Economic adviser's comment complicates McCain campaign

McCain chief economics whack-job Phil Gramm

from IHT:

By Michael Cooper 

BELLEVILLE, Michigan: Senator John McCain has spent the week trying to tell people that he feels their economic pain. So it was more than a little unhelpful when one of his top economic advisers was quoted as saying that the United States was only in a "mental recession" and that it had become a "nation of whiners."

The adviser, former Senator Phil Gramm, Republican of Texas, tried to clarify his remarks Thursday by saying he had been referring only to some of the nation's leaders.

But it was too late to keep from complicating things for McCain, who has been trying to strike a more empathetic tone after sometimes struggling to maintain a balance between optimism about the nation's future and an understanding of Americans' economic hardships.

Well, I'm sure Marie Antoinette thought the people of Paris where whiners as well.

A Timeline of the Mortgage Crisis

from MoJo:

Where Credit Is Due: A Timeline of the Mortgage Crisis

By Nomi Prins 

A field guide to the loan sharks and politicos who got us into the predatory lending mess

It's interesting how often a certain Arizona Senator's name and the names of prominent advisors to same appear in this mess. One thing for sure, it goes a long way toward validating McCain's self description as knowing nothing about the economy.

A Modest Prediction

To sow fear and confusion amidst my enemies, I will make my election predictions far in advance this year. Of course many things can change between now and November and I might rue this audacity, but as of today, this is how I see it.

Obama will win by 323 to 215 electorial votes. The Dems will hold all the states they had in 2004 and add AK CO IN IA MT NM NV OH VA and possibly NC.

In the Senate, the Dems will pick up 10 seats in AK CO ME MN MS NC NH NM OR VA, leaving themselves one vote short of being fillibuster proof.

In the House, the Dems will have a net pick-up of 18 seats. They will give the GOP a strong run for our congressional district (PA 05), but will probably lose...it will depend on turn out in State College.

Bonus VP predictions..

Obama... Jim Webb
McCain...Joltin' Joe Leiberman (just kidding) ... Bobby Jindal  

The campaign will turn on McCain's lack of understanding of the economy, his inablity to control his temper (there WILL be a very public incident sometime before November), and on a general repudiation of the last 8 years of corruption and incompetence, including the unnecessary Iraq War, the failure to secure Afghanistan and the horrific damage done to America's reputation in the world.

President Obama will  appoint 4, maybe 5 Supreme Court Justices during his 8 years. He will revitalize environmental regulation by hiring Al Gore to run the EPA. He will provide support for the less fortunate and work to bring about universal health coverage for all Americans.

Most of all, he return our military to its proper use, protecting America. He will do this by bringing Osama bin Laden and his cohorts to justice, not using it to fight wars for the individual economic aggrandizement of members of the government.

All you sobbing Neocon twits out there, get used to it.

Peak Oil keeps getting weirder.

It seems that half of the refined products that we import to cover the daily shortfall of oil production vs usage,  is used to make refined products we then export. Yes half the so called shortage is really just pass thru. When will we realize that Big Oil doesn't care a whit about our security and are purely interested in ripping as much profit from the system as they can before it all comes crashing down? 

WASHINGTON3 (Reuters) - While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries.
 
A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007. Shipments this February topped 1.8 million barrels a day for the first time during any month, according to final numbers from the Energy Department.
 
The surge in exports appears to contradict the pleas from the U.S. oil industry and the Bush administration for Congress to open more offshore waters and Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.
 
"We can help alleviate shortages by drilling for oil and gas in our own country," President Bush told reporters this week. "We have got the opportunity to find more crude oil here at home."
 
"As a nation, we can have more control over our energy destiny by supplying more of the oil and natural gas we'll be consuming from resources here at home," Red Cavaney, president of the American Petroleum (otcbb: AMPE.OB - news - people ) Institute, said in a letter last week to U.S. lawmakers.
 
But environmentalists and other opponents to expanding drilling areas could seize on the record exports to argue Congress should not open more acres if U.S. refineries are churning crude oil into petroleum products that are sent out of the American market.
 
"It doesn't look good to say: 'We need more oil.' But then export the refined products that you're getting. It doesn't seem to be consistent," said Jim Presswood, energy lobbyist for the Natural 
Resources Defense Council.
 
But many energy experts say oil and petroleum products are traded globally, and it may make economic sense to export gasoline refined along the U.S. Gulf Coast to Latin America and import European-refined gasoline to U.S. East Coast markets.
 
"The fact is that the (United States) participates in global markets for both crude and refined products, and there are any number of variables that impact supply and prices in those markets," said Bill Holbrook, spokesman for the National Petrochemicals and Refiners 
Association.
 
The 1.6 million barrels a day in record petroleum exports represented 9 percent of total U.S. refining capacity of 17.6 million barrels a day.
 
However, with refiners operating at 85 percent of capacity during the January-April period, the shipments represented a much a larger share of total U.S. oil products produced.
 
The exports were also equal to half the 3.2 million barrels of gasoline, diesel fuel and other petroleum products the United States imported each day over the 4-month period.
 
The biggest share of U.S. oil products exported went to Mexico, Canada, Chile, Singapore and Brazil.
 
U.S. consumers are paying record prices for gasoline and diesel fuel, which the Bush administration blames in part on tight supplies.
 
While the administration argues that more supplies would help to bring down prices, U.S exports of diesel fuel in April averaged 387,000 barrels per day, up almost seven-fold from 59,000 barrels a day in the same month a year earlier.
 
U.S. gasoline shipments in April averaged 202,000 barrels a day, the most for the month since 1945, when America was sending fuel overseas to ease supply shortages in other countries during World War II. Gasoline exports in April 2007 were almost half at 116,000 barrels per day.
 
Residual fuel exports in April were 377,000 barrels per day, the fourth highest level for any month, and up 10 percent from 344,000 barrels per day a year earlier.
 
John Felmy, the chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute, said a portion of the oil products exported, especially diesel, was fuel that did not meet U.S. clean air requirements and therefore could not be sold in America. "You may have some that you're not able to use," he said.
 
Also, while U.S. gasoline demand is down due to high prices and a weak American economy, there is "strong economic growth outside the United States" where fuel is often subsidized and demand is high, said John Cook, director of EIA's Petroleum Division.
 
However, both the EIA and API admitted they did not know why daily U.S. gasoline exports to Canada skyrocketed to 41,000 barrels in January-April this year from 9,000 barrels in 2007.
 
The EIA said more U.S. diesel is going to Latin American to fuel power plants because of a shortage of natural gas in the region, and China has switched to diesel from coal to run some of its generating facilities in order to reduce smog ahead of the summer Olympics next month in Beijing. 

Racist Asshole and All Around Evil Fuck Jesse Helms dies at 86

Photos of Jesse Helms at the height of his career as a race-baiting hate-mongering neo-nazi in the US Senate
 


RALEIGH, N.C. - Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during 30 conservative years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July. He was 86.

Helms died at 1:15 a.m., said the Jesse Helms Center at Wingate University in North Carolina. The center's president, John Dodd, said in a statement that funeral arrangements were pending.

"He was very comfortable," said former chief of staff Jimmy Broughton, who added Helms died of natural causes in Raleigh.

Let's see,  Thurmond, Falwell, Reagan, Helms...that leaves Revs Robertson and Hagee and Trent Lott...... You know where to direct your evil  liberal race blending gay and feminist  thoughts next....

The lyrics

An English translation of the Bengali lyrics for the Dancing video below:

Stream of Life

by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

And since this is such a cumbaya day....

Sing Along.

WOW WOW WOW!

This has just got to be the best thing I have ever seen on the intertubes. So utterly, utterly joyous. And as you may have guessed from my recent posts,  joy is rather thin on the ground these days. It just proves that the best anti-depressant is hanging out with happy people.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Click on the link for a larger image player.

Earth Near Tipping Point, Climatologist Warns

from the Toronto Star:

WASHINGTON-James Hansen returned to Capitol Hill a hero yesterday, but certainly not a conquering hero.

The soft-spoken scientist, hailed as the “whistle-blower for the planet,” tried to quiet a standing ovation from environmentalists here with a typically blunt admonition.

“It is not a time to celebrate,” said Hansen, 20 years to the day since he became the first leading scientist to warn of the dangers of global warming before a congressional committee.

He returned not to bask in any adulation, but to warn that the Earth is nearing a tipping point, to call for a national carbon tax and to say that CEOs of energy companies may be guilty of crimes against humanity and nature.

On June 23, 1988, by most accounts, the temperature in the committee room hovered at 38C and the U.S. was in the midst of a historic drought when Hansen told a Senate committee he was “99 per cent certain” that humans were warming the global climate.

His comments brought the issue to American consciousness.

The following day, The New York Times carried an account under the headline:

Global warming has begun, expert tells Senate.

Although global warming alarms had been sounding for more than a decade and Canadian scientists were warning of the greenhouse effect in the early 1980s, Hansen’s testimony seemed to crystallize the concern and provide the first jolt to the mass media in this country.

Two decades later, now 67 and director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, his message has not changed.

“We have reached a point of planetary emergency,” he said.

“There are tipping points in the climate system, which we are very close to, and if we pass them, the dynamics of the system take over and carry you to very large changes which are out of your control.”

During a speech at the National Press Club, he rambled, as if his ideas were sprinting well ahead of his words, but he kept an overflow ballroom audience rapt.

Already, he said, the world’s safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has been exceeded.

Yet, in the 20 years since he first testified, no major U.S. law restricting greenhouse gas emissions has been passed, 21 new coal-fired generating units have been built at power plants in this country and total U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide have climbed by about 18 per cent.

“If there is any single moment that marked the turning point where the climate issue became a serious public policy issue, June 23, 1988, had to be seen as that moment,” said Christopher Flavin, president of the Worldwatch Institute.

“(Yesterday) may mark a second kind of turning point.”

Tim Wirth, the onetime Democratic Colorado senator who organized the hearing that day, said he knew he had made much progress with Hansen’s testimony when a report made the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated.

“It was a brave and lonely leadership role he played then, and he hasn’t stopped one day since,” Wirth said.

Hansen’s second Capitol Hill appearance in 1989 was before a committee chaired by a Tennessee senator named Al Gore, but the White House edited his statement before Gore’s committee, throwing into question his certainty about the link between human activity and global warming.

Hansen was told he could accept the revisions, or he would not be able to testify.

So, in advance of the hearing, he asked Gore to question him on the edited parts, he then revealed the White House edit and the story led all U.S. network newscasts that evening. Hansen then moved out of the political spotlight for 15 years.

Yesterday, Hansen warned of greater forest fire risk in Canada, the extinction of polar and alpine species, danger to the coral reefs and the ocean life that depends on them because of carbon dioxide in the oceans, and refugees from melting ice sheets in Greenland and the western Antarctic.

He called for a phase-out of all coal-burning power plants by 2030 except those in which carbon dioxide is captured and buried and he called for a carbon tax on coal, oil and gas.

The tax, he said, should be returned in full to the public - not used by government - in equal amounts for each adult and a half-share for children, deposited directly into bank accounts or credited to debit cards.

Such a non-regressive tax, Hansen says, will spur low and middle-income people to limit their tax while profligate users will pay for their excesses.

He also accused corporate America of a “greenwash” in which their environmentally friendly words are not backed by actions and he supported criminal charges against CEOs of corporations such as ExxonMobil who are smart enough to know the situation but are intent on continuing their fossil fuel ways.

“When their descendants look back on them, they should not to be able to pretend that they didn’t know,” Hansen said.

“They do know.”

They are also guilty of funding and promoting contrarian views from scientists, furthering a charade that confuses the public into believing there is debate among scientists in this country, Hansen said.

“There is no debate,” he said.

Next year, with a new president, a new direction is desperately needed, Hansen said.

He said a call for offshore drilling, sounded last week both by U.S. President George W. Bush and Republican presumptive nominee John McCain is “crazy.”

“To go around drilling for the last drop of oil on the continental shelf will extend our addiction a little bit, but it will put us past the tipping point,” he said.

As for you Mr Bush, you and your little cabal of thieving, duplicitous venal war criminals are not fit to lick the boots of a true patriot like General Taguba.

From McClatchy:

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes

By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers 

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account. 

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." 

Taguba, whose 2004 investigation documented chilling abuses at Abu Ghraib, is thought to be the most senior official to have accused the administration of war crimes. "The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture," he wrote.

A White House spokeswoman, Kate Starr, had no comment.(more)

Oh Ghod...the Neocons Can't Even Do Propaganda Right

Another example of BushCo's incompetent management of the "War on Terror." This US taxpayer financed 'organization' actually spends most of its time broadcasting anti-American programming. I am  feeling so much safer.

from ProPublica:

Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, whose speeches were carried live and unedited on Alhurra. The State Department lists Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Lost in Translation:

Alhurra—America’s Troubled Effort to Win Middle East Hearts and Minds

by Dafna Linzer

An Arab-language television network and radio station, founded by the Bush administration to promote a positive image of the United States, has aired anti-American and anti-Israeli viewpoints, has showcased pro-Iranian policies and recently gave air time to a militant who called for the death of American soldiers in Iraq. 

So far, U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $500 million to fund those broadcasts. The television station, called Alhurra, and the radio network, Sawa, were meant to provide an American perspective on world events and counter the wave of global criticism that had been building against the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003. 

Instead, Alhurra’s four years of operation have been marked by a string of broadcast disasters that government officials believe are as negative as anything aired by Al Jazeera, the widely watched Qatar-based station that aired unedited speeches of Osama bin Laden. 

Alhurra’s reporters and commentators operate with little oversight. Alhurra’s president, Brian Conniff, does not speak Arabic and is unable to understand anything broadcast on the radio and television networks he is paid to manage. Conniff has no journalism experience and worked previously as a government auditor. His news director, Daniel Nassif, grew up in Lebanon and has no background in television. Before coming to the network, he helped promote the political aspirations in Washington of a Lebanese Christian former general. 

Both men said in interviews that they are providing effective supervision of the network’s five 24-hour radio and television broadcasts and they praised their staff as professional and committed. A string of highly publicized “mistakes” are behind them, Conniff said. 

That does not appear to be the case. (more)

Congratulations George and Brad

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — "Star Trek" star George Takei is ready to "live long and prosper" with his partner of 21 years.

Takei will marry 54-year-old Brad Altman on September 14th in Los Angeles.

The 71-year-old actor, known for his role as Sulu on the "Star Trek" sci-fi TV series, was the first to pay $70 for a marriage license in West Hollywood early Tuesday. The marriage license is good for 90 days.

Takei was jubilant, saying "it's going to be the only day like this in our lives and it is the only day like this in the history of America."

He told reporters and a swelling crowd outside the West Hollywood city auditorium "may equality live long and prosper."

The California Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage.

HURRAY! Some good news for a change.

An uncivil tongue

From Kolchak:


I saw George Carlin live only once. It wasn't his finest moment.

He spent a long time--what seemed like a half hour or more--playing with the microphone cord and waiting, perhaps, for creative lightning to strike. Or maybe he was waiting for the drugs to kick in. Or wear off. That was a long time ago, for both of us.

As you probably know already, Carlin died on June 22, of heart failure. He was 71.

Most of the news stories that I've seen today are leading with his involvement in the landmark obscenity case stemming from his routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television." I don't want to devalue that in any way (and I see that handdrummer has already posted about it) but I want to talk about the other way Carlin used language, to point out the absurdities in daily life. Most of the lines I'm going to use here are paraphrases, and I apologize for that in advance.

I'm not a sports guy and I'll never be one, but one of my favorite Carlin monologues is when he explained how baseball was pastoral and football was technological. It shows how something that looks like a trifle actually says something very real about the world. In baseball, you make an error. Everybody makes errors. In football, you pay a penalty. Football has to be played in a set time period. A baseball game can go on forever.

Carlin talked about how we all grow up to expect certain phrases to go together. You're probably not going to deposit your savings in Arnie's National Bank. And you're probably not going to hang out at the First National Bar and Grill.

I probably shouldn't admit this, but I remember a few of Carlin's earliest appearances on television, before his beard and his anger grew. He did a character he called the Hippy Dippy Weatherman, who delivered playful lines like: There was a freak accident out on Route 295 today. Two freaks in a VW hit three freaks in a van."

And wouldn't he have loved the phrase "heart failure"? I'm sorry, you failed. We're going to have to hold your aorta back a year.

As much fun as it is to recall punchlines, George Carlin did more than tell jokes. He had a way of looking at the world. And that's why he'll be remembered.

George Carlin, RIP

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits

Times have changed since Carlin made these words famous.

Piss is said on regular TV with a growing frequency.

Shit crops up in dialog on the cable channels regularly.

Fuck was immortalized by HBO's Deadwood.

Few rap songs exist that don't use MotherFucker.

Cocksucker is still a bit outre, though it does sneak an appearance into a movie or  comedy routine on occasion.

And Tits, well Tits is as Carlin said, cute.

That leaves Cunt as the lone holdout, the one that still can offend even the staunchist  free speech advocate. And that is more because its meaning has shifted from being denotive of a part of a woman's anatomy to being a hateful derogatory term for that woman in general.

I think Carlin would choose a different set of words today.

Nigger, Kike, Fag come to mind instantly...

Any suggestions for the other three?

There are no words

Dear Mr. President

Nine meals from anarchy

I'm so used to being called a nutjob when I worry aloud about this stuff that it is a shock to find an article like this is a middle of the road mainstream newspaper.

from The Daily Mail:

Nine meals from anarchy - how Britain is facing a very real food crisis 

By Rosie Boycott

The phrase 'nine meals from anarchy' sounds more like the title of a bad Hollywood movie than any genuine threat.

But that was the expression coined by Lord Cameron of Dillington, a farmer who was the first head of the Countryside Agency - the quango set up by Tony Blair in the days when he pretended to care about the countryside - to describe just how perilous Britain's food supply actually is. 

Long before many others, Cameron saw the potential of a real food crisis striking not just the poor of the Third World, but us, here in Britain, in the 21st Century. 

The scenario goes like this. Imagine a sudden shutdown of oil supplies; a sudden collapse in the petrol that streams steadily through the pumps and so into the engines of the lorries which deliver our food around the country, stocking up the supermarket shelves as soon as any item runs out. 

If the trucks stopped moving, we'd start to worry and we'd head out to the shops, cking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We'd be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol. 

What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn't stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on? 

There might be 11 million gardeners in Britain, but your delicious summer peas won't go far when your kids are hungry and the baked beans have run out. 

It was Lord Cameron's estimation that it would take just nine meals - three full days without food on supermarket shelves - before law and order started to break down, and British streets descended into chaos. 

A far-fetched warning for a First World nation like Britain? Hardly. Because that's exactly what happened in the U.S. in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. People looted in order to feed themselves and their families. 

If a similar tragedy was to befall Britain, we are fooling ourselves if we imagine we would not witness similar scenes of crime and disorder. 

Well, today Britain is facing a very real crisis. Granted, it is not the threat of a sudden, terrifying phenomenon such as the hurricane that struck New Orleans. But in its capacity to cause widespread hardship and deprivation nationwide, it is every bit as daunting. 

Oil prices are spiralling - $120 a barrel this week, up 23 per cent since the start of the year - and the cost is being felt not only by drivers but by each and every one of us who has seen our food bills soaring. 

This week, the British Retail Consortium revealed that food price inflation had risen to 6 per cent - the highest figure since comparable records began - and up from 4.7 per cent in April and 4.1 per cent in March. 

At its most basic, the reasons for this food inflation are twofold: increasing demand (particularly in the emerging economies of India and China) and spiralling production costs. 

The former had been predicted for years, but the latter is more unexpected. 

Conventional wisdom had it that in an age of mechanisation, the cost of producing the food that we eat would decrease as technology found new ways of improving yields and minimising labour costs. But there was a problem that hadn't been factored in. Production methods are now such that 95 per cent of all the food we eat in the world today is oil-dependent.

The 'black gold' is embedded in our complex global food systems, in its fertilisers, the mechanisation necessary for its production, its transportation and its packaging. 

For example, to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires the equivalent of six barrels of oil - enough to drive a car from New York to LA. 

Unbelievable? One analysis of the fodder pellets which are fed to the vast majority of beef cows to supplement their grazing found that they were made up of ingredients that had originated in six different countries. Think of the fuel required to transport that lot around the world. 

Now factor in the the diesel used by the farm vehicles, the carbon footprint of chemical fertilisers used by most nonorganic beef farms and the energy required to transport a cow to the abattoir and process it. The total oil requirement soon adds up. 

And so as oil prices have risen, so too has the cost of food - and I'm afraid it's only set to get worse. The age of cheap food is at an end - and it will impact not only on our supermarket bills, but on the whole economy.

Fifty years ago, food represented around 30 per cent of the average household budget, whereas nowadays it is nearer to 9 per cent. 

In other words, cheap food has not only helped keep inflation down, it also allowed the postwar consumer boom to flourish. 

With our most basic and necessary commodity - the food on our plates - costing proportionally less every decade, we had plenty of free capital to spend on luxuries: flat-screen TVs; the holidays abroad; the home improvements and extensions that so many of us have acquired. 

That's all set to change in a major way. A new era of austerity is approaching, and we are illpreparedfor its scale and effect. As a farmer myself, who runs a smallholding in Somerset, I was one of the first to detect the winds of change, as the prices for my animal feed rose. (more)

Mr. Maverick Republican's True Colors

from Congressional Quarterly

In CQ’s calculation of party unity, which measures how often members vote with their party on bills where the parties split, McCain had the Senate’s highest presidential support score last year, 95 percent.  He  has averaged 89 percent since 2001.

Apparently Republicans are so doctrinaire that deviating 11% from the party gets you labeled a maverick. How pathetic.

from Yahoo's Running on Empty group:

That leads me to the thought that if the U.S. administration had demanded the same degree of proof and certainty of Iraq's WMD that they are constantly demanding for Global Warming and Peak Oil then the U.S. invasion of Iraq would never have taken place.

Richard E

As true now as when first spoken...

"They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people"

Eugene Debs

Corn surges to new record on rainy weather, dollar

More trouble on the food supply front....


from Forbes Magazine 

Corn futures shot up to a record for a second day Friday, driven higher by heavy rain in Midwestern states, a slumping dollar and skyrocketing crude oil prices.

Other commodities traded broadly higher, with crude oil soaring almost $10 and gold, silver, copper and other agriculture futures also rising sharply.

Heavy rains have flooded corn crops in Indiana, Ohio, Nebraska and other states, giving farmers their wettest spring since 1993 and severely delaying planting. Forecasts show the bad weather moving toward the western corn belt states of Minnesota and Wisconsin over the next several days.

"It's all about the weather. People have had to replant fields a third time and it's completely unknown how the flooding is going to affect yields," said Elaine Kub, analyst with DTN in Omaha.

Corn for July delivery surged to an all-time high of $6.6325 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade before easing back to $6.52, still up $8.75 cents. Corn prices have jumped 35 percent since the start of the year.  (more)