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bipolarber -> RE: food costs to soar in 08 :-( (12/30/2007 6:09:12 PM)
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Where's the connection between this and the price of groceries? Okay, since you asked.
Until this last election cycle, both houses of Congress and the executive branch of the US government were held by Republicans. They had been for 6 years running... during that time:
Bush pushed for an "Ownership Society" pushing lending institutions to be freer with the purse strings... (this is what led to the sub-prime mortgage crisis)
Bush, within two months of taking office had to deal with 9/11. His response: attack a country that had nothing to do with the attack. (Saddam and Bin Leiden were enemies, you may recall...) Despite the "Coallition of the Willing" the US has had to bear the brunt of the fight, a little over 90% of the forces there being American, even at the start of the war... You may also recall all the talk about us getting in, changing the regime, and getting back out. The war, the GOP assured us, could be done for under $50 billion. But we got stuck in a quagmire. We had to stay there for years on end. To be able to afford to do so, we've had to borrow heavily from China... to the tune of nearly one trillion US dollars. (roughly 1/9 of the total US national debt.)
Bush's policies did nothing for job creation. In fact, unemployment has been skyrocketing since he took office. (The figues that say it's "stable" are misleading. They don't count the people who have been unemployed for so long that they are no longer eligible for government support.) A lot of these "phantom unemployed" are having to use credit cards to keep food on the table.
So this created a huge national debt. Both by the government, and by the average US citizen.(in fact, since Bush I got into office, it began to punch through the roof... things stablized under Clinton, but then went through the roof again under President "Jr.") What had remained at around negative 4 trillion dollars (from President Washington up until Reagan) is now 9.25 trillion... almost entirely due to GOP rule, of less than a decade and a half.)
Now... along comes a hurricane... and the oil companies (which Bush, and his family are a big part of) sense a good excuse. Despite minimal damage to coastal refineries, gas prices skyrocket. They continue to do so with any minor excuse they can think of... anything from the war reports going badly, to it being a hot summer, or that demand is spiking because a Panda went into heat in China.
Gas impacts everything... all prices on food are goverened by the cost of energy needed to produce it, prepare it for long term storage, and transporting it to market.... plus, each time food changes hands, the previous person adds his own markup to insure a profit...
So, tons of unemployed people here at home, going into crushing debt...
Losing their homes because of unfairly inflating mortgages...
Gas prices making it more and more expensive to produce the kind of bounty that we've seen in years past...
Massive national debt, which will have to be countered with increased taxes...
Causing the economy to spiral into massive inflation.... (Gas, food, transportation, goods and services... all becoming vastly more expensive.)
Thanks George! Thanks GOP held Congress between 1996 to 2004!
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