BF...Youre better than that bro.. i expect more from you
Even more unusual were the specifics of Palin's critique: As WSJ's Sudeep Reddy pointed out Monday, she doesn't get all of her facts right. In response to Palin's assertion that "everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so," Reddy wrote Monday that "Grocery prices haven't risen all that significantly, in fact." He notes that prices have actually increased only 0.6 percent over the past year. It's the lowest rate on record -- so low that it inspired a high-profile Twitter fight late last month.But Palin would have none of it. She wrote in her Facebook note, "That's odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy's own Wall Street Journal titled 'Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies.' She continued:
Now I realize I'm just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I'm surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn't.
Reddy has responded to Palin on Twitter, pointing out that she has actually misread the WSJ article she refers to. As Reddy notes, the article's first sentence discusses "the tamest year of food pricing in nearly two decades."
The source of confusion comes in the next paragraph. The article says the cost of goods has risen, a burden that food sellers must decide whether to pass on to customers via prices. The rise in prices hasn't actually happened yet. Palin omits this key fact.
Reddy has also re-tweeted a tweet from Columbia Journalism Review's Ryan Chittum, who defends Reddy and blasts Palin for misquoting the WSJ story about prices. Here's Chittum:
That's all well and good, Mal. Maybe she didn't own the WSJ reporter but regardless, there is plenty of talk about food inflation. Here's an article from Britain's "The Guardian" that was written five days ago.
US accused of forcing up world food prices
Fresh round of US quantitative easing will weaken dollar and push up commodity prices, hitting consumers, say critics
The US central bank was accused today of adding to soaring food prices with its new programme of quantitative easing, after oil and commodities surged on world markets.
Critics said the $600bn (£370bn) of QE announced by the Federal Reserve would hurt consumers by pushing up prices of soy, wheat and other staple foods, along with oil, copper and zinc.
The jump in commodity prices raised the prospect of an inflationary bubble reminiscent of 2008, when oil and other industrial raw materials struck all-time highs just before the crash.
While commodity traders said a decline in the dollar's value was expected following the QE decision, the Reuters/Jefferies CRB index, a global commodities benchmark, has since hit a two-year high. It has gained 18% since the start of September.
US light crude hit a year-high of $87.2 a barrel while copper flirted with record levels of $8,769.50 a tonne, within $200 of an all-time peak of $8,940 in July 2008.
UK food prices were 9.8% higher last month than a year ago, the biggest annual increase since October 2008, according to the Office for National Statistics. Imported food prices climbed 4.5% on the year, the fastest rate since October 2009, pushing up the price of bread and margarine. Prices are likely to be pushed higher in coming months, with refined sugar reaching a record of $783.90 a tonne today.
Despite surging commodity prices, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke has argued the likelihood of deflation is greater than inflation following prolonged weakness in the US economy. He said that the poor state of the housing market and continued weakness in consumer demand showed inflation was likely to undershoot the Fed's 2% target and that unemployment would remain high.
He is expected to be unmoved by the latest data showing 151,000 private-sector jobs were created in October. While many traders took the figures on face value, several analysts said they showed the jobs market remained depressed.
The Fed needs more than 300,000 jobs to be created a month to make a dent in US unemployment, which remains at 9.6%. A figure of about 150,000 is just enough to keep pace with the rising population.
However, several economists have argued the Fed's gloomy analysis cannot justify a second round of quantitative easing when high inflation and low interest rates persuade investors to seek higher returns from buying commodities and riskier asset classes.
Commodities are considered a safe haven when the dollar is falling. There is also an incentive for producers to seek higher prices to offset the falling value of the dollar.
Richard Batty of Standard Life Investments said a 10% rise in the oil price could potentially add 1% to US inflation.
"While QE may boost assets prices further and hence contribute to positive wealth effects and inflation expectations in the US economy, recent moves in oil prices, in particular, may drag on economic growth in the short term," Batty said.
China, Germany and Brazil warned that QE would have far-reaching negative effects beyond US shores. They said it amounted to promoting US exporters at the expense of rival trading nations with a scheme to artificially depress the value of the dollar.
"With all due respect, US policy is clueless," said German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble. "[The problem] is not a shortage of liquidity. It's not that the Americans haven't pumped enough liquidity into the market. And now to say let's pump more into the market is not going to solve their problems."
Zhou Xiaochuan, China's central bank governor, said while Beijing could understand that the Fed was implementing more monetary easing to stimulate US recovery, it might not be good for the global economy.
The head of Brazil's central bank agreed that further QE would cause further "distortions" in world markets and complicate his country's efforts to stem the rise of its currency. Brazil, like Thailand and other emerging economies has imposed capital controls on investors seeking to buy Brazilian assets to prevent its currency soaring.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/nov/05/us-accused-of-worsening-price-risesI'm not a fan of Palin by any means, but there has been plenty of talk about rising food prices across the entire world. Bad droughts coupled with the economic problems have definitely driven up the cost of certain commodity goods and it's starting to trickle into others. Either way, this WSJ reporter has come out of this looking pretty incompetent in my eyes.
