Black Friday Reads

Good Morning!

Well, be thankful for the food in your belly!!!  Did you move a size up this morning?  According to the U.N. and the NYT the  ‘World is “Dangerously close” to a Food Crisis’.

Global grain production will tumble by 63 million metric tons this year, or 2 percent over all, mainly because of weather-related calamities like the Russian heat wave and the floods in Pakistan, the United Nations estimates in its most recent report on the world food supply. The United Nations had previously projected that grain yields would grow 1.2 percent this year.

The fall in production puts the world “dangerously close” to a new food crisis, Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, said at a news conference last week.

Rising demand and lower-than-expected yields caused stocks of some grains to fall sharply and generated high volatility in world food markets in the latter half of the year. Prices for some commodities are approaching levels not seen since 2007 and 2008, when food shortages prompted riots around the world.

Got that backyard farm started yet?

At the moment, the only prices that appear to be rising on the national level are gas prices.  The Dallas Fed breaks down inflation as measured by the PCE for you.

Apart from yet another sharp increase in the price of gasoline, inflationary pressures in October were as muted as we’ve seen in quite some time. Both the core PCE price index and the trimmed mean registered essentially zero inflation rates in October, each posting annualized rates of just 0.1 percent.

The 12-month core rate fell 0.3 percentage points to 0.9 percent, and the 12-month trimmed mean rate, which had been fairly stable around 1 percent for the past six months, ticked down to 0.8 percent.

To be sure, the headline PCE price index did increase at a 2.0 percent annualized rate in October, but about 90 percent of that gain is accounted for by the price index for gasoline, which jumped 4.7 percent from September to October (or about a 73 percent annualized rate of increase).

So, gasoline aside, are we seeing a downshift in the underlying trend in consumer price inflation? While today’s release certainly points in that direction, one never wants to make too much out of any one month’s numbers. In inflation updates over the past few months, we’ve stated our view that the underlying trend in inflation was stable, albeit at an extremely low level. That view evolved only with the accumulation of several months worth of data. Going forward, we’ll again be looking for patterns that are sustained over multiple months worth of data.

They have a list of things that “leading progressives” are thankful for over at New Deal 2.0. You just have to go look.  Really.  I mean REALLY.   I’m going to stick with Dean Baker Bill Black, and James K. Galbraith  because economists have to stick together. You can  figure out what to do with the media personalities on your own.

“I’m grateful that we won’t have Larry Summers to kick around anymore.” – James K. Galbraith, author of The Predator State and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin

…

“I am grateful to Social Security, which made it possible for our family to avoid economic disaster when my father died of a second heart attack when he was 41. I am grateful to a nation in which I could be a serial whistle blower, exposing the misconduct of two presidential employees, the Speaker of the House James Wright, and the ‘Keating Five’ — and survive. And I am grateful to the Ancients, who faced a vastly crueler world and recognized that the key was for each of us to try to repair it, and whose advice has led generations to make those repairs, rather than accepting cruelty, greed, exploitation, and indifference as the natural state. I am thankful for all who came before and worked to make things better.” – Bill Black, Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and white-collar criminologist

…

“I am thankful for the Web. It is an enormous potential equalizer in giving progressives without money comparable input into public debate as the right-wingers with lots of money. In this vein, the Huffington Post’s webhits are going up. The Washington Post’s circulation is going down.” – Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research

Here’s some interesting news on Net Neutrality from The Hill.

Seeking to weaken potential regulations, AT&T is actively working to complicate the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) renewed effort to broker a compromise on net neutrality.

Industry and Hill sources said that an AT&T official made public last week that the agency has quietly undertaken a new round of negotiation. The sources stressed that they had obtained this information through AT&T channels.

The delicate FCC effort is aimed at resolving one of the most fractious issues in tech policy. The hope was to quietly consult with industry and public interest stakeholders while insulating the negotiations from the noisy politicking the question stirs on both sides.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski invited industry and public interest sources to help shape a possible compromise, giving AT&T a major seat at the table. Public advocates are concerned about how much Genachowski appears to be listening to AT&T, with one saying he has practically given them “veto powers.”

Ex parte filings show that AT&T officials consulted frequently with the agency this month. Policy executive Jim Cicconi met with Genachowski’s office the day before the new net neutrality effort became public.

Politico had a story up about lesbian Air Force Major Margaret Witt who was discharged under DADT.   This is another incidence involving the Obama administration’s legal stance on DADT which appears at odds with what the President says.  The Air Force may seek stay of order to block Witt’s reinstatement.  Her case is being followed by the ACLU.

“We foresee no problem about Major Witt getting reinstated,” Doug Honig of the ACLU’s Washington state chapter said Wednesday. “Once we discuss this with the Air Force, present evidence meeting the nursing hours requirements, and Major Witt passes the physical – all of which will happen – we would be shocked if the Air Force were suddenly to seek to stay her reinstatement.”

The Obama administration’s legal stance is likely to come as a disappointment to gay rights advocates, who took the decision not to seek a stay as an indication that the administration may no longer be mounting a full-court press to uphold the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy written into law by Congress in 1993. Obama has pledged to repeal the law, but the Justice Department has continued to defend it, citing a tradition of Executive Branch defense of most Congressional enactments.

Regardless of whether a stay is sought, the Justice Department is appealing Leighton’s ruling, just as it is appealing another judge’s recent order that the “don’t ask” policy is unconstitutional on its face.

HuffPo is reporting that Elizabeth Warren convinced President Obama to stop the bill that would make foreclosures easier and enshrine robosigning into law.  Let’s hope she’s replaced Larry Summers as the economic ear of the President.

The decisive way in which she labored behind the scenes to stymie a bill that would have eased requirements for documentation in the foreclosure process underscores how her arrival has altered the administration’s relationship with major banks.

The bill, which passed both houses of Congress and awaited President Obama’s signature to become law, essentially would have compelled notaries to accept out-of-state notarizations, regardless of the rules in those states.

State officials across the country–who have been pursuing probes looking into wrongdoing within the foreclosure process– feared that those jurisdictions with lax standards could have become hotbeds for foreclosure documentation fraud. Lenders and mortgage companies could have used those states as central clearing houses to produce bogus foreclosure paperwork, and then export those documents to other states with more stringent regulations–an expedient bypass around the strictures.

South Korea has ordered troops to move to a “front line island” and the U.S. sends an air craft carrier to the Yellow Sea.

Despite warnings from North Korea that any new provocation would be met with more attacks, Washington and Seoul pushed ahead with plans for military drills starting Sunday involving a nuclear-powered U.S. aircraft carrier in waters south of this week’s skirmish.

The exercises will likely anger the North — the regime cited South Korean drills this week as the impetus behind its attack — but the president said the South could little afford to abandon such preparation now.

“We should not ease our sense of crisis in preparation for the possibility of another provocation by North Korea,” spokesman Hong Sang-pyo quoted President Lee Myung-bak as saying. “A provocation like this can recur any time.”

At an emergency meeting in Seoul, Lee ordered reinforcements for about 4,000 troops on the tense Yellow Sea islands, along with top-level weaponry and upgraded rules of engagement that would create a new category of response when civilian areas are targeted.

Great!  Yet another excuse for more military spending!

I’m still trying to recover from three plus days of not having potable water.  If you hear a scream emanating from a laundry room some where south of you, it’s undoubtedly me.   Thank goodness I decided to eat out for Turkey Day!!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?