Thursday, May 29, 2008
With increasing worldwide food price inflation, what is the long-term solution?
BBC News: World Bank offers $1.2bn food aid
I've not quite worked out what the World Bank's agenda is. From wikipedia, it appears to be 'part-charity/part-profit-making-money-lender'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_bank
If world food price inflation is real (and not just a reflection of dollar weakness/short-term speculation/etc) and is getting worse, it's going to take more than the World Bank and Live Aid 2010/2011/2012 to stop people starving.
Posted by doom&gloom @ 08:49 PM (567 views) Add Comment
26 Comments
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1. Adarmo said...
Perversly the aid actually makes things worse. Buying up huge stocks of food will increase demand in one area. Dumping the food for free in another will destroy the incentives for local farmers to produce more/any food. Look at teh correlation of the increase in charity with the 'deamnd' for chairty. It's self fulfilling. If the good old UN decided that the UK needed food and started dumping it on our doorsteps fro free the supermarkets and suppliers and growers adn farmers would go out of business. Then we really would need it! Don't give to charity, it makes nothing better and in most cases does more harm than good.
You can't argue with Darwin!
2. layers said...
Well if the "WORLD BANK" are involved then everything will be just Dandy! Oh happy days.
3. titaniccaptain said...
608m food aid??????HaHaHaHa..........well that will sort out the problem wont it...........most of you know what im going to say and that is the same thing ive been saying for ages........the bank of england nevr mind the world bank can give 50/100 BILLION pounds to the banks yet the starving can starve, the old and the disabled can pay for their illness and the city boss can pay himself what ever he wants with your money. People should unite and forget the rules if your house gets reposessed stay in it and kick the f#ck out of the balif, dont worry about your debt you have been brainwashed into being greedy by media bombardment which is designed to take away your choice everyone walk out of work until this system is put back together so that there is equality in this world and not just between classes but between nations the whole world is broken..................get ready for someone who will appear to fix it
4. planning4acrash said...
Simple, the world bank is part responsible for the inflation, they are part of the global financier cartel. So, its simple, they have to generate global socialism to give a human face to the theft.
5. doom&gloom said...
@TC - Like the 'can-do' attitude ;-) Bet it's fireworks in your office most days... lol.
Hmm, turn our backs on capitalism - time for a revolution! But the result could be back to the Winter of Discontent and 3-day working week then?
Will be interesting to see how the population-at-large start to react to this once they really see their standard-of-living going into freefall. Globalisation is here, so the good honest workers who might have thought about strking in the the 70's must have the fear in the back of their minds that someone in India is just waiting to take their job if dare to strike now.
The 'someone who will appear to fix it' - is Jesus making his second-coming or is Maggie Thatcher coming back to save us from all of this?
6. harold said...
Spot on Planning.
Think about it: what is the "World Bank", who created it, who is it accountable to, and are any of it's officials democratically elected?
If you don't know the answer to any of these questions, that's probably because the Media conveniently don't ask.
7. doom&gloom said...
@p4c/harold
Agree. But if the 'World Bank' is a no more than money-making enterprise it makes a $1.2 giveaway a very expensive PR exercise.
8. titaniccaptain said...
@ Doom and Gloom
Always sparks around me mate lol
I just believe there is the worst distribution of wealth in history taking place and if things need to collapse to get it all right again then let this house of cards fall apart. And the person who will appear to fix it is.............the anti christ. But aside from my religious view point we are all brainwashed (yes many can say I am by my faith been there done that I analyse myself on a daily basis to a compulsive degree to see if my faith is brainwashing because it conflicts with logic and the answer is ................no) to think within the box of the financial flows and mechanisms in context of globalisation or socialism or the million isms out there..............I just think we should stop taking sh#t and being bullied by the powers that be...........who was it that said that the system should fear the people not the other way around...how many people out there are living in fear of their debts? that were created by a banking system that has more power it seems than the government via the media's ability to brainwash us into greed. WE ARE SLAVES
9. Sneaker said...
Where is this $1.2bn coming from? I thought there was a credit crunch and thus a global shortage of money.
I hope they aren't paying for this by printing more money.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Drawing_Rights
It would only make the inflation worse, later, under the illusion of making things better, now.
10. Sneaker said...
@harold:
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTSITETOOLS/0,,contentMDK:20147466~menuPK:344189~pagePK:98400~piPK:98424~theSitePK:95474,00.html#3
Who owns the World Bank?
The World Bank is like a cooperative in which 185 member countries are shareholders. For a complete list of our members and when they joined, see the Members page in the About Us section of our website.
11. titaniccaptain said...
Anyway bed time now for the Titanic family. Mrs Captain and all the little captains must go bed now and dream of a better world.......right time to read revelations to the kids before bed. God Bless
12. planning4acrash said...
doom & gloom, its not expensive for them, when you can print money for free, money is not an expense.
13. doom&gloom said...
@TC. Ah, signs of the times, yep. Of course it's the antichrist first then christ a bit later - my sunday school mornings are but a distant memory unfortunately.
Absolutely right we are all slaves to an extent. Always been the same through history, although our slavery has been relatively pleasant compared to what Jews/Africans/etc have put up with in the past.
Hope the kids are scared sh*tless by the word of the Lord. Night.
14. doom&gloom said...
"NOT scared", I meant to say. Fear is bad!
15. planning4acrash said...
Hows about a nice story, may a nautical Arthur Ransom book would be more appropriate?
16. gardeniadotnet said...
Does God exist? No one TRULY knows. Me? I choose to believe.
I know, I know, It's a houseprice site.
Many contributors realise it's become much more than that.
17. planning4acrash said...
gardeniadotnet, try Buddhist meditation for a start. There are tried and tested methods for discovering the answer to your question.
18. gardeniadotnet said...
@p4ac
>try Buddhist meditation for a start.
Started researching Buddhism, but didn't find the easy answer I was looking for.
Good night,
G.
19. planning4acrash said...
Its the technique and experience of meditation that I was talking of. It is not an intellectual, it is an experiential process.
20. gardeniadotnet said...
@p4ac
Got you.
I think I've been a buddhist all my life, without realising it.
21. gardeniadotnet said...
>There are tried and tested methods for discovering the answer to your question.
So, do millions of Buddhists know the "answer"?
22. gardeniadotnet said...
@p4ac
> It is not an intellectual, it is an experiential process
cf. the teaching of RE in faith and non-faith schools.
23. gardeniadotnet said...
@p4ac
I'm just sober enough to realise that I'm probably trying to engage conversation with someone who's gone to bed, but.....
....please don't misinterpret my posts. I'm not looking for an argument....just the Truth.
G.
24. Game Over said...
So we've got a deflationary recession.
Err................don't think so
Who is really suprised about the accelerating rate of inflation? I'm not: "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon"
How many billions of liquidity (sic 'cash') have been pumped into the world's financial system so far?
CGNAO looks like he's 100% correct guaranteed.
25. Sneaker said...
Without monetary "pumping" by the central banks, we would now be in a deflationary crash.
House prices are deflating and the CB's are printing money (injecting it into the system by lending new money to banks) hoping that this will prop up house prices.
Truth is, it isn't and it won't. Nobody wants to buy houses, so this fresh money ends up in other things.
Housing is no longer the fashionable asset so no amount of monetary pumping will cause people to invest in it in droves.
So all that money ends up in the newly-fashionable commodities sector, so oil, gold, rice, wheat, gas all shoot to the heavens.
The CB's are causing famine around the world, in an attempt to prop up house prices at home.
Isn't that sick?
It's so obvious and so easy to understand, but almost nobody in the public sphere explains it.
Ambrose Evans-Prichard at the Telegraph does a good job, but where is the talk in the tabloids or on BBC or Sky News about this?
26. planning4acrash said...
Buddhism isn't a religion, it is a set of techniques. It is not about devine intervention, but about teachings from the Buddha, who, through meditation, found enlightenment. Transcendental meditation provides a tool for dissolving senses and intellect, freeing consciousness to be self conscious without any awareness of physical reality. Once your senses and thoughts dissolve, you become aware of your spiritual self. To see how it happens is simple for anybody. Stare at one spot for more than 10seconds, and the image becomes blurred and finally dissapears, because nerves cannot hold the same impulse continually and need refreshment. This is exactly what transcendental meditation does to all cognitive abilities. Mantra's are simply a way of focussing the mind. You observe thoughts, breathing, your heartbeat, sensations without intervening in them, let them arrise and fall away. What is left is self, your spiritual self, pure consciousness. You experience eternity, because time is purely a measure of physical change, eternity is the eternal here and now, because future and past are physical abstractions. You understand that love and joy are the fundamental characteristics of consciousness. You recognise that, the possibility of being self-conscious without being conscious of anything else, means that, when you are in they physical world, your consciousness becomes your thoughts and experiences. That life is an animated form of death.