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Onions will help us fight economic nonsense today. Fortune has a short piece on the lack of an onion futures market and the subsequent wild ride for prices.
Before the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission starts scrutinizing the role that speculators may have played in driving up fuel and food prices, investigators may want to take a look at price swings in a commodity not in today’s news: onions.
The bulbous root is the only commodity for which futures trading is banned. Back in 1958, onion growers convinced themselves that futures traders (and not the new farms sprouting up in Wisconsin) were responsible for falling onion prices, so they lobbied an up-and-coming Michigan Congressman named Gerald Ford to push through a law banning all futures trading in onions. The law still stands. …
And Robert Samuelson helps out with “Let’s shoot the speculators.”
Tired of high gasoline prices and rising food costs? Well, here’s a solution. Let’s shoot the speculators. A chorus of politicians, including John McCain and Barack Obama, blames these financial slimeballs for piling into commodities markets and pushing prices to artificial and unconscionable levels. Gosh, if only it were that simple. Speculator-bashing is another exercise in scapegoating and grandstanding. Leading politicians either don’t understand what’s happening or don’t want to acknowledge their own complicity.
Granted, raw materials prices have exploded across the board. From 2002 to 2007, oil rose 177 percent, corn 70 percent, copper 360 percent and aluminum 95 percent. But that’s just the point. Did “speculators” really cause all those increases? If so, why did some prices go up more than others? And what about steel? It rose 117 percent — and has increased further in 2008 — even though it isn’t traded on commodities futures markets.
A better explanation is basic supply and demand. Despite the U.S. slowdown, the world economy has boomed. Since 2002, annual growth has averaged 4.6 percent, the highest sustained rate since the 1960s, says economist Michael Mussa of the Peterson Institute. By their nature, raw materials (food, energy, minerals) sustain the broader economy. They’re not just frills. When unexpectedly high demand strains existing production, prices rise sharply as buyers scramble for scarce supplies. That’s what happened. …
Martin Peretz wonders what the UN is worth.
Christopher Hitchens on how you can clean your home and help democracy in Iraq. Got some books around you don’t need? The Kurds have a library.
It’s quite common to read, usually from liberal opponents of the engagement in Iraq, that George W. Bush’s administration hasn’t asked the American people to make any sacrifices. I must confess that I never quite understand this criticism. As a society, we collectively contribute a great deal from our common treasury to give Iraq a fighting chance to recover from three decades of war and fascism and to prevent it from falling into the hands of the enemies of civilization. And as fellow citizens, we experience the agony of loss when our soldiers, aid workers, civil servants, and others are murdered. (That each of these is a volunteer is a great cause for national pride.)
However, I do believe that many people wish they could do something positive and make a contribution, however small, to the effort to build democracy in Iraq. And I have a suggestion. In the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniya, the American University of Iraq has just opened its doors. And it is appealing for people to donate books. …
Paul Greenberg on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette takes up the problem of Obama’s ignorance of history.
Barack Obama now has cited the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War as a model of the way Osama bin Laden should be tried in the (unlikely) event he’s ever taken alive. He recommends Nuremberg as an example to follow because, he says, those trials embodied universal legal principles.
The Nuremberg trials a model of international law? Those stone-faced judges in Red Army uniforms peering down from the bench at Nuremberg, shoulder boards in place and guilty verdicts at the ready, must have been there as representatives of Comrade Stalin’s well-known devotion to universally accepted legal principles.
This is not to say that the judges at Nuremberg couldn’t demonstrate exquisite tact. For example, not a one noted the Soviets’ responsibility for the Katyn Massacre, a war crime none dared accuse them of at the time.
In 1946, the Soviets were still Our Fighting Russian Allies. And so the mass execution of the Polish army’s officer corps in the Katyn forest was pinned on the Nazis, who were conveniently at hand. What would one more war crime matter in a record already so monstrous? …
Speaking of ignorance, James Kirchick in Contentions writes on Wesley Clark.
One would think that the Democratic Party would have locked Wesley Clark away somewhere after his infamous “New York Money People” remark last year. But he was on the Face the Nation yesterday morning, …
Kirchick referred to Clark’s toe to toe confrontation with Russians at the end of the war in Kosovo. Here’s the story from BBC.
… ‘Third World War’
General Wesley Clark, Nato’s supreme commander, immediately ordered 500 British and French paratroopers to be put on standby to occupy the airport. ”I called the [Nato] Secretary General [Javier Solana] and told him what the circumstances were,” General Clark tells the BBC programme Moral Combat: Nato at War.
”He talked about what the risks were and what might happen if the Russian’s got there first, and he said: ‘Of course you have to get to the airport’. ”I said: ‘Do you consider I have the authority to do so?’ He said: ‘Of course you do, you have transfer of authority’.”
But General Clark’s plan was blocked by General Sir Mike Jackson, K-For’s British commander. “I’m not going to start the Third World War for you,” he reportedly told General Clark during one heated exchange. General Jackson tells the BBC: ”We were [looking at] a possibility….of confrontation with the Russian contingent which seemed to me probably not the right way to start off a relationship with Russians who were going to become part of my command.” …
Ed Morrissey wonders just how stupid Wesley Clark is.
David Harsanyi says to Clark and the Obama campaign, “Go ahead, make McCain’s day!”
Ilya Somin posts in Volokh on why campaign finance laws protect incumbents.
Bret Stephens on the religious aspects of globalony.
Reason on how gun control lost.
The Economist says you might be twice as smart.
Forget the stuff that informs, Dilbert went to Branson, Missouri.