘do’ the shopping…um, is this article trying to tell me that food prices stopped going up and are now resuming their climb or are they saying they will move up at an even brisker pace than they have been rising?

Food Prices Likely to Start Ticking Up

By WILLIAM NEUMAN
Published: August 25, 2009

Prices for beef, milk, eggs and some other grocery items have been dropping for several months, providing relief for consumers who suffered through the steep increases of a year ago. But prices are likely to start edging upward again as the economy recovers, according to a new federal report and economic analysts. [Excuse me? When did the price increases stop? If they stopped, I have yet to see it reflected in the weekly shopping bill.]

“The impact from lower energy prices on grocery store prices has largely been played out, and so we’re now looking at grocery store prices to rise modestly through the end of the year,” said Mark Vitner, a managing director and senior economist at Wells Fargo. [Again, the original word on this topic is grocers were unable to ‘recoup’ their ‘losses’ when energy costs spiked and they would keep increasing prices because of this…now we’re being told that ‘reduced energy prices’ have finally ‘played out’ and prices are about to go up again? WTF! Prices haven’t stopped rising.]

The government report, by the Economic Research Service of the Department of Agriculture, said that grocery prices decreased 0.5 percent in July, compared with June. Compared with July 2008, when overall food costs were surging, grocery prices in July were down 0.9 percent. [Um, notice they don’t tell you what planet this is taking place on, as ‘tenths of a percent’ are once again being treated as a ‘big deal’.]

In several food categories, prices dropped sharply. Beef fell 2.3 percent in July, compared with June, the eighth decrease in the last nine months, according to the report. [Have you priced beef recently? They are indeed knocking down the price BECAUSE NOBODY WAS BUYING IT!] Egg prices were down 2.7 percent from June to July and were 21.3 percent below their level in July a year ago. Milk prices declined 0.4 percent in the month, the 10th decline in the last 11 months, and were 18.4 percent below July 2008. [Somewhat strange to see them using heavily subsidized milk prices as a comparison since the price has no relationship to reality.]

The national average price for a gallon of fresh whole milk in July was $2.99, compared with $3.96 in the same month a year earlier, a 25 percent drop, according to federal data.

Prices for fresh fruit and vegetables were also down markedly compared with their levels a year ago. [Um, you don’t suppose ‘seasonality’ AND the drastic reduction in energy prices have anything to do with it, do you?]

In contrast, some food prices rose compared with last year, including breakfast cereals, sugar and carbonated drinks. [So much for our nod to ‘reality’, a lot more than breakfast cereal and soft drinks have gone up in price.]

Over all, the Agriculture Department forecast that prices for what it calls “food at home,” a category that includes purchases at grocery stores, convenience stores and farmers’ markets, will rise 2 to 3 percent this year. Last year, the department said, prices for food at home rose 6.4 percent, the highest jump in nearly two decades.

“We do expect some price increases with the recovering economy,” said Ephraim Leibtag, a senior economist at the Agriculture Department. “Our numbers here imply there has to be some additional inflation in the next six months to get out of the negatives we’re in right now.” [Wait a minute, Slim! Do you see the ‘smokescreen’ being blown up your backside? The so-called ‘recovery’ (which so far only bloodhounds have caught scent of) is going to be accompanied by rising food prices? What kind of twaddle is this? As I have pointed out repeatedly in the past, it is extremely dangerous to lie about what the consumer can see and touch themselves. If you haven’t been paying attention, let me inform you that despite the lousy spring, they’re projecting a bumper harvest this year! But then again, we’re literally swimming in oil and the price continues to rise…]

Bill Lapp, president of Advanced Economic Solutions, a consulting firm that specializes in analysis of food commodity costs, said that even with only a modest gain this year, food inflation was expected to outpace the overall rise in the Consumer Price Index, which he said could be close to zero for the year. [What do you suppose this will do for the still nascent economic recovery? Worse, it appears we are being prepped to let speculators make another killing while they pick our pockets yet again!]

Mr. Lapp said that one reason food prices would continue to rise was that commodities like corn continued to trade above historical averages, even though they had come down from the unusually high levels they reached last year. [Um, add to that that most ethanol producers have gone bankrupt in the meantime…]

And some of the food categories that have recorded price declines, like beef, pork, poultry and dairy products, will begin to go back up as farmers cull herds and flocks, causing supplies of those products to decline.

“I think that the food inflation wake-up call won’t begin, in large measure, until late this year and in 2010,” Mr. Lapp said. He said, however, that there were already signs of rising prices for chicken and milk. [So, this is the tip of the iceberg…millions have lost their homes and millions more have lost their jobs, how do you suppose this is going to turn out?]

Faith Weiner, senior director of public affairs for Stop & Shop, the supermarket chain, said that shoppers had been snapping up large packages of meat or poultry when they were on sale.

“We think folks are stocking up,” Ms. Weiner said. “You might have a special on chicken breasts, a Big Buy packet at a reduced price. People are buying more than they normally would and freezing them because it’s a good value.


What part of this picture don’t these assholes get? Cut jobs and slash the wages of those who keep their jobs, then let prices climb out of control…what does that sound like to you?

It sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

How much do they think people will tolerate? Sadly, we’ve already proven that we will tolerate quite a bit, even the unfair and the unreasonable.

And once you’ve ‘given it back’ you have to fight for it all over again.

How bad do you suppose it will get good citizen? We all have different thresholds and can even astound ourselves with the levels of depravity we will tolerate.

Why?

Because in our current ‘anything goes’ situation, nobody is making a stand, it’s all good…until it isn’t.

There’s been a lot of discussion out there about ‘moral compasses’ and it has revealed we don’t, as a society, have one.

Be afraid, good citizen, be very afraid.

Thanks for letting me inside your head,

Gegner

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