Beef: it’s what’s for dinner (though it’s going to cost a bit more next year so stock up!) From The Wall Street Journal:
The Agriculture Department is standing by its forecast for unusually tame food-price inflation this year but warned Monday that the broad rally in farm commodity prices since midsummer will take a bigger bite out of consumers' wallets next year.
I keep saying to JR and David: you really couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. These guys at the top are supposed to be the “best and brightest” minds we have to offer; if that’s true we should all be building shelters while we can still afford bricks.
But then again, maybe gold buying is merely the virtual bomb shelter it’s advertized as on TV. The gold guys seem to understand deep in their gut, despite all the economic theories of cash flow, yield, inflation, deflation, or relative performance, US policymakers are heading down the path to a failure that will have worse consequences than it did during the credit crunch.
We mentioned yesterday: “let’s stay open to the idea there could be more to this than meets the eye given the curious timing between the Treasury and China.” Was that simply attaching news to a single day’s adverse price action? Today it sure looks that way.
Right now the greenback is getting hit hard, as the euro retraces much of yesterday’s collapse. Both the euro and the Aussie are rocking higher.
If you can believe it, the US dollar has gotten hammered in the last 12 hours -- the euro and pound up over a percent at their day’s highs; the Australian dollar coming very close to US dollar parity.
The day’s early moves have hints of capitulation as QE2 and currency war speculation saturate the headlines. In fact, we were easily stopped out of EURUSD and AUDUSD as the pairs blew through last week’s highs and cleaned out whatever orders sat above those levels. The expectations for the US dollar to bottom are growing in talk but not in walk.
No currency deal on the IMF front this weekend; but really, did we expect anything more than dialogue?
What did seem to be decided upon was the need for more emerging economy representation on the global front ... because the developed economies are running this global supertanker aground, of course. The IMF said:
“Stronger and even-handed surveillance to uncover vulnerabilities in large advanced economies is a priority ..."
