Just a heads up on wheat

Valhalla · Profuse Pontificator

Just a heads up on wheat

Duke of Mirth · Profuse Pontificator

Yep, hold on. The ethenol deal is driving all commodities sky high. Of course when adjusted for inflation farmers over the last 20 years or so were getting less than depression level prices for many commodities so they are do to make some decent money for their work. I just got back from a meeting with one my manufacturers and they were warning dealers that they would not allow hording of combines. Production for the whole year was sold out months ago.

Organist · Senior Member

My friend in the church's humanitarian department has told me that the skyrocketing wheat prices are causing problems all over the world, which problems will continue to escalate.

Mahonri · Senior Bucketkeeper

Get ready folks.

Cheese and milk are going up.

A loaf of bread will soon be outrageous.

We bought a bunch of wheat flour before the price went up....If they still haven't changed the price at the Costco next week, we are buying more. We also bought more rice, beans, salt, sugar and spices.

I laugh at Bush. We have passed going into a recession.... right now we are inbetween a recession and a good ol' fashioned depression.

Unemployment just jumped in Phoenix. House prices continue to go down. Foreclosures are at an all time high around here. There is no gas under $3.02 here in Phoenix.

Start tightening your belts folks and get ready for the long haul... this one could last 3-5 years from everything I've seen and even though it's all gone down, I'm dumping my stocks this week and taking the loss. Our market is going to go DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. I'm keep some Euro stocks and some Asian stocks but I'm imagining that our market downturn will cause a downturn in all of the others.

Grateful I have some things stored and some $$ in the bank but I'm wondering if that will still be there sooon.

mirkwood · Senior Bucketkeeper

Rice is jumping in price too. Better store what you can now...it will cost a lot more pretty soon.

arbilad · Head Chef

Inflation is real, but we're in danger of getting hyperinflation soon, IMHO. I've seen hyperinflation when I served my mission in Ukraine, but I was mostly protected from it because I got my support money in dollars instead of the local currency, which went from about 2000 to the dollar at the beginning of my mission to over a million to the dollar towards the end.
But I think that the Fed is about to lose control over inflation. About 7 years ago, I could buy gas for just under a dollar a gallon. Today, I'm doing well to find gas at $2.95. And Colorado, I'm led to understand, is one of the 10 states where gas is cheapest. A barrel of oil hit a high recently of $103.75 a barrel, which is an "inflation adjusted" all time high. The last was $38 per barrel in 1980. So it now takes $2.70 what it took $1 to buy in 1980. It gets better yet. My mom tells me that she found an apartment, in the Los Angeles area, for around $40 per month back in the sixties. Nowadays in Colorado you can only find a low income apartment for $600 a month. While I'm comparing a mid level apartment in a highly populated area to a low leve apartment in a not-so highly populated area, you can see that that you are paying more than fifteen times for an apartment nowadays than you would have in the sixties.
Still, it's not the long term inflation that really shocks me, as bad as it is, it's the short term inflation. $20 wheat that used to be $9 is more than a 100% increase in a short period of time.
Independent truckers are in real trouble, because they can't make money on a load with diesel prices where they are at.

bokbadok · Senior Bucketkeeper

So what are y'all doing to reduce food costs in the face of inflation?

arbilad · Head Chef

There's not much further that we can go, since we tend to cook from scratch anyway. Maybe use less expensive ingredients (for example, less cheese), but wheat, one of the cheapest ingredients, is going way up too.

bokbadok · Senior Bucketkeeper

You don't buy goodies like ice cream and cookies? No chips and salsa? No candy bars?

arbilad · Head Chef

Cookies we make. Ice cream we buy occasionally, but not a lot. Maybe once a month. Salsa we tend to can and buy when our ward is doing wet pack at the church cannery. We rarely eat chips. Candy bars maybe once a month, if that.
I'm not saying that we don't have any stuff like that in our food budget, just that we've cut a lot. And we save where we can. For instance, fruit drink we buy at the cannery, because it's good stuff and very cheap there. Ditto for chocolate pudding, which we eat rarely but we like the stuff from the cannery.

arbilad · Head Chef

Even luxury items like bacon we try to save on. For instance, I can buy a 10 lb box of bacon for $15, and that lasts us for a good long time. It's uneven or badly cut pieces, but hey, I don't mind.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Doesn't Greenspan save us from hyperinflation?

Wow, think of 30s Germany. Spend your paycheck now cuz by Monday, it won't be worth diddely squat!

arbilad · Head Chef

So, before hyperinflation comes, put all your savings into gold (because money in the stock market during hyperinflation is not going to keep its value), wait a while, then pay off your mortgage with inflated money.
Of course, banks would go under in a situation like that, because the mortgages that they hold would basically become worthless. So, hyperinflation is a very dangerous, very serious thing in our modern society. I hope that it doesn't happen.

arbilad · Head Chef

BTW, Greenspan hasn't been the head of the Federal Reserve for a while now. It's now Bernanke.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

I knew that.

arbilad · Head Chef

Well, I can forgive you forgetting that. It's not as if you work in a bank or something and you should know it.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

Yeah, no kidding. See, it's cuz I'm so anti-Fed that I don't know it ON PURPOSE.

I will not be assimilated, I will not be assimilated...

bokbadok · Senior Bucketkeeper

Where's Paul Volcker when we need him?

Volcker's Fed is widely credited with ending the United States' stagflation crisis of the 1970s by limiting the growth of the money supply, abandoning the previous policy of targeting interest rates. Inflation, which peaked at 13.5% in 1981, was successfully lowered to 3.2% by 1983.

arbilad · Head Chef

bokbadok wrote:

Where's Paul Volcker when we need him?

Volcker's Fed is widely credited with ending the United States' stagflation crisis of the 1970s by limiting the growth of the money supply, abandoning the previous policy of targeting interest rates. Inflation, which peaked at 13.5% in 1981, was successfully lowered to 3.2% by 1983.

A founding member of the trilateral commission? Endorsed Barack Obama for President? Helped us get off the gold standard? I don't like the guy.

mirkwood · Senior Bucketkeeper

arbilad wrote:

bokbadok wrote:

Where's Paul Volcker when we need him?

Volcker's Fed is widely credited with ending the United States' stagflation crisis of the 1970s by limiting the growth of the money supply, abandoning the previous policy of targeting interest rates. Inflation, which peaked at 13.5% in 1981, was successfully lowered to 3.2% by 1983.

A founding member of the trilateral commission? Endorsed Barack Obama for President? Helped us get off the gold standard? I don't like the guy.

Cthulu dreams...

We really need an octopus type emoticon.

hiccups · Future Queen in Zion

:E

I've seen that as a Cthulu emoticon a few places...

bokbadok · Senior Bucketkeeper

My point is, do you think Bernanke et al have the guts to stomp on the economy in order to stop inflation? I doubt it.

Cocobeem · Keeper of the Holy Grail

If it's to their evil advantage, yes, they have the guts.

Dyany · Senior Member

Back to wheat... :P

If you are in the Boise area there are some people in my stake who are putting together an order of wheat at a really good price, but you have to come pick it up here in Kuna. PM me if you want ordering details.

Prairie Gold Hard White Wheat
17.66 1-50 lb bag

Bronze Chief Hard Red Spring Wheat
17.16 1-50 lb bag

arbilad · Head Chef

The gift cards issue reminds me of why it's important to get out of debt - debtors have control over you. No sane store would suddenly decide to not honor its gift cards, because you royally annoy a large swath of customers that way. Annoying customers is not a good way to get repeat business. But in this case, Sharper Image has no choice - their large creditors are forcing Sharper Image to honor the large, secured debts first, and not the multitude of small debts. It will hurt the store in the long run, but they have more clout because they are owed more money.
Think about this, too; those to whom the US government is indebted have control over us. If China were to pull its financial support, our nation would be in serious doodoo. The US government will act exactly the same as Sharper Image did when its creditors said jump. They'll just ask "How high?" The individual taxpayer won't matter.