Gassing Up with Obama from RightChange on Vimeo.
Check out the price at the pump in the video. Seem familiar (see below).
Politics And One Mother With A Keyboard. Because in front of every informed voter is a frightened politician.
Gassing Up with Obama from RightChange on Vimeo.
GRAIN PRICES SURGE ON WEATHER NEWS: “Grain prices surged as persistent rains fueled worries that farmers won’t plant as much corn and wheat as they had planned. . . . While the direction of crude-oil prices are closely linked to the health of the global economy, the outlook for agricultural commodities is fraught with more uncertainty because cool, wet weather has thwarted early plantings in the U.S., the world’s biggest grains producer. . . . Corn planting, in particular, is drawing attention because farmers need to harvest a big crop next fall to rebuild stockpiles, which are projected to reach a 15-year low this year.”
UPDATE: A reader emails:Your post on grain supplies surging is too polite by half. We haven’t only reached a 15 year low – we’ve reached the historic low (going back to the fundamental change in farm policy instituted by Earl Butts in the early 70s). Whatsmore, the levels of corn in reserve we are seeing now hasnt been this low since 1937 at the height of the dust bowl.Ugh. On the upside — well, maybe it’s an upside, maybe not — the shutdown in Mississippi barge traffic is holding up exports.
Most of this, btw, is caused by ethanol: which received tremendous subsidies on top of a massive purchase mandate and of course import tariffs to keep foreign ethanol out of the market.
At least 40% is directly attributable to ethanol. The rest comes from changes to grain markets (people planting less wheat or cotton or soy beans for instance) because of ethanol support.
On top of the wet cold spring causing concern now, Texas and Oklahoma are experiencing the worst drought in 40 years. If it spreads to the Midwest this summer, and we don’t have the largest corn yield in history, we will run short of corn in August of 2012 (we may still run short this year too – we have about 14 days to carry us through till the fall harvest).
Bill Gross is the world’s biggest bond trader. He runs the PIMCO bond fund with over $250 billion under management. He recently disclosed through financial filings that PIMCO has sold every single U.S. bond in its portfolio. Local, state, federal bonds- all sold off. Gross knows bonds are about to default in record numbers. And most importantly, he knows that the last resort of the Federal Reserve buying our own government’s bonds at auction is a certain sign of Armageddon. When no one is left to buy your own debt but you, you have reached the end of a Ponzi Scheme.Read the whole thing and dispair. Then write your local newspapers and tear them up for not reporting on this better.
Then there is legendary Wall Street investor Stanley Druckenmiller. He, too, is calling the Fed’s bond purchases a fraud and a Ponzi scheme. Druckenmiller says, “There is a phony buyer of $19 billion per week of Treasury Bonds.” The phony buyer he refers to is the U.S. government. Druckenmiller knows that when a country resorts to buying its own debt, we are seeing the last days of the Roman Empire.
Another Wall Street legend, Jim Rogers, spoke out at a business conference last week. He said he plans to short sell (bet against) U.S. bonds with both hands. Rogers added, “If any of you have bonds, I would urge you to go home and sell them. If any of you are bond portfolio managers, I would get another job…if I were you, I would think about becoming a farmer.”
Finally, we have the opinion of municipal bond expert Meredith Whitney, named by Fortune magazine as “one of the 50 most powerful women in business,” and by Time magazine as “one of the 100 most influential people.” She sees America in financial ruin with 50 to 100 cities defaulting on their debt in the next year.
What do these financial legends know that the rest of us do not?
Bill Gross is the world’s biggest bond trader. He runs the PIMCO bond fund with over $250 billion under management. He recently disclosed through financial filings that PIMCO has sold every single U.S. bond in its portfolio. Local, state, federal bonds- all sold off. Gross knows bonds are about to default in record numbers. And most importantly, he knows that the last resort of the Federal Reserve buying our own government’s bonds at auction is a certain sign of Armageddon. When no one is left to buy your own debt but you, you have reached the end of a Ponzi Scheme.Read the whole thing and dispair. Then write your local newspapers and tear them up for not reporting on this better.
Then there is legendary Wall Street investor Stanley Druckenmiller. He, too, is calling the Fed’s bond purchases a fraud and a Ponzi scheme. Druckenmiller says, “There is a phony buyer of $19 billion per week of Treasury Bonds.” The phony buyer he refers to is the U.S. government. Druckenmiller knows that when a country resorts to buying its own debt, we are seeing the last days of the Roman Empire.
Another Wall Street legend, Jim Rogers, spoke out at a business conference last week. He said he plans to short sell (bet against) U.S. bonds with both hands. Rogers added, “If any of you have bonds, I would urge you to go home and sell them. If any of you are bond portfolio managers, I would get another job…if I were you, I would think about becoming a farmer.”
Finally, we have the opinion of municipal bond expert Meredith Whitney, named by Fortune magazine as “one of the 50 most powerful women in business,” and by Time magazine as “one of the 100 most influential people.” She sees America in financial ruin with 50 to 100 cities defaulting on their debt in the next year.
What do these financial legends know that the rest of us do not?