A slice of pizza is much more expensive now than it was a year ago. This is because a fifty-pound bag of flour has doubled in price in less than a month. Beer prices have risen dramatically. This is because the price of hops per pound is nearly ten times what it was one year ago. An extremely fat, short, and jolly man at the packie informed me that he expects Sam Adams and other mass-market high-end beers to exceed $10 a six-pack by year's end. The national average for a gallon of regular gasoline is $3.28, up about fifty cents from a year ago. What do pizza, beer, and gasoline have in common? They are commodities that normal people consume on a regular basis. The rise in prices cut into the disposable income of people who don't have much to dispose. I'm no soothsayer, but these are what they call in the augery business "bad omens."

Ask Louis XVI and the rest of the Bourbons what happens when the price of wheat goes through the roof. Or just ask Edmund Burke, he understood it as well.

Viva la Republic!

What would the Bush's say to those having trouble buying wheat? "Let them eat steak?"

Be well,

Sponge

With the increase in energy costs in general and the use of corn based products in mandated designer bio-fuel blends, it was inevitable that food and beverage prices would increase.

When used as a food source, corn is the basis of a myriad of consumable items and when used as a feed source, corn is the basis for how the animals we eat are grown and marketed.

Now that corn production is subsidized by our government as fuel additive, the problem is twofold: farmers are growing more corn in lieu of growing other crops for more and easier profit and there is less corn for food when used as a processed supplement for gasoline and other fuels.

There may be a temporary silver lining here though as farmers have become so quick to produce the government mandated maximum of 7.5 million gallons of ethanol by 2012, that they have overproduced and are now at that threshold. This has prompted a cutback on government subsidies for corn production.

A 12 pack of Guinness goes over 20 bucks and I'm gonna be displeased.

Don’t think you’re going to have to worry about Guinness that much as all of the ingredients are Irish grown and Ireland is not a big corn producer with little incentive to replace the growing the necessary crops. Plus the Irish aren’t that ambitious in the first place.

From what I understand though, they’re near rebellion in Germany over beer prices. Beer in Germany is a religion and corn has replaced hops production in many places. Supply and demand is dictating a beer market where brew has become much more expensive.