You have maybe two months to stock up on the necessities of life before food prices rise dramatically, potentially prompting a food panic, widespread famine, and quite possibly the long-expected collapse of the U.S. economy.
Farmers across America and in many other parts of the world are calling 2009 the worst harvest they’ve ever seen in their lives, owing largely to extended bouts of bad weather. At the same time the U.S. Department of Agriculture is officially forecasting bumper crops, while grain elevators stand nearly empty and close to three-fourths of the country’s farmland is in areas declared eligible for federal disaster assistance due to failed crops.
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It’s over a year now since the 2008 financial crisis spread havoc throughout the global economy. Dozens of books and articles have appeared to explain what went wrong. They identify culprits ranging from Wall Street financiers overleveraging assets, to ACORN lobbying policy-makers to lower mortgage standards, to politicians closely connected to government-sponsored enterprises such as Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae failing to exercise oversight of those agencies.
The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the banking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from taxpayers to the banking industry. One need merely read the last post I wrote on this topic.
The debate over financial services reform has meandered for weeks without a clear sense of urgency. It would be a huge opportunity lost if our political, regulatory and business leaders cannot craft a credible new regulatory foundation for one of America’s pre-eminent industries. It’s time to set politics and regulatory infighting aside and establish the new rules of the road for this critically important business.