Costly Crude Fuels Price Hikes On Goods You Use Every Day

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djhighlights/200711090030DOWJONESDJONLINE000015.htm

CHICAGO (Dow Jones) - Let the consumer beware: Costs are going up on almost everything the average American family consumes.

Blame it on crude oil. The rocketing price of crude oil is not only sharply hiking the costs of fueling the car and heating the home, but is bidding up prices on the raw materials that go into goods from produce to perfume.

At the same time, the push to develop ethanol as an alternative fuel through corn and similar products is inflating the cost of feed for cows, pigs and other farm animals - and that also increases the prices consumers pay.

"Oil affects everything from top to bottom," said Phil Flynn, energy analyst at Alaron Trading. "Most people wear crude oil every day."

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yes - we have no inflation...

eat into the food supply. If you want to grow corn for corn ethanol, then that's fine, but the rest of the corn stalk is wasted. With cellulose ethanol, you can still eat the corn, but the rest of the stalk is used to make cellulose ethanol. It would help to prevent food price inflation by removing the crowding out effect.

The biomass stored in soil constitutes the humus of the soil, supporting the beneficial microorganisms and invertebrates and storing nutrients and water. Without it, you have sand and clay instead of rich, black dirt.

Remove those "wasted" cornstalks repeatedly over several years, and your yields will drop. Farmers already have to supply supplemental nitrogen, phosphorus and trace nutrients to make up for removal of only the ears of corn, much less the entire corn plant.

Oh, wait, that's right, everybody who was paying any attention foresaw this.

:D

That just reminds me of when I worked at the last casino I was in before I quit dealing table games. There were times when our tip income was just horrible (other than tips we subsisted on minimum wage) - sometimes averaging barely $40 a day. The whole day shift crew got into the habit of humming "Yes, we have no bananas" to the relieving dealer if the table was full of "stiffs". We had to laugh about it or lose our minds.

There is a reason it was under the ground. We put it back above the ground. The oil isn't at fault.