Mostly Monday Reads: The Clusterfuck Express

“Sometimes, science isn’t all that great. No need to create DINOs in the lab.” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

If ever a case could be made that the politicians sent to the District to represent the people couldn’t be more out of touch, this year’s case would take top prize.  As someone who has taught and studied fiscal and monetary policy for decades, I’ve never had such a tough time explaining how opposite everything is right now. I imagine those who research and breathe military and foreign policy will say the same thing. The people’s priorities are dead last.

And it shows in the headlines. I’m going to start with a few examples of how badly consumers (e.g., voters) are being treated these days. It’s no wonder there’s a scramble to rig and suppress votes by this administration. This is a sad story to bring up as we face the new school term and Thanksgiving. It comes from MTN. “They don’t understand the scale of the hunger!” – An unfolding crisis at the nation’s food banks. Weeks before the midterm elections, the cost crisis is hammering food pantries in red and blue states”.  No one can do well at school, work, or life with an empty, aching stomach. Scott McFarlane has the story.

On the shelves inside the giant food bank warehouse in Rockville, Maryland, you see a giant stack of flour packets. The sign next to the stack says “1 each” for those packing up food boxes for families.

A shorter stack of canned “mixed fruit” is next to the flour. An even shorter stack of canned tuna is the next to the fruit.

But it’s the empty shelves above that tell the story.

The demand for donated food is unprecedented at the Manna Food Center.

In fairness, this is a challenging moment for food banks and pantries across the country, including in this diverse suburb 20 miles north of Washington, D.C.

Food banks have two fundamental, destabilizing problems that are getting worse:

1. The food is getting more expensive
2. The diesel to deliver the food is getting more expensive

With just a few weeks remaining until a highly-anticipated midterm election, the cost crisis is worse than some elected leaders – including President Trump – are acknowledging.

A week of interviews and food pantry visits by Scott MacFarlane Reportsreveals the depths of the problem. Some of the reality is masked by Trump’s claims that the economy is the greatest in history, in the “hottest country in the world.”

A newly-released study called the “Hunger Report”, produced by a Washington, D.C.-based food bank group had an alarming diagnosis: “The state of food security more broadly is deteriorating.”

Some of the findings are just gutting.

The survey found broad swaths of people who acknowledge they:

• Cut the sizes of their children’s meals, due to the cost of the food
• Have children who didn’t eat for an entire day
• Skipped meals, to save money

It certainly is the fault of the farmers and ranchers of this country. They are hard hit too. So hard hit, the Iowa is quite close to turning Blue as is Nebraska.  This is an article from last May, also known as planting and baby animal season that sums up what the agriculture sector is facing. It’s from an economic stie called MarketPlace.  Caitlin Tan has the analysis if the situation.  “Many farmers, ranchers stare down an economic crisis. Across the U.S., farmers and ranchers are struggling to weather a growing season plagued by drought, high prices, and a trade war.”  Sounds like what you used to read in history about the Great Depression doesn’t it?

American farmers and ranchers are staring down a lot of financial pressure: fuel and fertilizer prices, the war in Iran, tariffs, drought, and more.

In the West, it’s that time when ranchers move their cattle to public grazing lands, so the cattle can eat. But the summer pasture that normally feeds cattle through the fall isn’t very green and lush this year.

“The big word is drought,” said Jim Magagna, executive vice president of the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association.

That means ranchers are looking to buy hay, Magagna said. Extra hay can cost $30,000 on the low end, and hundreds of thousands on the high end.

Ranchers’ other option, he said, is to sell off some of their livestock. Selling could pad ranchers pockets right now, and Magagna advised ranchers to hold onto that cash.

“It may sorely be needed in 2027, 2028 and beyond,” he said, because financial woes are growing for those who live off the land.

“So many farmers are reporting, you know, that they’re kind of on the brink of a crisis situation,” said Aaron Lehman. A fifth-generation farmer, he grows corn, soybeans, and oats, and is president of the Iowa Farmers Union.

Lehman said his costs are soaring, and so are his neighbors’, for labor, health insurance, fuel, and fertilizer.

“For a medium sized farm like mine, they had an increase in costs of about $20,000,” he said.

Last December, the White House announced a $12 billion aid package for farmers. And recently, the White House said China will purchase billions of agricultural products from U.S. farms.

But Lehman is not encouraged by that development.

“Farmers don’t know exactly what to think. They hear some vague news and vague promises and then there’s nothing concrete about it,” he said.

That instability shows up at the bank. Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union, said lenders are backing off.

It’s from that point in the spring to this headline today at CNN. “‘Is it really worth it to keep going on?’ Economic pain hits America’s farm belt.”  This does not meet our expectations for a functional market where the supply and demand should equal in the texbook sense. Obviously both producers and consumers are experiencing some pretty drastic factors.  All of these factors are from bad policy by the White House. It doesn’t take an economist to figure any of this out. Chris Isidore and Tami Luhby share the lede.

Notice this first farmer has had his farm in the family that made it through the Great Depression and quite a few other kinds of Panics which is what they called some of action in the past.

John Yeley has spent the last 26 years working on his farm, which his family has owned since 1852.

Yeley is the seventh generation to run his farm in Illinois, just over the state line from Indiana. Although he plans to keep doing so, he’s not sure he wants his 16-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to take over because the current economics are so rough.

“Right now, the way all of this is now, no, I wouldn’t wish it on them,” he said about farming.

Farmers like Yeley as well as agriculture experts agree that the farming sector is in a painful recession. Farms are dealing with record-high diesel prices, a fuel that is critical to their equipment. Trade disputes have cut off access to vital markets. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have sent fertilizer costs soaring, just as farmers pay higher interest rates on the loans needed to get from planting to harvest season.

Yeley is not sure he’ll earn a profit this season, even with prices up for for his corn and soybeans.

“We’re not a big county, but we’ve had three farmers go under this year,” said Yeley. “I know that’s on the minds of everybody, is it really worth it to keep going on? The stress level is pretty high.”

Currently, the price of diesel is the most pressing problem for farmers.

So what kind of idiot would start a series of wars where oil is most at play? Yeah, that’s rhetorical. Trump’s ‘foreign policy’ basically ignores the reality of how intertwined our economies are and how easily a market can be disrupted. That kind of knowledge has been common since the world’s great minds picked apart the Great Depression and the World Wars. Unfortunately, the world’s great minds or even the country’s aren’t a play here. This country isn’t what it used to be at all.

The link is gifted.  So is this one written by Guest Essayist Tim Wu, which was published today by The New York Times.  Wu worked on economic issues during the Biden Administration. It’s all about the big word that Trump finds appalling. “Affordability Is a Winning Message for Democrats. But There’s an Even Better One.”

The most important political division in our times is not between Democrats and Republicans, or socialists and capitalists; it’s between those who think today’s economic system is fair and working well for most people, and those who do not. While a minority of Americans defend the current system, citing aggregate indicators like growth rates, a majority see things differently.

A recent CBS News poll found that some 60 percent of Americans think the economy is “unfair” and that most people under 45 say they have fewer economic opportunities than their parents did. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 66 percent of Republicans said that the gap between rich and poor is a “big problem.” Though the stock market is up and the United States is not suffering a recession or mass unemployment, Gallup’s monthly Economic Confidence Index has been persistently negative.