Posted on 10/09/2012 7:03:04 AM PDT by blam
A Year’s Supply Of Rice
By Addison Wiggin
October 8, 2012
“Better buy now,” advised the rice merchant in Tehran.
The retired factory guard took him up on the advice, buying 900 pounds of the stuff to feed his extended family for the next 12 months.
“As I was gathering my money,” the retiree told The New York Times, he got a phone call. “When he hung up, he told me prices had just gone up by 10%. Of course, I paid. God knows how much it will cost tomorrow.”
Iran’s currency, the rial, collapsed 40% last week under the pressure of Western sanctions and homegrown blundering. We’re not sure if Iran is in hyperinflation, as Cato Institute researcher Steve Hanke asserted in Friday’s 5 Min. Forecast, but at the very least they’re on the cusp.
Austrian economists describe three stages of inflation. In the first stage, people still hang onto their money, expecting prices to come down. In the second stage, people part with their money to stock up on goods before prices rise again. In the final hyperinflationary stage, people buy anything they can get their hands on — even if they don’t need it — because the goods are more valuable than the currency.
As we said on Thursday, Iran today is looking more and more like Iran during the 1978-79 revolution. Now there’s corroboration from someone who lived through those days.
“The new government wanted to prevent flight capital from leaving the country,” recalls Chicago-based derivatives specialist Janet Tavakoli, who married an Iranian while in college.
“In the panic to leave the country with some of their wealth,” she wrote in her 1998 book Credit Derivatives, “citizens found that although there was an official exchange rate of 7 tomans (10 rials) to the U.S. dollar, there was no means to convert money. Banks were closed much of the time. The government put a further restriction on conversion of currency. Citizens could take only $1,000 in U.S. currency out of the country and could take only a suitcase of clothing. The idea was to prevent citizens from taking valuable carpets, now labeled national protected works of art, out of the country.”
“Before a currency goes into free fall,” she writes now at Huffington Post, “its value can be chipped away while a distracted population fails to notice that the currency buys cheaper-quality clothing and less food in a package at a grocery store… That’s the current situation with the U.S. dollar.”
Iran, she says, is far beyond that stage. Where it leads this time, we have no idea… but it’s nowhere good.
Huh? What was that? I was watching the game...
( /no sarc)
Ping.
/johnny
BTW I was perusing some photos my Daughter had taken when we got her her first camera. These were taken Circa 2002.
One is a picture in my Mom's kitchen and just shows the kitchen counter. (She was 7 at the time so she liked to take pictures of anything and everything...)
On the counter was a bag of Lays Potato Chips and it said something like New 1 lb. Family size and a price tag of $1.59.
Yesterday I was at the store and saw about the same size bag (Family Size) yet it held like 11.5 oz. and cost almost 4 bucks.
But there is no inflation... nosiree not a bit.
Pinging Kart!
“Better buy now,” advised the rice merchant in Tehran.
The retired factory guard took him up on the advice, buying 900 pounds of the stuff to feed his extended family for the next 12 months.
“As I was gathering my money,” the retiree told The New York Times, he got a phone call. “When he hung up, he told me prices had just gone up by 10%. Of course, I paid. God knows how much it will cost tomorrow.”
So if you are a “Prepper” in Iran you are rational and sane... Well according to the Huffington Post...
“Before a currency goes into free fall,” she writes now at Huffington Post, “its value can be chipped away while a distracted population fails to notice that the currency buys cheaper-quality clothing and less food in a package at a grocery store… That’s the current situation with the U.S. dollar.”
That is what I got from it.
It continues to amaze me Romney and the GOP are not making inflation an issue. We know the price of gasoline has doubled in four years.
Attached is a link to a website that provides the price of a number of commonly purchased items showing prices from 2008 to today. The “real world basket” of goods has increased 45% in 4 years.
http://www.thepeoplehistory.com/pricebasket.html
The only reason I can think of the GOP is not making an issue of the high rate of inflation for food, gasoline, and health care is they expect their economic policies to continue or accelerate the trend if Romney is elected. By his failure to fight spending during the past two years, House Speaker Boehner has certainly demonstrated he and his Republican majority are not too concerned about runaway spending. The Constitution gives the House the ability to shut off spending any time it wants. Senate Minority Leader McConnell has also acquiesced to the spending spree.
Could it be they know if they stop Bernanke from running the printing presses the government will not be able to finance the debt and interest rates will skyrocket? The elites of both parties, and Wall Street, may have decided it is better to keep inflating by printing money to buy up the debt than really get serious about cutting spending. It troubles me greatly Romney isn’t talking to the American people about the inflation tax given that it is a winning issue.
Barter will come next.
You can still get simular deals if you are sale saavy and coupon saavy at the same time. I remeber when the grocery store had a sale 10 for 10 on campbell’s soup and had a coupon that was 50 cents off a can of the same soup, limit 10. so I got a lot of soup for somewhat cheap.
But it will get harder and hard to do this...
I'm thinking that is because of the drought.(?)
[Could it be they know if they stop Bernanke from running the printing presses the government will not be able to finance the debt and interest rates will skyrocket? The elites of both parties, and Wall Street, may have decided it is better to keep inflating by printing money to buy up the debt than really get serious about cutting spending. It troubles me greatly Romney isn’t talking to the American people about the inflation tax given that it is a winning issue.]
The longer the pain is put off the more it will hurt later. Sadly the state of politics today feeds the habit of kicking the can down the road.
The U.S. Social Security Administration says the cost of living has gone up this year 01.8%. Anybody here believe that? S.S. recipients may expect a raise of 01.4%.
The sanctions are beginning to bite. The question is - will it be enough to turn the mad mullahs away from enriching plutonium?
Yeah understood. But what I was pointing out was the "Family Size" in 2002 was a 1 lb. bag. Now it seems its a 11.5 oz. bag. and over double the price.
I've seen the same with canned goods. More water in the can of green beans with less of the vegetable, yet charge more for less.
I've seen plastic peanut butter Containers suddenly acquire a conical shaped column in the bottom of the jar. Thus making the jar look the same size but have a good deal less product in the container yet they usually cost more.
Price rises are being hidden from consumers with packaging changes and "fake sales" tactics. (Buy 3 get one free but it still cost you more than the previous month's price for the same product.)
Still have a WIN (Whip Inflation Now) Button. The ramification from an admission of the error of lower inflation is enormous. Think of the COLA for any government program. Bernanke knows that if he quits pushing buttons a rise of just 2 point in the interest rate would mean game over for the US. But then maybe that’s the ultimate end game.
Prepare accordingly.
I am told by my BIL (he works at a meat delivery service) that pork prices are going to soar because of a perfect storm of drought, dollar inflation and rising feed prices due to idiotic subsidies for bio fuels from crops.
Seems strange the MSM hasn't noticed the food inflation - guess we'll have to wait until Romney's President before they'll open their eyes again...
Not BACON!!!???? Ahhhhhhh.
A year ago I bought 70 lbs of ground chuck at $1.99 a lb.
In the past year it has gone up to $2.88 a lb. It would cost over 200 dollars to buy what I paid just over 139 dollars for last October.
At least in Iran, the use of cash and barter will slow down the wipe-out of shelves and warehouses.
/johnny
/johnny
Exactly.
Iran’s currency, the rial, collapsed 40% last week under the pressure of Western sanctions and homegrown blundering.It's an article about today's version of the Weimar non-republic.
Preppers’ PING!!
Yep, and because they didn't utter a peep while The “real world basket” of goods has increased 45% in 4 years, they are certain the democrats will give them a pass for the next four years of 20% inflation.
Repeating the same stupid appeasing actions and hoping for a better treatment from evil people is the definition of what again?
There aren't any homeless either.
Expect that to change at noon on January 20th...
“Repeating the same stupid appeasing actions and hoping for a better treatment from evil people is the definition of what again?”
Capitulation?
That works. ‘Insanity’ would work. ‘Stockholm syndrome’ would work. ‘Beaten wife syndrome’ would work...
This does point out the limited value of sanctions.
The people who are hurt the most are not the power elite making the decisions. - it is the man in the street, the family trying to make ends meet and feed their family, the small businessman.
I know the argument - they should throw off their incompetent leadership and end the conditions that brought about the sanctions.
But that is easier said than done.
We have had an absolute disasterous president for four years and nothing has been done to change the situation. And now that we have a chance to change direction it still looks like he has a good chance of staying in office.
And the difficulty of making a change in a place like Iran is much higher than in a place like the US.
At least here the government has only killed citizens in small groups (so far) - not by the hundreds and thousands like Syria and Iran.
$17 for 50 lbs rice from Costco. Enough for all the calories an adult male needs for over one month. (Incomplete nutrition, but at least a cheap minimum energy.)
This is 2007, on Ahmadinejad’s whim and not even the Green Revolution:
JULY 2007 : (IRAN : MASS EXECUTIONS OF “ANTI-ISLAM HOOLIGANS” FOR 6 WEEKS RUNNING; AT LEAST 150 MORE SCHEDULED TO DIE IN COMING WEEKS...) Iran has just carried out the largest wave of executions since 1984.
It is early dawn as seven young men are led to the gallows amid shouts of “Allah Akbar” (Allah is the greatest) from a crowd of bearded men as a handful of women, all in hijab, ululate to a high pitch. A few minutes later, the seven are hanged as a mullah shouts: “Alhamd li-Allah” (Praise be to Allah).
The scene was Wednesday in Mashad, Iran’s second most populous city, where a crackdown against “anti-Islam hooligans” has been under way for weeks.
The Mashad hangings, broadcast live on local television, are among a series of public executions ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month [JULY 2007] as part of a campaign to terrorize an increasingly restive population. Over the past six weeks, at least 118 people have been executed, including four who were stoned to death. According to Saeed Mortazavi, the chief Islamic prosecutor, at least 150 more people, including five women, are scheduled to be hanged or stoned to death in the coming weeks.(Excerpt) Read more at opinionjournal.com ...-————Domestic Terror in Iran
OpinionJournal.com ^ | August 6, 2007 | AMIR TAHERIhttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1876899/posts
410 posted on 08/06/2007 2:28:30 AM PDT by Cindy
I don’t know where those prices came from but the prices here are much higher.
World basket prices:
potatoes 42c lb.
bread went up 20c since 2008
pizza today is $3.33
My prices:
potatoes this week’s ad 60c lb.
bread doubled in four years
cheap nasty never buying again store brand pizza bought last week was around $5
My property taxes have gone up 50% since 2008.
27 five gal. buckets in Mylar pouches.
The small cans of tuna used to be 7.5 oz. Today they’re 5 oz. Be careful with them when storing them because the cans are very thin. Very thin metal. It’s so thin, you can’t use the lid to squeeze the liquid off the meat because it’ll bend on you. A couple years ago, store brand tuna was 45c but now it’s 79c for a smaller can.
Toilet paper, same thing. “Double rolls” are a joke. They’re small than what regular rolls used to be. I made my bathroom shelves to fit two stacked rolls but now there’s a 3/4ths in gap so they’re not only shorter in length but narrower. I’ve noticed the last two packages are so narrow that I have to carefully fold the paper so that it’s wider when using. Probaby too much information but we shouldn’t have to go to all that trouble for tp.
And don’t even get me started on the price of ground beef. I broke down this weekend and bought 10 lbs of the cheap stuff. I hadn’t bought ground meat in a year because it’s gone up double what it was.
This will probably sound like sacrilege to the preppers here, but I’m crossing rice off my list of “good emergency storage foods” and replacing it with other grains. Wheat flour, barley, pasta, cornmeal, etc.
Why? Because if I eat rice, I can’t tell that I’ve eaten anything.
Maybe it’s just me, I know I have kind of a weird digestive tract, I even have lab tests proving it. But, if I try to make rice the main carb in a meal, it won’t matter how much I eat of it, I’ll still feel like I haven’t had a single bite. What’s more, I found out my body can’t get energy from it for some reason. Probably missing that enzyme, I know I’m missing others. But, when I was on a special diet for a week to test for food intolerances, my choices were limited to rice, unseasoned meat, and a specific list of fruits and vegetables. Not only was I famished that whole week, I also felt like I’d been hit by a truck, and had so little stamina that just crossing a room wore me out.
On the other hand, if I eat different grains, I feel full. Cream of barley soup is one of my favorites.
So, I’m not saying this should apply to everybody, but if there’s anyone else who has noticed they get this effect with rice, it might be prudent to look to other grains instead.
I’m also stocking up on seeds for the grains I enjoy the most. I’ve got wheat, barley, spelt, hulless oats, amaranth, sorghum, and quinoa in my stash so far, along with a few varieties of corn.
I believe that Cost of Living has gone up more than that, and people on SS haven’t gotten a raise in TWO years, but our bloody Congress critters sure as Hades did.
If the morons in the Fed want the U.S. Dollar to be any good in the future, they’d stop buying bonds and start selling them, drawing all those extra paper dollars and bank account zeroes OUT of the economy.
But they won’t do that, will they?
For this economy to really get going, interest rates must “necessarily skyrocket.” Why would any bank want to lend money when most interest rates, to say nothing of the Fed rates, are WELL BELOW the actual rate of inflation.
For banks to want to lend, first they must have some assurance that what they get back is actually WORTH MORE than what they lend out.
As inflation has taken its toll over the decades, the quality of our food has deteriorated. In order to keep prices competitive, companies are adding more and more cheap crap to our food. It could be part of the explanation as to why more and more people are becoming obese.
Why would any sane person buy top quality roast beef at the deli when it costs $9.99 a pound?
When was the last time you saw heart wrenching stories of middle class people losing their jobs, homes, medical coverage etc.? About 4 years ago?
I'm sure a lot of young families would love a "fixed" income like SS instead of constant threats of losing jobs, or hours, or benefits, etc...
Bernanke thinks they can manage the economy and prevent the bad things from happening.
Romney probably isn’t making inflation an issue because its hard for many people to understand when interest rates for long term mortgages are 3.5%. He has used the price of gasoline which is one of the indicators though.
First of all they eat real rice and not the crap most Americans think is rice.
Huge difference in taste and nutrients. Rice is easy to grow, store, and cook.
I was being a bit snarky...
personally, I’ll stick to egg noodles, black beans, oatmeal, stuff like that stored in bulk.
I tend to think the popularity of rice has to do more with how many people worldwide live in coastal zones that make rice agriculture easy.
Doesn’t something like 35% of the worlds population live with 100 miles of the ocean? Maybe not that much, but it’s still a huge number.
I figured you were but others aren’t. For storage rice is an ideal item. Its extremely compact, easy to store and cheap. A years worth of rice also takes up significantly less space then a years worth of potatoes. I also have the beans, oatmeal and such but not as much.
-——It continues to amaze me Romney and the GOP are not making inflation an issue.——
The inflation will continue and cannot be stopped until the debt is repaid. That will not happen in the next four years. As a matter of fact, payback for being set up by Bush may be Obama’s revenge.
Shelled pecans here in 'pecan country' are $8.00 a pound.
I can pick up 50 pounds of pecans (in under one hour) from 'volunteer' trees growing on the sides of the roads here.
My biggest producing pecan tree dried from a lightening strike this year.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.