More food cost spikes
Mar. 19th, 2008 12:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonA slice of pizza gets pricier
(subhed: Rising wheat prices are pushing up costs for baked goods, and foods from muffins to pizza are getting more expensive.)
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(excerpt, full article via link above)
By Allan Chernoff
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Pizzeria owner Joe Vicari shakes his head as he prepares to rip open a 50-pound bag of flour for another batch of dough.
"That's 37-bucks. $37. I couldn't believe it!" says Vicari.
Since opening Mariella Pizza in mid-town Manhattan 30-years ago, Vicari, says he has never experienced such a jump in the cost of his ingredients.
"I can't even believe how much the flour [goes] up. When I see the bill I can't believe it, that's too much," says the veteran pizza maker, who emigrated from Sicily. Only four weeks ago, Vicari says, he was paying just $16-a-bag for Gold Medal brand flour, which at $37-a-bag now seems more golden than ever.
Executives at his supplier, Cremosa Food of Melville, New York, did not return CNN's repeated phone calls, though a source at the company confirms there are plans for a price hike to $40-a-bag in the next week. Cremosa, the source said, is allocating flour to restaurants, refusing to allow customers to buy more than they had purchased the prior week.
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Argh. Thank you, ethanol boondoggle, and the dubious Fed policies of drastic interest-rate cuts and big business bailouts. These, along with the massive amount of new U.S. debt (created by the Bush administration to fund their foreign wars), lead the foreign investors who hold most of our new debt to drive the dollar down, which naturally causes oil prices (in dollars) to rise even faster than they would normally due to Peak Oil conditions (if the dollar is worth less, foreign producers want more of them for each barrel of oil).
A low dollar makes U.S.-produced goods cheaper overseas (good, right?) Not so fast -- that means that our prices here go way up, not just for all the (almost everything) we import, but even for those few things (like wheat) that we export, because we're now competing against the world for our own produce. You can produce far more than you need to live, yet hunger because so much is shipped overseas -- just ask the Irish about the Potato Famine. Bottom line, food prices are rising, and will probably keep doing so, as long as the dollar keeps falling.
All of this stuff comes together, and I fear we're going to see that with the combination of stagnating economy, credit and mortgage industry crisis, and high actual inflation (because so much...everything, really...is tied to oil prices, including essential staples like food), there is the potential for some very rough times ahead, the pernicious combination of slow economy and high inflation that was termed "stagflation" when it was first applied in the 1970's. The mainstream economists assure that this can't happen, but it was only a few months ago that they said the mortgage credit crisis was "contained," and that the risk of a recession was "low to none." Sure.
Here on this 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, it is quite clear that we have got to get the hell out now, because, all other issues aside, we simply cannot afford to be pouring our money (or actually, creating massive new piles of debt), down the endless sinkhole. Could we "win" in Iraq? Highly doubtful. And even if, through the application of obscene amounts of money and far too many lives over countless years, we did pull off something we could call, even nominally, temporarily, a "victory," the long-term damage to the U.S., in terms of our economy, not to mention niceties like world perception (much of which has already been done), will be the textbook definition of Phyrric victory. If only we could learn from history...we've had 2200 years to learn this lesson, so if we haven't figured it out by now...
I'm thinking it's a good year to build more raised bed gardens. Worst-case, we have more fresh veggies than we can eat and can store some for Winter ;>
(subhed: Rising wheat prices are pushing up costs for baked goods, and foods from muffins to pizza are getting more expensive.)
-------
(excerpt, full article via link above)
By Allan Chernoff
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Pizzeria owner Joe Vicari shakes his head as he prepares to rip open a 50-pound bag of flour for another batch of dough.
"That's 37-bucks. $37. I couldn't believe it!" says Vicari.
Since opening Mariella Pizza in mid-town Manhattan 30-years ago, Vicari, says he has never experienced such a jump in the cost of his ingredients.
"I can't even believe how much the flour [goes] up. When I see the bill I can't believe it, that's too much," says the veteran pizza maker, who emigrated from Sicily. Only four weeks ago, Vicari says, he was paying just $16-a-bag for Gold Medal brand flour, which at $37-a-bag now seems more golden than ever.
Executives at his supplier, Cremosa Food of Melville, New York, did not return CNN's repeated phone calls, though a source at the company confirms there are plans for a price hike to $40-a-bag in the next week. Cremosa, the source said, is allocating flour to restaurants, refusing to allow customers to buy more than they had purchased the prior week.
-------
Argh. Thank you, ethanol boondoggle, and the dubious Fed policies of drastic interest-rate cuts and big business bailouts. These, along with the massive amount of new U.S. debt (created by the Bush administration to fund their foreign wars), lead the foreign investors who hold most of our new debt to drive the dollar down, which naturally causes oil prices (in dollars) to rise even faster than they would normally due to Peak Oil conditions (if the dollar is worth less, foreign producers want more of them for each barrel of oil).
A low dollar makes U.S.-produced goods cheaper overseas (good, right?) Not so fast -- that means that our prices here go way up, not just for all the (almost everything) we import, but even for those few things (like wheat) that we export, because we're now competing against the world for our own produce. You can produce far more than you need to live, yet hunger because so much is shipped overseas -- just ask the Irish about the Potato Famine. Bottom line, food prices are rising, and will probably keep doing so, as long as the dollar keeps falling.
All of this stuff comes together, and I fear we're going to see that with the combination of stagnating economy, credit and mortgage industry crisis, and high actual inflation (because so much...everything, really...is tied to oil prices, including essential staples like food), there is the potential for some very rough times ahead, the pernicious combination of slow economy and high inflation that was termed "stagflation" when it was first applied in the 1970's. The mainstream economists assure that this can't happen, but it was only a few months ago that they said the mortgage credit crisis was "contained," and that the risk of a recession was "low to none." Sure.
Here on this 5th anniversary of the Iraq war, it is quite clear that we have got to get the hell out now, because, all other issues aside, we simply cannot afford to be pouring our money (or actually, creating massive new piles of debt), down the endless sinkhole. Could we "win" in Iraq? Highly doubtful. And even if, through the application of obscene amounts of money and far too many lives over countless years, we did pull off something we could call, even nominally, temporarily, a "victory," the long-term damage to the U.S., in terms of our economy, not to mention niceties like world perception (much of which has already been done), will be the textbook definition of Phyrric victory. If only we could learn from history...we've had 2200 years to learn this lesson, so if we haven't figured it out by now...
I'm thinking it's a good year to build more raised bed gardens. Worst-case, we have more fresh veggies than we can eat and can store some for Winter ;>
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no subject
Date: 2008-03-19 07:44 pm (UTC)