From 10,000 Feet

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported that world food prices had risen 3.4% in January (the seventh monthly increase in a row) to the highest level since records began in 1990. Continued increases are expected. Food prices have proven to be the underlying motivation for civil unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan, and Yemen and more uprisings are expected in countries around the world. Indonesia and Thailand have been rationing staples for more than a year. Here in Canada, the increases have been slightly less but substantial enough for people to notice the difference when they go to the grocery store. What is the future of food, what is happening, and what can we do?

The general consensus outside the US is that the problem is caused by US monetary policy. Printing  $600B (QE 2) and the very loose lending policies of the Federal Reserve aimed at resuscitating the US economy have caused inflation and the destabilisation of world currencies. French President Sarkozy  and G20 head has pointed his finger at food speculators. Inside the US, Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and Noble Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, have redirected the attention from US policy to drought and reduced supply. They also claim that countries have the option of appreciating their currency to offset the policies of the US; however, that would also kill their exports.

From the ground-level, the problem seems like a complicated stand-off between the interests of the US government and the rest of the world. The flaws in globalization and the world currency system are not going to be resolved by you and me. It is obvious from 10,000 feet, however, that the solution for us is to de-couple ourselves from the world in strategic areas such as food and regain our sovereignty.  It is not likely the Canadian government is going to do that. There have been many forward thinking outsiders (forerunners) warning about the need for food sovereignty for years with little response. So what can you do?

The lifestyle of Canadians has become increasingly dependent on others to supply their basic needs. Urban living has made us dependent on food which has been grown far away. Being linked to and dependent on the rest of the world to feed us makes us vulnerable to soaring prices and disruption in supply caused by war, drought, transportation problems, and political and social upheavals, to name only a few. Globalization has given us a world of reasons why we should take care of ourselves, particularly in the production of food.

If you grow your own food, you remove the impact of subsidies, transportation costs, carbon emissions, trade barriers, speculators, shortages, wars, earthquakes –  effectively all the obstacles!

There are many highly developed techniques for growing your own food such as “square foot gardening” and “intensive gardening” which make the process simple and give incredible yields. Growing food is therapeutic and giving some of it away, as most home gardeners do because they have too much, is joy to the giver and receiver. Growing your own food also reduces pressures on existing supplies, thus leaving food for others who are hungry. By helping yourself, you help others – it is a win-win solution. Now is a good time to start planning a garden.

If, however, you can’t grow your own food, the next best solution is to buy it from local producers. There are many cooperatives and farm-gate growers in our township and we need to support them and encourage more food suppliers in our area to sell locally. We have some of the best land in the province and it could feed us and much of the country.  Small farms produce many times more food per acre than industrialized farms, making them quite profitable.

It is convenient to buy garlic from China but when you compare the quality and the price, Canadian garlic is still the better deal. Some things are a little more expensive when they are grown here, but there are other values to consider. When you buy imported food, the money leaves the community, but when you buy local, all of the money stays right here. Hidden subsidies create inequities between foreign and local pricing. Food production and food sovereignty should be part of our federal government’s policies and commitment to protect Canadian food growers. Our region should also develop plans and incentives to stimulate the growing of food locally.

By growing our own food and taking care of ourselves, we become positioned to take care of others. We also regain control of our lives and strengthen our community.  Buying and supplying our food locally is a powerful solution anyone can use to overcome soaring food prices.

How to Beat World-Wide Food Inflation

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported that world food prices had risen 3.4% in January (the seventh monthly increase in a row) to the highest level since records began in 1990. Continued increases are expected. Food prices have proven to be the underlying motivation for civil unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan, and Yemen and more uprisings are expected in countries around the world. Indonesia and Thailand have been rationing staples for more than a year. Here in Canada, the increases have been slightly less but substantial enough for people to notice the difference when they go to the grocery store. What is the future of food, what is happening, and what can we do?

The general consensus outside the US is that the problem is caused by US monetary policy. Printing  $600B (QE 2) and the very loose lending policies of the Federal Reserve aimed at resuscitating the US economy have caused inflation and the destabilisation of world currencies. French President Sarkozy  and G20 head has pointed his finger at food speculators. Inside the US, Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and Noble Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, have redirected the attention from US policy to drought and reduced supply. They also claim that countries have the option of appreciating their currency to offset the policies of the US; however, that would also kill their exports.

From the ground-level, the problem seems like a complicated stand-off between the interests of the US government and the rest of the world. The flaws in globalization and the world currency system are not going to be resolved by you and me. It is obvious from 10,000 feet, however, that the solution for us is to de-couple ourselves from the world in strategic areas such as food and regain our sovereignty.  It is not likely the Canadian government is going to do that. There have been many forward thinking outsiders (forerunners) warning about the need for food sovereignty for years with little response. So what can you do?

The lifestyle of Canadians has become increasingly dependent on others to supply their basic needs. Urban living has made us dependent on food which has been grown far away. Being linked to and dependent on the rest of the world to feed us makes us vulnerable to soaring prices and disruption in supply caused by war, drought, transportation problems, and political and social upheavals, to name only a few. Globalization has given us a world of reasons why we should take care of ourselves, particularly in the production of food.

If you grow your own food, you remove the impact of subsidies, transportation costs, carbon emissions, trade barriers, speculators, shortages, wars, earthquakes –  effectively all the obstacles!

There are many highly developed techniques for growing your own food such as “square foot gardening” and “intensive gardening” which make the process simple and give incredible yields. Growing food is therapeutic and giving some of it away, as most home gardeners do because they have too much, is joy to the giver and receiver. Growing your own food also reduces pressures on existing supplies, thus leaving food for others who are hungry. By helping yourself, you help others – it is a win-win solution. Now is a good time to start planning a garden.

If, however, you can’t grow your own food, the next best solution is to buy it from local producers. There are many cooperatives and farm-gate growers in our township and we need to support them and encourage more food suppliers in our area to sell locally. We have some of the best land in the province and it could feed us and much of the country.  Small farms produce many times more food per acre than industrialized farms, making them quite profitable.

It is convenient to buy garlic from China but when you compare the quality and the price, Canadian garlic is still the better deal. Some things are a little more expensive when they are grown here, but there are other values to consider. When you buy imported food, the money leaves the community, but when you buy local, all of the money stays right here. Hidden subsidies create inequities between foreign and local pricing. Food production and food sovereignty should be part of our federal government’s policies and commitment to protect Canadian food growers. Our region should also develop plans and incentives to stimulate the growing of food locally.

By growing our own food and taking care of ourselves, we become positioned to take care of others. We also regain control of our lives and strengthen our community.  Buying and supplying our food locally is a powerful solution anyone can use to overcome soaring food prices.

How to Beat World-Wide Food Inflation

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recently reported that world food prices had risen 3.4% in January (the seventh monthly increase in a row) to the highest level since records began in 1990. Continued increases are expected. Food prices have proven to be the underlying motivation for civil unrest in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Pakistan, Jordan, and Yemen and more uprisings are expected in countries around the world. Indonesia and Thailand have been rationing staples for more than a year. Here in Canada, the increases have been slightly less but substantial enough for people to notice the difference when they go to the grocery store. What is the future of food, what is happening, and what can we do?

The general consensus outside the US is that the problem is caused by US monetary policy. Printing  $600B (QE 2) and the very loose lending policies of the Federal Reserve aimed at resuscitating the US economy have caused inflation and the destabilisation of world currencies. French President Sarkozy  and G20 head has pointed his finger at food speculators. Inside the US, Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, and Noble Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, have redirected the attention from US policy to drought and reduced supply. They also claim that countries have the option of appreciating their currency to offset the policies of the US; however, that would also kill their exports.

From the ground-level, the problem seems like a complicated stand-off between the interests of the US government and the rest of the world. The flaws in globalization and the world currency system are not going to be resolved by you and me. It is obvious from 10,000 feet, however, that the solution for us is to de-couple ourselves from the world in strategic areas such as food and regain our sovereignty.  It is not likely the Canadian government is going to do that. There have been many forward thinking outsiders (forerunners) warning about the need for food sovereignty for years with little response. So what can you do?

The lifestyle of Canadians has become increasingly dependent on others to supply their basic needs. Urban living has made us dependent on food which has been grown far away. Being linked to and dependent on the rest of the world to feed us makes us vulnerable to soaring prices and disruption in supply caused by war, drought, transportation problems, and political and social upheavals, to name only a few. Globalization has given us a world of reasons why we should take care of ourselves, particularly in the production of food.

If you grow your own food, you remove the impact of subsidies, transportation costs, carbon emissions, trade barriers, speculators, shortages, wars, earthquakes –  effectively all the obstacles!

There are many highly developed techniques for growing your own food such as “square foot gardening” and “intensive gardening” which make the process simple and give incredible yields. Growing food is therapeutic and giving some of it away, as most home gardeners do because they have too much, is joy to the giver and receiver. Growing your own food also reduces pressures on existing supplies, thus leaving food for others who are hungry. By helping yourself, you help others – it is a win-win solution. Now is a good time to start planning a garden.

If, however, you can’t grow your own food, the next best solution is to buy it from local producers. There are many cooperatives and farm-gate growers in our township and we need to support them and encourage more food suppliers in our area to sell locally. We have some of the best land in the province and it could feed us and much of the country.  Small farms produce many times more food per acre than industrialized farms, making them quite profitable.

It is convenient to buy garlic from China but when you compare the quality and the price, Canadian garlic is still the better deal. Some things are a little more expensive when they are grown here, but there are other values to consider. When you buy imported food, the money leaves the community, but when you buy local, all of the money stays right here. Hidden subsidies create inequities between foreign and local pricing. Food production and food sovereignty should be part of our federal government’s policies and commitment to protect Canadian food growers. Our region should also develop plans and incentives to stimulate the growing of food locally.

By growing our own food and taking care of ourselves, we become positioned to take care of others. We also regain control of our lives and strengthen our community.  Buying and supplying our food locally is a powerful solution anyone can use to overcome soaring food prices.

It was difficult choosing a topic for this month’s column because there has been so much going on in the news that I wanted to bring to your attention. But with the US dollar “dropping off the table”, I decided to do my year-end projections for 2011 a month earlier.

Since June, the US dollar has lost more than 9% which is good news if you are buying US cash to take a trip or make a purchase. But the reality is that what is happening to our currency and the economy is going to require us to change the way we think and do business with the Americans.

Much of the move in the US dollar has happened in the last month in response to an announced second round of stimulus, sometimes called QEII (Quantitative Easing 2). The first round didn’t work and the second round is unlikely to work either – so you might ask, “what are they doing?”

Bill Gross, President of PIMCO (World’s Largest Mutual Fund), gave us some insight into what is really happening when he commented recently on America’s economic woes.

“It is a globalized economy of our own doing for the past 20-30 years. We encouraged all of this, but it is coming back to haunt us. To the extent that Chinese labor, Vietnamese labor, Brazilian labor, Mexican labor, wherever it is coming from that labor is outcompeting us and holding down our economy. ……Other countries and citizens are willing to work for less and willing to work harder—and we forgot the magic formula somewhere along the way,” he said.

He went on to say, “One of the ways to get even, so to speak, or to get the balance, is to debase (devalue) your currency faster than anybody else can. It’s a shock because the dollar is the reserve currency. But to the extent that that is a necessary condition for rebalancing the global economy over time, then that is where we are headed.”

He also said later in this interview that he thought the US dollar could be devalued by as much as 20%.

Globalism is Dead
I have been speaking out against globalism for 30 years because it has killed our manufacturing (particularly in Ontario), and made a lot of multi-national corporations and their upper management unbelievably wealthy at the cost of millions of well paying jobs in Canada. In the US, it has wiped out the middle class almost completely. However, Mr. Gross, though accurate about globalism, demonstrated a total disregard for the value of our labour when he said, “we (America’s labour force) have forgotten the “magic formula”. He compares us with workers who are forced to work (through circumstances) for pennies an hour, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. He has forgotten that we HAD built up enough wealth in the west so that we didn’t have to work day and night for a subsistence income before globalism. Now that wealth is in the hands of a few corporations. Instead of raising up those other countries to a more humane labour standard, they have devalued our labour to the lowest level possible and oppressed even the poorest of poor in order to make even greater, and greater profits. These are the people who are running the financial world who we so foolishly “invest our money with”. 95% of the world’s wealth is held by 5% of the people. There can be no recovery without the redistribution of wealth – it’s impossible. I wonder what he thinks his labour is worth???
Now that I have that out on the table, Gross did say a few other things that really matter to you and me. By devaluing the Greenback through the increase of the money supply (printing it), you do two things. You devalue the current debt of the US. (They have the equivalent debt of a person making $50k per year and owing $5M.); and more importantly, imports (from Canada) becoming more and more expensive in the US.The Canada/US exchange rate has gone from -20% to +2. Obama has assured the G20 that he would not start a currency war, but he really doesn’t have any other options. This effectively makes NAFTA pretty much worthless.

You and Me and 2011
That being said, what does that mean for you and me in 2011? The coming year will be an opportunity for Canadians to break free from US “dependency”. The US will begin to make more of their needs at home as it becomes more expensive to import products. Canada should look for ways to increase the labour component in our raw materials and there will be opportunities to develop and provide services to Canadians from the US as the value of their dollar decreases and ours increases.
The Waterloo Region will continue to invest heavily in technology as our major export. We are among the best managed and economically sound areas in Canada. We are well positioned to do better than most of the country because of our progressive, forward-thinking and creative people who will rise to the challenges of change. Innovation and creativity, on which this region was built, can turn the coming challenges into wealth building opportunities. 2011 will have its “bumps in the road” but in a world of change, I have great confidence in our creativity and innovative ability to lead and prosper.

Read the whole story here

http://www.cnbc.com/id/39957072

Get an education here….
See “Inside Job” the film

http://www.insidejob.com/

The birth of HST in Ontario has arrived. I doubt if anyone will be handing out cigars – on second thought, maybe Dalton McGuinty will. Compared to British Columbia, the first step in selling the HST to Ontarians has gone down like an Oceans 11 movie. The tax will probably have a longer life than any of us – sadly, taxes never die; and most of you will by now have received your “bribe cheque”, as many people are calling it. But I am wondering if a bribe today will quell the building anger over the next few months as people see the cost of living in Ontario go up yet again.

Brian Mulroney gave us GST. You may remember that he went from a majority government to holding his caucus meetings in a phone booth because of the hated tax. He never suspected that taxpayers were prepared to respond with such collective retaliation. He underestimated, or possibly misinterpreted just how strongly people felt about the issue even if they didn’t march in the street. It became a life lesson for every politician in Canada that we don’t always say everything we are thinking.

Although Wilmot Township’s taxpayers haven’t marched in the streets in a HST tax revolt (it just isn’t our style), I am convinced that the modest reaction to such a significant increase in taxes does not mean that we believe what we have been told about the tax. In fact, the most common response to questions about the tax is that people don’t believe the government about the personal impact of the HST. They are suspicious and cynical about the cost. They may have been reflecting on the Smart Meter Answer Book which Mr. McGuinty distributed across the province. We were told, as you may remember, that the new system was a way for us all to save money on our electric bill – NOT.  In reality, hydro prices for the same usage were increasing significantly. If you wanted to save money you would have to cook your meals and do your laundry between 9 pm and 7 am – a bit inconvenient for most of us to say the least. The “spin-doctors” where working overtime and what we were “sold” and what we got were very different.

With the G20 ending, some economists suggest that we have entered into a world-wide third depression which they are calling the Long Depression characterized by deflation and continued unemployment. Ontario’s manufacturing sector (our greatest strength) has been destroyed over the last 20 years by NAFTA and globalism in general. The challenges the province faces are of a grand scale and the remedies (if there are any) are multifaceted. Raising taxes seems like the easy way out again. But my conflict with Mr. McGuinty is that  we have been sold the HST with less than half truths; in particular, how higher taxes will increase employment and make all of Ontario more prosperous. If there was any truth to that, I would be the first to suggest doubling taxes. I understand the cynicism among taxpayers because what we are being sold and what we will get I think will be quite different.

Over the next few months the illusions about HST will fade and reality will become evident. If Mr. McGuinty has oversold his “product”  there will be a great deal of anger and possibly voter retaliation to a government which has “ zoomed” us yet again. Sadly, by then it will be too late for taxpayers. Rarely are bad taxes ever repealed even by the succeeding government. If nothing more, we will be reminded of the old adage: “if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is”.

The Story:
The OECD and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization agency published its report on food prices and world hunger prior to a World Summit on Food, June 3-5, in Rome.

Report Findings:
- no relief in the high food prices in the next ten years
- cost of food has doubled in the last 2 years

Causes:
1. Biofuel use of grains
2. Speculators
3. Inflation
4. Drought

Effects: millions of people are being effected drastically – mostly in under developed countries. For example: 60 percent of income is used for food in Bangladesh, 27 percent in China, and just 10 percent in the United States or Germany

Recommended Actions:
1. Urgent and immediate need for humanitarian aid,
2. promote genetically modified seeds,
3. more research on the benefits and problems of biofuels, because the US and Europe are planning large growth in biofuel production.

The world is a very complicated place, because we are all linked together through globalization. I have seen enough of the ill effects of world markets over the last 20 years to come conclusive down on the side of abolishing them. If you are thinking that these ideas are crazy I would challenge you to think outside the box for a moment. The question is why should we let large corporations determine how and what we will and won’t do. Globalization is their idea of giving themselves special priviledge. Goods and services move freely across borders but labor movement is heavily resticted. They move production to a country where they can exploit cheap labour then suite countrires tha try to put up trade barriers to the sale of their goods. They unemploy people and claim it is because they aren’t productive enough. They want the taxes and benefits playing field leveled which really means severe cuts to both. They have set up their own government agencies such as the WTO, and the Federal Reserve, and the World Bank. All of these agencies are being used to subject people and governments to the will of the corporate elite. Why any thinking person would support globalization is really a product of fear and manipulation.

You won’t even hear someone suggest in the mass media that we should reevaluate globalization and NAFA and how other trading groups have negatively affected the people they were promoted as serving. Such thinking would be considered a threat to the control of the multi-national corporations what are close to running the world. The media is the main enablers of their agenda to control and plunder the masses. The Marist expression that religion is the opiate of the people is completely wrong. The mass media is the opiate of the people. It is the single greatest factor in the control of the masses. It guarantees compliance and detracts the masses from demanding governments act in their interest.

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The Stories:

April foreclosures rise 65 percent on year:

Wed May 14, 2008 3:28pm EDT (Reuters) “The total number of U.S. properties with foreclosure activity in April was the highest monthly total we’ve seen since we began issuing the report in January 2005,” James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a statement.

In March, home foreclosure filings had risen 5 percent from February.

The surge in foreclosures indicates an increasing number of homeowners are struggling to make mortgage payments amid the worst U.S. housing market downturn since the Great Depression.

Tame April price rise eases inflation worry

Greed behind food price rises: development bank head

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