foilhatgrrl, imported or domestic pasta? If imported, could be the US is playing one of its mini trade wars – some sort of mad tariff against Italy in retaliation for – who the **** knows? Berlusconi’s views on Iraq? when we were in the deli business we were always running into things like that, particularly with French stuff. After France refused to join the Iraq murder spree, Dijon mustard couldn’t be had for love nor money (just one more way the US makes itself loved and adored beyond these shores). Look for a lot more of this crap in the days to come.

Posted by: Tantalus | Nov 25 2008 21:13 utc | 4

A perverse impact of the lower volumes is that freight rates on the China-US West Coast route for ISO tanks (tanks with box frames) is rising as there is no backhaul traffic out of the US. So tank shippers like Stolt, Hoyer, etc have raised prices on that route in the last month to offset their increased costs to reposition the tanks.
So although BDI has crashed it does not mean that freight rates may not rise. All this reduction in shipping capacity will have an impact on prices.

Posted by: ab initio | Nov 25 2008 21:27 utc | 6

“The Air Transport Association is predicting 10% fewer people flying this holiday weekend from a year ago, as average ticket prices climbed and the domestic economy slid into recession. Airports normally busting at the seams with travelers could now appear relatively sedate.”
Thanksgiving travel
Fares rise as fewer passengers.

Posted by: ab initio | Nov 25 2008 22:29 utc | 8

Tantalus, thanks for increasing my vocabulary.
My point is never to take the conventional wisdom for granted. Note that during the dotcom blow up it was “disinflation leading to deflation” all the time on all the channels. Greenspan justified that to pump up the easy credit machine and the housing based ponzi scheme and Bush gave as even more “fiscal stimuli” through borrow and spend on the wealthy with their tax cut giveaways.
Now all channels have “deflationary depression” all the time. And lo and behold what do we have – even more easy money with an acronym soup of Fed lending vehicles on the basis of blown up bank assets and more borrow and spend once again on the wealthy but this time to feed big construction companies like Bechtel and the local asphalt politician – Big Dig redux.

Posted by: ab initio | Nov 25 2008 22:42 utc | 10

It’s gtoes against my better nature to give that prentious lump of lard, english PM Gordon Brown, the heat off my pooh much less anythjing approaching kudos, but I have to say his plan to knock 2.5 percentage points offa the english consumption tax does warrant polite applause. I’m unsure what the VAT rate there is now up around 17.5% so putting it back to 15% isn’t earth shattering since 15% is still gouging ordinary humanity to an unacceptable level, but still how often do we see a tax break that is good for Joe Bloggs nowadays. Normally tax cuts are vehicles for ‘wealth redistribution’ ie robbing the poor so the rich can have caviar with their daily breakfast of other people’s babies.
NEWSFLASH I knew Gordy wasn’t gonna give anything away. The cut is temporary after which Gordy had planned to whack the VAT up to an eye watering 18.5%!
I have lived in a few countries when consumption taxes were introduced and the most noticeable rise is on non-discretionary items, those we have to buy ie kai, tucker, food
Consumption taxes which are always iniquitous have been at the heart of the attack on humanity since the inception back in the Thatcherite Reaganomics days.
How great would it be to see that inquity which was used as the vehicle for allowing the top 2% of the population to keep their 25 million dollar bonuses because the bonuses no longer attracted the sort of punitive taxes which made the rip impracticable gone.
See the whole crooked tax the poor for their bread and milk horror thrown out with all the rest of the deregulations, fat assed blood sucking privatization speculators, warmongering arms makers and limp wristed socially democratic enablers of misery?
Well if the english ‘social democrats’ are anything to go by there’s not much chance of that, that is if humans have to rely on them.
Buried at the bottom of the gruniad article I linked to is the most mealy-mouthed excuse yet for not taxing the rich, but since it is so closely aligned with the sort of excuse used to deregulate and encourage industry self regulation (ie put the crooks in charge of the sheriff’s office) it doesn’t surprise even if it does appall.

The institute for Fiscal Studies, Britain’s leading tax experts, said today that the 45% income tax band for the better off might end up raising no extra revenue at all because higher earners will find ways of avoiding paying more tax.

Translated into humanspeak. “You can’t tax the baby-eaters because they will just hire expensive mouthpieces to evade their taxes anyhow.”
Yeah right. I wonder how long the promotion of new ‘tax schemes’ would last after the first smarmy tax lawyer was strung up for treason and his fat assed client was given the choice of either dobbing in his ‘acquaintances’ (the rich rarely have real friends) or facing the same fate.
So what the tax experts really mean is “We have constructed a beautifully arcane structure for gathering state revenue which is designed so that the poor who can’t afford to fight it pay up, but the rich can flout it safe in the knowledge that any ‘indiscretions’ can be concealed and those that can’t be hidden won’t cause any real discomfort.”
Still all of this does give an inkling of the vulnerable points in the capitalist carapace, the points where activists should concentrate their efforts to effect maximum pressure.
Most of us recognise that the changes to the social structure over the last handful of decades have shifted the the way that peeps see themselves. Our brothers and sisters are less likely to define themselves by their occupation (welder, machine operator, cleaner, the ubiquitous housewife of yore), than they are to see themselves by what they consume (Chevy truck-head, mac-user, vegan) so this is the hierachy that activists need to be exposing the iniquities and inequalities within.
A consumption tax is a handy place to start since it is vulnerable for being too generalist ie the flat ‘tax it all’ national consumption taxes much favoured by the economic rationalists (a quick aside on that you can take the Gordy Brown outta Scotland but you can’t the hard hearted Scots Presbyterianism outta Gordy Brown, he is keeping the rip off taxes up at 17.5% on beer, thereby denying humanity the right to take the edge off their oppression and providing the thin edge of the wedge. The rationalists have always insisted that a flat tax must apply across the board to every item otherwise it becomes too “inefficient” [read expensive] to maintain,. Gordy’s puritanical streak has just subverted that claim.)
On the other hand the older taxes much favoured by middle tier (state) governments for their revenue stream are riddled with obscure ‘get outta gaol free cards’ for favoured industries or popular past times and as such are also ripe for attacking the outrageous contradictions many of these ‘exemptions’ allow.
I won’t turn this into War and Peace elaborating on the other point of attack (the retail and distribution monopolies) here.
Humanist oriented activists should be concentrating their efforts on facilitating access to foodstuffs firstly by way of action in alternative supply chains and secondly operating in concert to pressure local, state and national government on the blatant iniquities contained in all consumption taxes.
Yeah I know what’s new? Maybe not much in what we are saying but certainly the environment we will be saying it in has changed. Peeps will be more receptive if the person edumacating them has just helped them get enough food on their limited budget.
Right now the forces of darkness are attempting to pull one of the lowest stunts pulled since Adam was a babe. They are attempting to use this disaster created by their greed and self serving ‘derugulation’ to institute a structure that allows even less control by the people and even more manipulation by/for the greedheads.
There will be no help from the new faces in Washington – they are all on board the bizness as usual express. Still strike early before the assholes feel secure in their ‘new’ roles. This is gonna be a tough winter for ordinary humans up there in the North and peeps will move to anger quickly when they see more and more of the same old faces turn up in the Obama cabinet. Especially when the same old faces continue to talk the same old shit.
We need to do what we can to help our brothers and sisters, and in doing so we will find that most won’t need to be ‘spieled at’. They will already be halfway there, especially if those helping others help themselves, can project a caring and sharing persona, free of any of the old clichés, but aligned with the timeless notion than standing together always beats falling alone, then the possibility for real change will emerge.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Nov 25 2008 23:09 utc | 12

here, hell is presenting itself, imperceptibly but surely

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Nov 26 2008 0:35 utc | 14

I just got an unsolicited fat 20th Century Art and Design auction catalog in the mail, the cheapest estimate is $1,000-1,500, with most items in the mid $30-50,000 range, and some going at a half a million……. I have no idea what this means. Unless there’s a whole bunch of dumping going on to cover bets. The mere fact that it reaches me as a possibility, is a sure sign of desperation. Highly amusing desperation, at that.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 26 2008 2:07 utc | 16

Interesting to note the difference between the harsh numbers of the Baltic Dry Index and the soft word choice of today’s OECD report, which merely calls the global recession a “downtown”.

Posted by: seneca | Nov 26 2008 3:02 utc | 18

r’giap & uncle: your comments have provided a convenient lead in to what i was coming here to say tonight anyway.
hell is not, yet, presenting itself at the emergency shelter in this inter-mountain retirement/college/service industry town. we’ve got seventy beds, showers, washer/dryer, free medical screenings, HIV testing, case management, and coffee. coffee is very important.
part of my job is refining how we gather statistical information, so i’ve been sifting through all the records for the past 3-5 years, and our numbers are obviously going up, and money is definitely tight, but we’ve got, and are still getting, plenty of food.
our food rescue van makes daily rounds to grocery stores, both local and corporate, gathering expired food, and we usually give almost all of it away. but what hit me today, besides a clipboard, was the realization we are in no way prepared for even a doubling of the numbers as they stand today.
the pantry where we distribute food for non-residents requires recipients fill out monthly forms. it’s a pretty relaxed system run by volunteers and a lot of discretion is used with how much food we give out. getting hit by a clipboard because the woman at the food window didn’t want to lose her position in line by stepping out of line to fill out the form, as is the current custom, got me thinking.
i’ve been reassessing some of these “normal ways of doing things” because this particular non-profit, like many non-profits, are underdeveloped due to a systematic lack of funds and people who give a shit.
Obama is compelled to not give a shit by the people who financed him. even uttering poverty is apparently blasphemous. look forward to change that jingles as the system lurches on, bloating the the top 1% like ticks gorged on blood.

Posted by: Lizard | Nov 26 2008 4:58 utc | 20

Tantalus at 4 –
Domestic pasta, which is what makes it scarier, the co-op labels origin in its bulk section. Durum wheat grown in North Dakota should have no trouble being made into pasta and shipped to Wisconsin. Plenty of Italian pasta available for north of $2 per pound, bulk was closer to $1.50-1.75, but prices have been creeping up.
I never made the connection on the Dijon mustard a few years ago, just thought it went out of style for other (domestic) brands getting the shelf space. Interesting.

Posted by: foilhatgrrl | Nov 26 2008 14:33 utc | 22

Foilhatgrrl
I’ve remembered the story behind the Dijon shortage(!): it wasn’t the Iraq war that caused that particular one, but France leading the EU in a ban of US beef owing to the fact that its hormone/antibiotic content far exceeded EU legal safety levels. So worse, in a way: buy our poison, or else! This stuff goes on all the time, often with ‘unofficial’ policies like stopping shipments on the docks until customs deigns to inspect them. Tons and tons of food gets destroyed that way. This sort of low level punitive crap seems to happen a lot. It certainly used to affect us, as retailers.

Posted by: Tantalus | Nov 26 2008 14:54 utc | 24

Roubini:

The Treasury will be issuing in the next two years about $2 trillion of additional debt (on top of having to refinance and rollover another $1 trillion of maturing debt) while the Fed/Treasury/FDIC are taking on a massive amount of credit risk via outright bailouts and guarantees (TAF, TSLF, PDCF, ABCPFFFMLM, TALF, TARP, Bear Stears, AIG, Citigroup, TALF and another half a dozen new facilities and programs). These policies – however partially necessary – will eventually leads to much higher real interest rates on the public debt and weaken the US dollar once this tsunami of implicit and explicit public liabilities and monetary debt driven by rising twin fiscal and current account deficits will hit a world where the global supply of savings is shrinking – as most countries moves to fiscal deficits thus reducing global savings – and foreign investors start to ponder the long term sustainability of the US domestic and external liabilities.

He finally got that too …

Posted by: b | Nov 26 2008 20:06 utc | 26

My local anecdote… The Big Isle of Hawaii’s Domino’s Pizza has shuttered their doors, surprising, in that we have a sizable college student population…!

Posted by: CTuttle | Nov 26 2008 23:50 utc | 28

“There have been calls from outside Germany for it to beef up fiscal support, but Ms Merkel has been wary of raising public borrowing to stimulate demand, fearing that the extra income could boost Germans’ savings rate, which is already high.” (Financial Times, 11-27)
Not everyone agrees with b’s position above.

Posted by: seneca | Nov 27 2008 15:13 utc | 30