Comments on: The latest Agflation news: 8% increase in food prices

By: et alli.

et alli. — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 22:19:58 +0000

Experts to “We Feel Fine” to Cats

Feuilletons ~~~~~~~~~~ ‘I’m an Expert. You Can Be One, Too. By ALAN CONTRERAS I am an expert. Everyone tells me so. They tell me that I am an expert on diploma mills and degree fraud because I have been working

By: cm

cm — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 03:57:55 +0000

Addendum to my post above, the milk I reported at 2.99 1-2 weeks ago was 3.49 today. That was in Trader Joe’s BTW. I was already wondering why they were maintaining such a large discount versus all the other local dealers.

By: telecommuting

telecommuting — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 02:55:19 +0000

Telecommuting would save oodles of energy. But, “I-don’t-know-how-to-measure-productivity, so-I’ll-measure-facetime” managers don’t go for it.

They won’t until they’re forced to. Maybe this needs to be legislated: wasteful corporate managers need nanny government to prod them along.

By: Camille, CT

Camille, CT — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:31:16 +0000

It’s that infinite substitution factor that the BLS uses to justify using a geometric mean vs arithmetic mean for calculating inflation that keeps those inflation numbers nice and tame. The reasoning is, when milk gets expensive, we’ll substitute…we’ll substitute it with diluted milk. When diluted milk gets expensive, we’ll substitute it with dilute paint primer. And so on.

Nothing positive will come from this corn to fuel process. What could we possibly gain from an inefficient process for turning food into a corrosive fuel for the goal of powering an inefficient transportation system? We’re starting to see the effect of this brilliant strategy on our economy.

By: brion

brion — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 21:54:07 +0000

“…a new joint report by the U.N. and OECD forecasts that, over the next ten years, food prices will rise between 20-50% more than they usually do….”

food is overrated anyway….

By: randy

randy — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 19:37:32 +0000

“Ag inflation leads me to think that what happened with manufacturing- offshoring to maintain lower retail prices- will be attempted with food.”

it’s already happening.china is flooding our country with sub standard fish and chicken.it is shipped here in bulk/frozen and re-packaged to “look” american.some of this shows up in fast food.either way it does’nt come close to fda standards.i believe it’s still required to let the consumer know it’s origin ( label)but you have to look close.it’s a crying shame we can’t even raise our own food anymore

By: Aaron Byrnes

Aaron Byrnes — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:48:27 +0000

Ag inflation leads me to think that what happened with manufacturing- offshoring to maintain lower retail prices- will be attempted with food.

The problem with this is that many people have a strong preference for buying food grown locally, produced under modern and clean conditions.

Our system of food production is one of our strengths and I do not want that to fall because of some stealth policy to hide inflation by offshoring those areas where inflation pressure appears.

By: David

David — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 18:08:21 +0000

I think they forgot to hedonically adjust that gallon of milk. Clearly a gallon of milk today tastes better than a gallon of milk from last year.

I can’t believe you people haven’t taken that into account. I’m sure Ben has.

By: cm

cm — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:45:01 +0000

As I pointed out before, 1 gallon of milk was 2.89 at the start of the year, 3.69 now, in a particular store.

But then, walking over to that store for a milk will still cost me less in money and time than driving out to the closest store where the milk is still 2.99, or it was 1-2 weeks ago I should say.

By: m3

m3 — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 16:09:25 +0000

4% in one quarter = 16% annualized.

wow.

in his speech, ben seemed more concerned with inflation expectations than the core rate.

if that’s true, eventually he’ll wake up out of his dreamworld once the public goes nuts about food and gas prices…

but that will take years; and by then it’ll be too late…