WSJournal Says "Start Stockpiling Food!" 700 Club Says "Ditch the Dollar Now!"

[RiversideGator]

RG - remember what a bubble is.  a bubble is a boom that has no fundamentals backing it.  the tech bubble had small internet companies with no provent profits behind it.  the housing price bubble had people with bad credit and incomes that were too low pushing it along.  if you contend there is a commodities bubble, where does the demand fall short of necessitating these price increases?

Again, how has demand tripled in a few short months?  Or, has the supply fallen?  This might result in price rises but I have seen no evidence that the supply has fallen or that demand has massively increased.  There has been no major supply disruption like a massive drought or war or some such thing.  The main change has been the credit crisis, the injection of liquidity into the US money supply and the drop of the dollar in relation to other currencies.  There is a direct correlation between these events and the commodities rally.  So, it is a bubble IMO in the sense that there are not fundamentals justifying this huge increase in prices.

[Driven1]

The inclusion of the word into last years oxford should be enough to settle the matter.

WRONG!!!  Sorry, you are just plain wrong.  While I know that this is near impossible for you to face, it is true.  You are wrong again.

from searching "seperate" at the oxford dictionary online...

Sorry, there are no results for that search.

http://www.askoxford.com/results/?view=searchresults&freesearch=seperate&branch=&textsearchtype=exact

oddly though,  a search for "separate" yields 169 results.  weird.

[Driven1]

RG - remember what a bubble is.  a bubble is a boom that has no fundamentals backing it.  the tech bubble had small internet companies with no provent profits behind it.  the housing price bubble had people with bad credit and incomes that were too low pushing it along.  if you contend there is a commodities bubble, where does the demand fall short of necessitating these price increases?

Again, how has demand tripled in a few short months?  Or, has the supply fallen?  This might result in price rises but I have seen no evidence that the supply has fallen or that demand has massively increased.  There has been no major supply disruption like a massive drought or war or some such thing.  The main change has been the credit crisis, the injection of liquidity into the US money supply and the drop of the dollar in relation to other currencies.  There is a direct correlation between these events and the commodities rally.  So, it is a bubble IMO in the sense that there are not fundamentals justifying this huge increase in prices.

RG - i will not disagree with you that the an iffy stock market and the cutting of rates and corresponding devaluing of the dollar have attributed to a lot of new money going into commodities.  this is true.  but look at the large correction/sell off of them in mid-March.  for 5 days straight CNBC was talking about nothing but the "commodity bubble".  and after that sell-off, where are we today?  the answer is - significantly higher.  i'm no expert on these matters.  but here are 2 fundamental signs...

1) food riots in the streets of many countries
2) here in Jacksonville if you go to BJ's and try to buy more than 4 large bags of rice, you will not be allowed

Lastly, this has not just occurred recently. This has been years in the making - with diminishing grain supplies worldwide.  Read the quote from Bill Doyle, CEO of Potash of Saskatchewan from earnings call 2 days ago...

WINNIPEG, Manitoba (Reuters) - Government policies spurring biofuel production are not to blame for grain shortages and food inflation, said the chief executive of Potash Corp, the world's largest fertilizer company.

Bill Doyle said demand for meat and other food from Asia's growing middle class combined with a depletion of world stocks are the major factors behind rising food prices.

"I think that ethanol is the most popular whipping boy in the agricultural world at the moment," Doyle told analysts on a conference call on Thursday.

Doyle, who has talked about declining world grain stocks for years, noted 95 percent of the world's grain crop this year will be used for food.

"So to say that biofuels are the culprit clearly underestimates the demand and really shows a gross misunderstanding of the world food situation," Doyle said.

Cutting back on biofuel production would be a short-term measure for the long-term challenge of producing enough food to feed the world, he said.

Doyle said moves by governments to curb grain exports could lead to less grain production at a time when more is needed.

"Governments finally wake up to the problem, they go into a flat panic, full lather, and they make policies that are absolutely wrong-headed, and are making the situation worse," he said.

Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam, India, Egypt and Cambodia have recently introduced export bans or tariffs on rice -- a grain that Doyle noted is not used to make biofuel -- which could exacerbate shortages in stores seen as far away as North America.

"By limiting exports of rice they try to keep the price of rice low in their home country, which doesn't give any stimulus to farmers to grow more rice.

"We have to grow more food. We have to increase yields," he said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN2430848420080424

[Driven1]

more interestingly is that I am posting from the downtown library where there is in fact a copy of the oxford. 

Not to mention a listing for seperate. I will see if I can post a cellphone photo of the listing.

weird.  I wonder how you were able to outsmart these dumb bastards.

i wasn't.  i claim no such intelligence level as you.  the good folks at google, dictionary.com, american heritage dictionary, and oxford dictionary were.  and that makes no mention of the whole rest of the world. 

but, please...continue.  it is fun watching you throw snowballs at an avalanche.

[Driven1]

LOL - Not only is the spelling of "separates" wrong in your signature...you have warped the quote even!

Here is the real quote from Thucydides (and do notice how Mr. Dides chose to spell "separates" - like the rest of the world)...

“The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.”

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Thucydides

[Driven1]

Did he say that in the original english there, Drivel?

lol, was wondering if you would catch that. 

[Driven1]

hey mo!

you are right!!  seperates is a word.  but...
a) only in the plural form (as in Women's Swimwear Seperates)
and
b) only as a noun

but, i'm sure this is what you meant all along, right?

sorry...say it a hundred times over again.  post it on every discussion board possible.  insult me. 

none of it changes the fact that you are wrong.  now continue in you oblivion.  better yet, start a crusade against AHL, Oxford, Google, Yahoo and the rest of the world and try to convince them to start spelling it your way.  better yet, go with the "silent k" version... "kseperates".

[Driven1]

RG...Doyle continues here...

"In eight of the past nine years, including this year, the world has consumed more grain than farmers have produced," Doyle said. "This has gone largely unnoticed by global leaders and the public because countries were able to meet food demand by drawing from inventories, keeping food prices artificially low."

The cupboards finally started to go dry and food shortages and soaring prices are making daily headlines. Doyle said a crisis can be averted, but it will take a major commitment to farming practices and proper fertilization, and it will take years to build grain inventories back up to a comfortable level.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/business/story.html?id=21e337bc-4ea4-4fb3-bd66-2937d74dc177

[Charleston native]

Again, how has demand tripled in a few short months?  Or, has the supply fallen?  This might result in price rises but I have seen no evidence that the supply has fallen or that demand has massively increased.  There has been no major supply disruption like a massive drought or war or some such thing.  The main change has been the credit crisis, the injection of liquidity into the US money supply and the drop of the dollar in relation to other currencies.  There is a direct correlation between these events and the commodities rally.  So, it is a bubble IMO in the sense that there are not fundamentals justifying this huge increase in prices.

I think the available supply of raw food material has not decreased, but it has been diverted to a different market: production of fuel. The government has additionally inflated spending of the US dollar through those farm subsidies for farmers to harvest crops specifically for fuel production, not food production. Now, food is starting to have higher demand since it is essentially two commodities instead of one.

Granted, the demand may have not tripled, but it has been increased as it entered into another market: fuel. In general terms, the supply of food has remained the same, but by default, the actual supply used for food production has been reduced because of its diversion to fuels.

The situation was a one-two punch against food prices.

[Charleston native]

I hope my post made sense...

[RiversideGator]

RG...Doyle continues here...

"In eight of the past nine years, including this year, the world has consumed more grain than farmers have produced," Doyle said. "This has gone largely unnoticed by global leaders and the public because countries were able to meet food demand by drawing from inventories, keeping food prices artificially low."

The cupboards finally started to go dry and food shortages and soaring prices are making daily headlines. Doyle said a crisis can be averted, but it will take a major commitment to farming practices and proper fertilization, and it will take years to build grain inventories back up to a comfortable level.

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/business/story.html?id=21e337bc-4ea4-4fb3-bd66-2937d74dc177

As the CEO of a fertilizer company, do you think this guy may have an ax grind?  He has certainly benefited from the increase in the value of the stock in his company which has occurred concomitantly with the commodity boom/bubble.

[Driven1]

RG - you are right...he COULD have an axe to grind.  Doesn't necessarily mean that he does though.  And if you do some searching and read a bunch of his stuff from the last couple of years, you will see that he is not grinding an axe.  Plus, I have not checked his sources - we probably could with some research - but he says that 8 out of the last 9 years more grain was used than was produced.  If this is true, this is not grinding an axe, but just stating facts.  

[Driven1]

hey mo!

http://www.odps.org/glossword/index.php?a=list&d=8&t=dict&w1=M&w2=MO

Mo?  whats with the undercurrent of homoinsulting jabs there Driven?

lol!!! you are too much!!  as funny as that was, no, it was actually in the sense of...

first name Mo
last name Ron

[RiversideGator]

total sense, Dave.

But the demand itself has tripled.

Food Commodities are going through the same process as building materials have already been going through for the past 8 years.

Eastern Consumption gallops way past western production.

Its an issue for the US to creatively solve in the long run imo.

In my mind its the justification for NAFTA and the North American Union.

Source please.  Pardon me if I dont take your word for it.   

BTW, "seperate" is a common misspelling of "separate".  It is wrong, at least in American English.  Let's move on.

[RiversideGator]

hey mo!

http://www.odps.org/glossword/index.php?a=list&d=8&t=dict&w1=M&w2=MO

Mo?  whats with the undercurrent of homoinsulting jabs there Driven?

That is a new one.