Academic

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Massive Inflation, Right Under Our Noses. ?Food prices are hitting record highs?.

By Glenn Reynolds

KEVIN WILLIAMSON: Massive Inflation, Right Under Our Noses. “Food prices are hitting record highs. Sugar, meat, oils ? boom, boom, boom. Food-related products, like fertilizers, are on a pretty steep upward trajectory. (Even the reliably pessimistic cotton farmers are celebrating.) Inflation is nipping at the Chinese economy and threatens to exacerbate social unrest in the world?s largest for-profit police state. Meanwhile, oil prices are zooming, and the boom in gold and other precious metals has been too amply remarked upon to bear further commentary here. . . . It seems to me entirely plausible that what we are seeing is a giant, global vote of no confidence in the economic policies of the world?s major economies: Europe and the United States, sure, but China, too. I used to say that you could judge how seriously a man took his beliefs about the future by how much of his own money he was willing to bet on a given proposition. But there are things that people take even more seriously than money: things with real value, like food and fuel. . . . When one country devalues its currency in a last-ditch effort to stave off crisis, it?s a banana republic. When the United States, Europe, Japan, and China do it in a coordinated fashion, we?re all part of the Banana Federation of Greater Bananastan.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on January 06, 2011 (boomark / email).