I can't believe a word that comes out of the Bush people. These people wave the cross but are pathological liars. Of course Bush says that energy crops are only 10% of the crop.

And let it be clear - ethanol is another Republican bondagle in the US. One poster blames the environmentalists - yet another nod to Big Corn and the mid-west farmers.

Hmmm...looking at the posts for this column and others, I suspect that right-wingers are targeting liberal sites and adding their comments. Interesting, since they don't like to read. Perhaps their comments are based on the headline?

Who cares? We'd MUCH rather get to Wal-Mart to go deeper into debt buying next year's garage-sale stuff, than eat today! Get in the Hummer, Maude; we're gonna go get two hundred tacos!

No doubt that the statistics of the metrics on the increase of food prices are more or less accurate.

Who is responsible for the price increase?

Is it speculators' fault? Not to the implied extent.

In an open market environment, risk takers are the plasma that smoothe out price and supply bottlenecks.

It has been such for 2000 years.

What do you think was going on at the Tempel in Jerusalem when the Baby Jesus was roaming the city?

The futures market.

Mungo Fetch

Maybe it's 3 or 10 or 40 or more. But if you imagine that biofuels are free non polluting don't harm brown people and unicorns then you are huffing paint again.

BTW Rads, Income distribution in oil free Brazil is even MORE uneven than in the US. In Brazil there are a few obscenely weathly, a tottering middle class trying to hang on, and a huge underclass.

I think there are 2 aspects to the speculation driven markets that come into play when politicians discuss them. Lying and ignorance. Ignorance on the part of so many politicians when clearly they don't even understand how the system works (how could they when it has been deliberately manipulated to obscure how it actually works). And lying when they just parrot whatever lobbyists have told them is the truth. When so many people in economics/finance are unable to predict what will happen or even to clearly explain what did happen after the fact, it indicates that the whole system is flawed and lacks transparency. It can't possibly be managed in a sensible way that benefits society.

It seems like a crime when we have an economic system that allows so much wealth to be extracted without actually doing anything productive, and it is not an abstract thing either since this effects us all at the grocery store and when we buy or sell a home. I'm not saying capitalism is the problem, just that we have allowed some really clever people to set up rules for the game that very few people understand and that allow those who do to make money from doing nothing, or worse doing something that actually undermines the value built by the hard work of everyone else. This has to stop, and it does not make me anti-capitalist to say that I am tired of getting screwed like this.

Since the economic system is set up for us and by us (well should be anyways) it should be something that we at least have a chance to manage in a way that benefits our long term goals as a society. Time to do a little tinkering to get the system to support long term thinking that leads towards a sustainable future and diminishes the casino night that we have allowed it to turn into.

1. Andyinsdca: I sympathize. I have written several, many embarrassing Salon posts while all-but-plastered.

2. Everybody: Please bear in mind that the original idea for corn fuel was "Energy Independence," rather than efficiency. And, the people who promote ethanol are not lefty greenies, but corn farmers and agro-industrialists.

Corn fuel is an idea whose time came and went very quickly. We need time to catch up with reality.

hey ... good article

the question to be asked then .....

... is who in Blazes would want to be sitting in the Offal Office for the next few years with this Rogue Diesel LOCO-motive Barreling Down the Rickety Tracks toward 1600 Penna. Ave. ??

Ethanol is dead. Long live King Methanol!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_economy

Well, since fructose is also a corn derivative, maybe we could stage a national snacks & soda strike.

If we refused to eat all this toxic junkfood, it would depress the corn market signifcantly and lower the price of corn.

Seriously. Do you have any idea how much clout the snacks and drinks portion of our economy wields with lobbyists?

Fast food chains will be seeing such huge hits by winter that their surplus will go into depressing food prices since even a Big Mac is going into unattainable territory for the Working Broke in freezing houses.

And there were until recently all sorts of correlations between fructose intakes and obesity.

Although this may happen anyway in a de facto sort of way since snacks and soda are going to be the first out the door as we go on a national budget.

If I had the money I'd buy popcorn futures. Making it at home from scratch is so cheap that there will be a run on it from the snack-deprived. Hint keep it in the freezer.

Maybe the two thirds of this overweight country can now consider that girth hibernation storage.

If the majority of the country got into diet mode and forsook all the munchie junk, it would add greatly to the food stores available and start to lower the prices.

I've been reading some budget tips on chatboards and the number of formerly middle-class older people going into belt tightening mode in some very scary ways (like only eating once a day and watering kids' milk) is starting to get quite sobering.

By August the GOP will realize what a goldmine with these same voters they have in that footage of Obama pondering the cost of arugula.

And by this winter the price of fuel oil will mean true hardship in the North.

Just in time for the elections.

It'll be the first time the October Surprise will end up being about nationalizing oil.

It's inevitable at this rate. It's no longer IF, it's WHEN.

First candidate to go for it will win.

-gala1