Global Famine: the FED’s role

If the Fed chief decides to lower rates again at the end of April, he could be condemning millions of people to an agonizing death by starvation.

There is no shortage of food; it's just the prices that are food unaffordable.

Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke's "weak dollar" policy has ignited a wave of speculation in commodities which is pushing prices into the stratosphere. Foreign central banks and investors presently hold $6 trillion in dollars and dollar-backed assets, so when the dollar starts to slide, the pain radiates through entire economies.

And oil depletion, biofuel production, over-population, and giant agribusinesses adds to the problem. But the catalyst is the Fed's monetary policies; that's the domino that puts the others in motion.

Otto Spengler in his recent article in Asia Times, "The global food crisis is a monetary phenomenon, an unintended consequence of America's attempt to inflate its way out of a market failure. …Washington's economic misery now threatens to become a geopolitical catastrophe....The link between the declining parity of the US unit and the rising price of commodities, including oil as well as rice and other wares, is indisputable."

A field worker in Haiti who earns $2 a day, and spends all of that to feed his family, has to earn twice that amount or eat half as much. That's not a choice a parent wants to make.

[Excerpt of an article by Mike Whitney, ICH]