the sky is not falling

[Marlowe]

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10564141

i'm not sure which is worse -- that the news media are portraying the world as coming apart at the seams, or that so many of you guys seem to believe it.

here's a good article from this week's economist to put things in perspective. we're living in a golden age, and never in history have so many made such great strides from extreme poverty to relative prosperity.

take a deep breath -- everything's gonna be alright.

[Homsar]

One thing I learned from that article: Russia has fewer than 135 million residents. I knew it was declining, but that's a lot less than I thought.

[euro60]

take a deep breath -- everything's gonna be alright.
I couldn't agree more... shame on the politicians for playing the fear card (on both sides of the isle)

[markalot]

Keep the panic going until those rebate checks are in the mail.

Any excuse to get my money back.

[jneale]

i went to a seminar-ish sponsored by our insurance broker, the speaker was a senior vp investments @ Huntington - that was pretty much his theme too - turn the TV off, the economy is in for some volatility over the next two years, but nothing that will result in the end of days.

[Shlep]

I couldn't agree more... shame on the politicians for playing the fear card (on both sides of the isle)

Don't you mean "aisle"? Or are you referring to Britain, and I think you must be talking about COngress 'cuz I'm a typical Yank who think the world revolves around the US? :D

PJ O'Rourke wrote a similar piece as an intro to (if I recall correctly) his book All The Trouble In The World. To whit: everything is getting better, people or getting wealthier, living longer, and enjoying more comfort and health than even before. Living conditions (and infant mortality, life expectancy, and various other things) in many of the worlds' aid sops today are better than they were in the US and other parts of the "inudstrialized world" 100 years or so ago. And yet people seem to want to believe the world is coming to an end.

And yeah, it is a bit ironic that politicians seem to be among the biggest alarmists about how things are in the world...or that so many insist that it's up to politicians to fix it. Bad politics tends to be at the root of much of the truly dire, depressing, and awful stuff going on in the world.

[DaHood]

http://www.georgehernandez.com/h/aaBlog/2005/media/09-06_Gilligan.jpg

[Duemellon]

Marl,

Sometimes you seem besieged by fictional forces out there. Who's giving this "doom & gloomness" so I may also have some 2¢ to put in.

BTW, all the talk about the poorest of the poor being richer, that means they have a greater % of the total active wealth. That percent comes from somewhere. The US has historically had a huge chunck of the total active wealth, but they're losing it with the globalization & industrialization of other countries. Doom? More like "balancing". If we keep having an isolationist view the change to our standard of living will be a traumatic event, but if we help it along it's way, it'll be a smooth & helpful transition.

I don't see how that's "doom & gloomy", it's just a "what if..." thing.

[bestlaidplans]

Of course it's not falling, it's just burning up. http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8186/emottb1.gif

Seriously though the only way the sky would fall is if the sun some how cooled way off, then our atmosphere would snow down upon us. http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/4241/emotdanceeh9.gif

[classicgrrl]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080130/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/haiti_eating_dirt

Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt
By JONATHAN M. KATZ, Associated Press Writer

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau.

The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares a two-room house with her baby, five siblings and two unemployed parents, cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable shortening have become a regular meal.

"When my mother does not cook anything, I have to eat them three times a day," Charlene said. Her baby, named Woodson, lay still across her lap, looking even thinner than the slim 6 pounds 3 ounces he weighed at birth.

Though she likes their buttery, salty taste, Charlene said the cookies also give her stomach pains. "When I nurse, the baby sometimes seems colicky too," she said.

Food prices around the world have spiked because of higher oil prices, needed for fertilizer, irrigation and transportation. Prices for basic ingredients such as corn and wheat are also up sharply, and the increasing global demand for biofuels is pressuring food markets as well.

The problem is particularly dire in the Caribbean, where island nations depend on imports and food prices are up 40 percent in places.

The global price hikes, together with floods and crop damage from the 2007 hurricane season, prompted the U.N. Food and Agriculture Agency to declare states of emergency in Haiti and several other Caribbean countries. Caribbean leaders held an emergency summit in December to discuss cutting food taxes and creating large regional farms to reduce dependence on imports.

At the market in the La Saline slum, two cups of rice now sell for 60 cents, up 10 cents from December and 50 percent from a year ago. Beans, condensed milk and fruit have gone up at a similar rate, and even the price of the edible clay has risen over the past year by almost $1.50. Dirt to make 100 cookies now costs $5, the cookie makers say.

Still, at about 5 cents apiece, the cookies are a bargain compared to food staples. About 80 percent of people in Haiti live on less than $2 a day and a tiny elite controls the economy.

Merchants truck the dirt from the central town of Hinche to the La Saline market, a maze of tables of vegetables and meat swarming with flies. Women buy the dirt, then process it into mud cookies in places such as Fort Dimanche, a nearby shanty town.

Carrying buckets of dirt and water up ladders to the roof of the former prison for which the slum is named, they strain out rocks and clumps on a sheet, and stir in shortening and salt. Then they pat the mixture into mud cookies and leave them to dry under the scorching sun.

The finished cookies are carried in buckets to markets or sold on the streets.

A reporter sampling a cookie found that it had a smooth consistency and sucked all the moisture out of the mouth as soon as it touched the tongue. For hours, an unpleasant taste of dirt lingered.

Assessments of the health effects are mixed. Dirt can contain deadly parasites or toxins, but can also strengthen the immunity of fetuses in the womb to certain diseases, said Gerald N. Callahan, an immunology professor at Colorado State University who has studied geophagy, the scientific name for dirt-eating.

Haitian doctors say depending on the cookies for sustenance risks malnutrition.

"Trust me, if I see someone eating those cookies, I will discourage it," said Dr. Gabriel Thimothee, executive director of Haiti's health ministry.

Marie Noel, 40, sells the cookies in a market to provide for her seven children. Her family also eats them.

"I'm hoping one day I'll have enough food to eat, so I can stop eating these," she said. "I know it's not good for me."

[Marlowe]

haiti continues to have some of the most incompetent leaders in the world, so for sure much of the blame goes to their failure to stabilize their system and liberalize their economy.

another big factor to blame for rising food-costs is the good old US of A. we have the ruinous policy of massively subsidizing ethanol, which doesn't help the environment at all and has the impact of raising prices for corn and for other basic grains.

[The Sheck]

another big factor to blame for rising food-costs is the good old US of A. we have the ruinous policy of massively subsidizing ethanol, which doesn't help the environment at all and has the impact of raising prices for corn and for other basic grains.

Total agreement with you here. It also costs more to make one gallon of ethanol than one gallon of gas. Why this is being pushed on Americans as a 'viable' energy source is beyond me.

[mongoose]

It might just be my own personal paranoia but I still think the sky is falling. I think 50 years from now things will be in a sad state.

[george]

haiti continues to have some of the most incompetent leaders in the world, so for sure much of the blame goes to their failure to stabilize their system and liberalize their economy.

another big factor to blame for rising food-costs is the good old US of A. we have the ruinous policy of massively subsidizing ethanol, which doesn't help the environment at all and has the impact of raising prices for corn and for other basic grains.

Can't deny the substantial effect of ethanol, but running years of ruinous drought in Australia and the effect of rising income levels across Asia (wealth brings changes in diet, most notably, eating more meat, which requires much more grain than eating bread or other foods) have contributed just as much.

Hello agflation.

[laurenmarie]

It might just be my own personal paranoia but I still think the sky is falling. I think 50 years from now things will be in a sad state.

http://joelogon.com/images_temp/pearlsendofworldbox.gif

Posted outside of my cube at work.

[Orville Wrong]

haiti continues to have some of the most incompetent leaders in the world, so for sure much of the blame goes to their failure to stabilize their system and liberalize their economy.
Once upon a time on a single Caribbean Island:

Haiti's GDP 2007: $6.1 billion

Annual Economic Impact of Major League Baseball on Dominican Republic: $76 million.

Summary of Economic Impact by Category

1. Signing Bonuses $ 13,812,875
2. Operation of Academies $ 14,725,000
3. Dominican Summer League $ 2,822,500
4. Travel to the DR $ 360,000
5. Reinvestment of DR Big Leaguers $ 41,842,180
6. Reinvestment of DR Minor Leaguers $ 2,188,750
7. Donations and Government Support $ 250,000
Total US$ 76,001,305

Dominican baseball alone is more than 10% of Haiti's entire GDP. Yep. The sky is falling.

[tempo]

Total agreement with you here. It also costs more to make one gallon of ethanol than one gallon of gas. Why this is being pushed on Americans as a 'viable' energy source is beyond me.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

From what I've read, the manufacture of a gallon ethanol still consumes more energy than than it supplies when burned. It's craziness. I'm aware of the arguments in favor of farm subsidies, but really, they can't offset the craziness. Where are the free-market-worshipping conservative politicians on this issue?? Talk about runaway entitlement programs... sheesh.

And don't get me started on the "hydrogen economy"...

[Marlowe]

Where are the free-market-worshipping conservative politicians on this issue??
you're right on that. people who are true free marketers (like me) abhore this, but a lot of 'generally' free market types let this one go for two reasons. first and foremost, iowa is the first caucus state in presidential elections, and anyone who remotely wants to be president one day (aka, 100% of washington) is deathly afraid to kill ethanol subsidies because they will be dealt a 'death blow' by the lazy welfare class in iowa known as farmers and agri-business.

the second reason generally-free-market types let ethanol go is that there is a large contingent of "national security conservatives" who want us to become more energy independent so we can unwind from our involvement in the middle east.

both are understandable reasons from a political standpoint, but both are dead-wrong. ethanol is a complete joke.