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Across Egypt this year, people have waited in line for hours at bakeries that sell government-subsidized bread, sign of a growing crisis over the primary foodstuff in the Arab world's most populous country. President Hosni Mubarak has ordered Egypt's army to bake bread for the public, following the deaths of at least six people since March 17 -- some succumbing to exhaustion during the long waits, others stabbed in vicious struggles for places in line.

Economists and analysts say the crisis exposes the government's inability to fulfill the decades-old pact between ruler and ruled here: As long as the country's authoritarian system has supplied cheap bread, its people have put up with the squelching of political rights and economic opportunity. For Egypt's more than 30 million poor, subsidized bread means survival.

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Inflation, income inequality and equity

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BANGLADESH experienced low to moderate inflation over the last one decade, except for the year 1997-98 when the consumer price index climbed to 9%. The index hovered around 7% or below till 2005-2006. The rise in food prices averaged at 6% per year during 1996-97 to 2005-06. But in 2007-08, we are confronted with a high-price level that promises to stick around for an unforeseeable future, given the scarcity in food supply and Bangladesh's vulnerability to weather.

In the last several months, the prices of rice, flour, edible oil, sugar, milk all registered an increase of 50% or more. . .

The competitive edge of Bangladesh garments due to low wage structure will face turbulence. We may here quote what the guru of macroeconomics John Maynard Keynes once wrote: "The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but also at the confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. To those whom the system brings windfalls beyond their expectations or desires, become 'profiteers' who are the objects of the hatred of bourgeoisie whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than by proletariat."

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Hunger is a sharp thorn

[ 19 April 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

The rise in global food prices has sparked a number of protests in recent weeks, highlighting the worsening epidemic of global hunger. The World Bank estimates world food prices have risen 80 percent over the last three years and that at least thirty-three countries face social unrest as a result. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has warned the growing global food crisis has reached emergency proportions.

In recent weeks, food riots have also erupted in Haiti, Niger, Senegal, Cameroon and Burkina Faso. Protests have also flared in Morocco, Mauritania, Ivory Coast, Egypt, Mexico and Yemen. In most of West Africa, the price of food has risen by 50 percent -- in Sierra Leone, 300 percent. (...)

Raj Patel is a writer, activist and former policy analyst with Food First, which is based in the Bay Area. He has worked for the World Bank, World Trade Organization, the United Nations, and he's also protested them on four continents. He has just come out with a new book called Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. He recently joined me in San Francisco to talk about the book and the food-price crisis.

Raj Patel: There are two kinds of stories that we can tell about the food prices. One is an economic story, and that's a story about a perfect storm of poor harvests and a demand for meat in developing countries, which is diverting grain, and the high price of oil, which is driving up food -- farm inputs, and at the same time, the biofuels boom, the process of growing fuels in order -- sorry, growing food in order to burn it rather than eat it. All of these are economic factors that are driving up the price of food.

But at the same time, there's a political story here, and it's a longer-term political story about how countries have been forced to abandon their support for farmers and to abandon things like grain supplies and grain stores. And this is a longer-term story, and it involves organizations like the World Bank and the World Trade Organization that have a fairly iron control over the economies of most of the poorest countries in the world. And what the World Bank and what the WTO and, to some extent, the International Monetary Fund have done is force these countries to tie their hands behind their back, effectively, and to bind them very firmly to an international economy in food. And the consequence of that is that when the price of food goes up, these economies have very little recourse and very little possibility of defending themselves economically. (...)

The control of world markets and wealth by banks and funds or the pigmen as they are commonly described is being extended by government enablers.

In the US, hyperinflation will lead to a devalued currency- hence losses to the bankers -but forcing asset dimunition or devaluation onto the government balance sheet will obligate the Treasury into accepting liability and provide a taxpayer financed direct subsidy of the banks' debt.

Inflating US currency levels and devaluing it will force the individual owner of American dollars to accept losses while simultaniously wiping out the trade deficit. Basically a transfer of wealth from individual Americans to foreign holders of American debt.

This may trigger a collapse in the bond market,leading to sky-high interest rates which will basically give the banks not only any cash left but also possession of the collateral assets (houses etc).

This is the scenario that the pigmen want to engineer - a revisit to the depression where the pigmen own the assets.

The adoption of Bill HR 5649 IH - Home Owner's Loan Corporation by the US Congress will facilitate this era whereby the homeowner will become the new sharecropping sheep - an era that will only end when the sheep have nothing left to shear or die.

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Major retailers in New York, in areas of New England, and on the West Coast are limiting purchases of flour, rice, and cooking oil as demand outstrips supply. There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

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There are also anecdotal reports that some consumers are hoarding grain stocks.

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Uh... why report anecdotal reports ?

Housing costs play role in urban hunger - 2005