-Americans are stocking up on staples such as rice, flour and oil in anticipation of high prices and shortages spreading from overseas.According to Tom Buis, President of the National Farmers Union:
-Costco and other grocery stores in California reported a run on rice, which has forced them to set limits on how many sacks of rice each customer can buy.
-U.S. wheat stocks are at the lowest levels in 60 years
-The diversion of one-third of the U.S. corn crop into making ethanol for vehicles has increased prices for corn and other staples such as soybeans and cotton as more acreage is set aside for ethanol production.
-Farmers also have raised prices because they have been hard hit by spiraling energy costs, which not only raised the price of diesel fuel to records of over $4 a gallon but drove up the cost of nitrogen fertilizer, which is made from natural gas.
"Something is wrong."No shit!
I've said it before and I'll say it again, anyone who continues to think that the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility is living in a fool's paradise. There is nothing at all conservative about how this President, his father, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and Herbert Hoover navigated America's finances. Trickle-down economic policies and the run-up of record-setting debt (much of it owed to foreign adversaries) is the ultimate in irresponsibility and, in my humble opinion, absolutely anti-American.
The Republican nominee in this year's presidential contest has admitted to knowing nothing about economic affairs and, while on the campaign trail, embraces the policies of the current administration...the very policies that have put us in our current situation of high prices, a housing market breakdown, and a fast-collapsing economy overall.
Umm....thank you, but no.
If Americans put John McCain in the White House this November then they have what's coming to them. And dare I say, the resulting downturn could be on par with Herbert Hoover's Great Depression.
In the mean time, get out there and hunt down some of that neighborhood squirrel. The way things are going, it will soon be about all you can afford for dinner.
