Hat Bernanke auch eine 'Ernährungsmaschine'?

dottore , Samstag, 29.03.2008, 06:22 (vor 6521 Tagen) @ McShorty

Hi McShorty,

die Sache schaut wirklich nicht gut aus.

Hier die NYT dazu:

Somalia’s Government Teeters on Collapse

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: March 29, 2008
MOGADISHU, Somalia — The trouble started when government soldiers went to the market and, at gunpoint, began to help themselves to sacks of grain last week.

Islamist insurgents poured into the streets to defend the merchants. The government troops took heavy casualties and retreated all the way back to the presidential palace, supposedly the most secure place in the city. It, too, came under fire.

Mohamed Abdirizak, a top government official, crouched on a balcony at the palace, with bullets whizzing over his head. He had just given up a comfortable life as a development consultant in Springfield, Va. His wife thought he was crazy. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I feel this slipping away,” he said.

By its own admission, the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia is on life support. When it took power here in the capital 15 months ago, backed by thousands of Ethiopian troops, it was widely hailed as the best chance in years to end Somalia’s ceaseless cycles of war and suffering..."

Hier das WSJ:

High Rice Cost Creating Fears of Asia Unrest

By KEITH BRADSHER
Published: March 29, 2008
HANOI — Rising prices and a growing fear of scarcity have prompted some of the world’s largest rice producers to announce drastic limits on the amount of rice they export.

The price of rice, a staple in the diets of nearly half the world’s population, has almost doubled on international markets in the last three months. That has pinched the budgets of millions of poor Asians and raised fears of civil unrest.

Shortages and high prices for all kinds of food have caused tensions and even violence around the world in recent months. Since January, thousands of troops have been deployed in Pakistan to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Protests have erupted in Indonesia over soybean shortages, and China has put price controls on cooking oil, grain, meat, milk and eggs.

Food riots have erupted in recent months in Guinea, Mauritania, Mexico, Morocco, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. But the moves by rice-exporting nations over the last two days — meant to ensure scarce supplies will meet domestic needs — drove prices on the world market even higher this week.

This has fed the insecurity of rice-importing nations, already increasingly desperate to secure supplies. On Tuesday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines, afraid of increasing rice scarcity, ordered government investigators to track down hoarders.

The increase in rice prices internationally promised to put more pressure on prices in the United States, which imports more than 30 percent of the rice Americans consume, according to the United States Rice Producers Association. The price that consumers pay for rice has already increased more than 8 percent over the last year.

But the United States is fortunate in also exporting rice; poor countries ranging from Sengal in West Africa to the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific are heavily dependent on imports and now face higher bills.

Vietnam’s government announced here on Friday that it would cut rice exports by nearly a quarter this year. The government hoped that keeping more rice inside the country would hold down prices.

The same day, India effectively banned the export of all but the most expensive grades of rice. Egypt announced on Thursday that it would impose a six-month ban on rice exports, starting April 1, and on Wednesday, Cambodia banned all rice exports except by government agencies.

Governments across Asia and in many rice-consuming countries in Africa have long worried that a steep increase in prices could set off an angry reaction among low-income city dwellers.

“There is definitely the potential for unrest, particularly as the people most affected are the urban poor and they’re concentrated, so it’s easier for them to organize than it would be for farmers, for example, to organize to protest lower prices,” said Nicholas W. Minot, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington..."

Summa: Wir haben neben der Weltbanken- jetzt auch eine Welternährungskrise. Die lässt sich nicht mit ZB-Milliarden zupflastern. Bernanke Druckmaschine in allen Ehren - doch wo hat er wohl seine Nahrungsmittelmaschine stehen?

Ich halte das Hungerrevolten-Problem für extrem explosiv: Die Banken kann der Steuerzahler (ungefragt) bailouten und wird das stumm-ergeben über sich hinwegziehen lassen, zumal er es nicht selbst bezahlen muss, sondern - wie üblich - der "spätere" Steuerzahler via Staatsverschuldung.

Das Bankenproblem ist sozusagen ein "Future"-Problem. Das Hungerproblem dagegen entlädt sich "spot". Den Gläubiger (Kontraktschuldner) kann man vertrösten. Beim Urschuldner geht das nicht.

Gruß!