Great insight from someone more eloquent with words than me...
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Posted by Mercyphotography
Today, UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-Moon is heading an international conference, in Switzerland, to
address the global food crisis. The World Food Programme ( WFP) says an
extra 100 million people ( world wide) cannot afford food anymore.
The World Bank President ( Robert Zoellick) is attending, so is
Pascal Lamy from the World Trade Organization. UN Secretary Ban says
that if not handle right away " The food crisis will escalate and pose real threats to economic groth, social progress and even political security "
Most worldwide analysts point at the corn production for ethanol as
one of the key factor in the crisis. Yet, in America the Congress is
likely to vote again in favor of very generous farming subsidies for
the corn agro-industry.
Senator McCain was against it in 2003, but now he is pro-ethanol,
Senator Clinton is in the same boat. It is easy to understand why;
bottom line ( unless you want to commit political suicide) it is very
hard to go against the farming lobby in the US.
I think it is time to cut all farm subsidies for corn growers, they
make enough money as it is. Of course it will never happen in an
election year.
To read about the UN, WFP and World Bank meeting go to: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7370484.stm
Note: I am a French filmmaker/photojournalist based in the US since 1983. To view my main photo/editorial web site go to: http://www.digitalrailroad.net/Mercier
The
Washington Post notes that last year, the “Mortgage Bankers Association
was thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters
building in downtown Washington.” Since then, however, the group “has
fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by
some of its members proved dicey.” The result is that the group is now
finding it “harder than it imagined to
pay its own mortgage“:
Scheduled to close on the building in the coming weeks, the association will have to pay millions of dollars more than it would have a year ago when it contracted to buy the 160,000-square-foot structure — millions of dollars it is now less able to afford. […]
Critics also see irony — and some justice — in this predicament. “They are certainly getting what they deserve,”
said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research, a liberal research group. “Mortgage bankers encouraged people
to take out mortgages that were very risky, and the result of that was
a large number of the mortgages went bad and caused mortgage interest
rates to soar. Now they are the victims of high mortgage rates and
chaos in the market more generally.”