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Wheat Prices Surge to Record High
Wheat prices crossing the $10 a bushel threshold won't immediately translate into a spike in retail prices for bread, cereal, cookies and other products, experts say. That due partly because companies like Kellogg Co., General Mills Inc., ConAgra Foods Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc. typically protect themselves from price volatility with long-term supply contracts. But analysts say consumers should expect that higher wheat prices will eventually work their way into the grocery aisle.
Pasta hoardin' time is here. It is probably the best hedge in the known universe. If wheat prices come back down, no harm done. If wheat prices don't come back down, you locked in cheaper pasta prices early. Win win! (If you can call any part of food inflation a win that is.)
This is a service for my readers. Don't tell your friends and family. If everyone started to hoard food just because I mentioned it might be a good idea, then the black helicopters might appear over my house and that would be the last you ever saw of me.
I also don't want you to do jail time like Martha Stewart just because I tossed you a food hoarding tip. I don't really think this is inside information though. Wheat prices are public information.
The video is an April Fool's Day prank the BBC pulled on the public in 1957. Unfortunately, the video quality isn't all that great (and worse, today's spaghetti prank seems to be the real thing).
There's sarcasm here in places, but perhaps not nearly as much as you might expect.
Real Estate Newsletter Articles this Week: Existing-Home Sales Increased to
4.15 million SAAR in November
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At the Calculated Risk Real Estate Newsletter this week:
[image: Existing Home Sales]*Click on graph for larger image.*
• NAR: Existing-Home Sales Increase...
12 hours ago
2 comments:
We can largely thank the politicians and the alternative-energy cultists (not that everyone interested in alternative energy is to blame - I mean people who are anti-oil and so don't balance cost/benefits) for this. Corn turns into very, very expensive ethanol, wheat replaces corn as a primary food in many uses, and the cost of wheat rises dramatically.
Add in the boosts from oil costs (farm equipment use, fertilizers, transport to market) and the general inflation due to Fed and other central banks dumping money to try to support economic structures in the face of the housing bubble burst, and you've got a recipe for terrific hurting on wheat prices.
Frank,
A recipe for terrific hurting on wheat prices will probably translate into a recipe for terrific hurting on restaurant profits.
I think my next post will show one such eating establishment.
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