Economic forecasts

Tracking down some info from a link I ran across some details about what was feeding into the high food prices in Tunisia--some of which I'd seen before but not all in one place. The post includes extraneous assertions about the President and you probably don't want to read the comments--so I'll give the gist of useful information. The great powers are printing money (the EU buying worthless Greek/Irish debt and the Treasury generating and buying empty US bonds), while in the meantime Russia's harvest is in trouble, Canada's weather means poor food exports, Australia's weather means poor food exports, China lost 1/3 of its winter wheat, and the US is turning a huge chunk of food into fuel. (And Mexico is having harvest problems) Inflation plus less food available means higher food prices--not a huge deal for us but disaster in poor countries. Bernanke's inflation isn't just robbing us; it is robbing the Egyptian poor too.

Long term things will probably adjust, next year's harvest be better, etc--but this year a lot of people are going to go hungry. Bad harvests are bad enough, but the inflation is making it worse.

Our own economic indicators aren't anything to smile about. See Kipling on the subject. We made some implicit promises to the world, and it looks like we're going to renege into inflation--and inflict misery on innocent bystanders as we go.

UPDATE: Not everybody agrees; some see bright spots. I still see inflation.