Ben Plans, Food Prices Reach All-Time Highs

Brian Hicks

Posted February 3, 2011

Bernanke 2010

Don’t you just love the Federal Reserve…?

Higher prices have helped to set the world ablaze and Bernanke & Co. continue to insist inflation is a figment of our imagination.

You see, despite the obvious fact that commodity prices are skyrocketing…….

cchart

…the Fed comes out with this nonsense this morning. About inflation the Bernank remarked:

“On the inflation front, we have recently seen significant increases in some highly visible prices, notably for gasoline. Indeed, prices of many commodities have risen lately, largely as a result of the very strong demand from fast-growing emerging market economies, coupled, in some cases, with constraints on supply. Nevertheless, overall inflation remains quite low: Over the 12 months ending in December, prices for all the goods and services purchased by households increased by only 1.2 percent, down from 2.4 percent over the prior 12 months. To assess underlying trends in inflation, economists also follow several alternative measures of inflation; one such measure is so-called core inflation, which excludes the more volatile food and energy components and therefore can be a better predictor of where overall inflation is headed. Core inflation was only 0.7 percent in 2010, compared with around 2-1/2 percent in 2007, the year before the recession began.”

 

Meanwhile, the reality is food prices around the world have hit their highest levels EVER…

From Breitbart entitled: World food prices hit record high: UN agency

World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the UN food agency said on Thursday, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.

Rising food prices have been cited among the driving forces behind recent popular revolts in north Africa, including the uprising in Egypt and the toppling of Tunisia’s long-time president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.

And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January — the highest level since records began in 1990.

The Index rose by 3.4 percent from December — with big increases in particular for dairy, cereal and oil prices. The rises were most significant in China, India, Indonesia and Russia, data from FAO’s monthly report showed.

“There are a lot of factors that could spark turmoil in countries and food is one of them,” Abbassian said, pointing out however that several countries have become better at managing prices after a series of riots in 2007 and 2008.

“They have learnt from previous episodes,” he said, adding however: “These are obviously not very easy times. There is now no hope that prices will return to anything we can consider normal, at least until the summer.”

Global aid agency Oxfam said: “Millions of people’s lives are at risk.”

“Poor people in developing countries spend between 50 and 80 percent of their income on food, making higher prices, as well as unpredictable prices, a serious threat to their ability to eat,” Oxfam said in a statement.

Oxfam blamed the price rises on reduced production due to bad weather, increased oil prices making fertilizer and transport more expensive, increased demand for biofuels, export restrictions and financial speculation. “

 

Ben plans, commodities soar….

And to think its all to save the banks that screwed us in the first place.

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