A not so popular piece titled Fed Rate Cuts Kill People was published here in February:

[I]nstead of letting the market sort itself out as it should, the Fed cut the rates again and with unprecedented speed. It induced a fresh bubble, this time in the commodity markets.
…
The direct consequence of the ongoing bail-out of irresponsible and greedy people on Wall Street is mass starvation because of exploding wheat, rice and other food prices.

The ‘biofuel’ madness adds to the Fed induced killing.

In comments I further noted:

[Commodities] have left the explainable landscape of fundamentals and jumped into bubble territory. Three years from now, or whenever the commodity bubble will inevitably burst, everybody will point to the fed.

All that sounded just too nutty and there was little discussion on the issue. But this week, much earlier than I expected, some other lone, know-nothing lefty came to the same conclusion.

Martin Feldstein, Harvard prof and chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisers under Reagan, wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed on
the issue. He reasoned:

It’s
time for the Federal Reserve to stop reducing the federal funds rate,
because the likely benefit is small compared to the potential damage.

Lower interest rates could raise the already high prices of energy and food, which are already triggering riots in developing countries.
…
Many
factors have contributed to the recent rise in the prices of oil and
food, especially the increased demand from China, India and other
rapidly growing countries. Lower interest rates also add to the upward pressure on these commodity prices – by making it less costly for commodity investors and commodity speculators to hold larger inventories of oil and food grains.

Lower interest rates induce investors to add commodities to their portfolios.
When rates are low, portfolio investors will bid up the prices of oil
and other commodities to levels at which the expected future returns
are in line with the lower rates.

An interest rate-induced rise in the price of oil also contributes indirectly to higher prices of food grains. It does so by making it profitable for farmers to devote more farm land to growing corn for ethanol.

Feldstein
is right in his analysis, but wrong in calling for the Fed to just halt
interest rates cut. The Fed should immediately increase interest rates
up to the real
U.S. inflation rate plus 2%. Even more important, it should reign in
the crazy money supply growth. That increase is best measured by the
(guess why) no longer officially published (but shadowed)
M3 stats. More money in the market -> more speculation -> higher
prices in the fad investing scheme, which is for now commodities.

Less money supply and higher Fed interest rates would severly dent,
if not implode, the commodity bubble that this year already increased
prices in general commodities by over 20%.

People who live on a dollar or less pay day, and there are many of
these on this planet, can not afford enough rice, now priced at $1000+
per ton, to survive.

Unless the U.S. government changes its inflationary policy, it will
be guilty of creating the most extensive humanitarian crisis this
planet has ever seen.