Panera Bread CEO Says Pay What You Can

'One in six Americans live in “food insecure” homes. This means one in six Americans is seriously hungry, likely under-nourished or malnourished and doesn’t know when he/she will have their next meal. When Panera Bread Founder and CEO Ronald Shaich learned this, he thought about how Panera Bread opens two restaurants every week, employs 60,000 people, and he knew Panera’s resources could have impact on America’s hunger problem. He personally set out to help, pitched his board (with a lot of respect and credibility under his belt), created a foundation and the result is a new kind of chain restaurant: pay-what-you-can Paneras.'

Read more...

>>>READ MORE

J.P. Morgan's Food Stamp Monopoly: The More Americans That Fall Into Poverty The More Money Jamie Dimon Makes

>>>READ MORE

MSNBC - Wall Street Is Behind High Food-Oil Prices Thats Causing Arab Instability

>>>READ MORE

Is There a Financial Scam Behind the Rise in Oil and Food Prices?

'When I met Phil the other night, he was on fire, enraged by what he believes is the scam of the century that no one wants to talk about, because so many powerful people armed with legions of lawyers want unquestioning allegiance, and will sue you into silence. 

He studies the oil/food issue carefully and has concluded, “It’s a scam folks, it’s nothing but a huge scam and it’s destroying the US economy as well as the entire global economy but no one complains because they are ‘only’ stealing about $1.50 per gallon from each individual person in the industrialized world.” 

“It’s the top 0.01% robbing the next 39.99% – the bottom 60% can’t afford cars anyway (they just starve quietly to death, as food prices climb on fuel costs). If someone breaks into your car and steals a $500 stereo, you go to the police, but if someone charges you an extra $30 every time you fill up your tank 50 times a year ($1,500) you shut up and pay your bill. Great system, right?”' 


Read more...

>>>READ MORE

Food crisis benefits Goldman Sachs

>>>READ MORE

What If Supermarkets Fail Us?

'If you’ve read the news closely these past couple of weeks, you may have found a very interesting item buried somewhere in between headlines: food prices in America grew by more than 1.5 times the overall rate of inflation this year. They went up 1.7 percent, to be precise. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is forecasting a 2 to 3 percent food inflation rate in 2011, a number that many experts expect to be on the low-end. Meanwhile, big agribusiness players like Kraft Foods, General Mills, McDonald’s, Kellogg and Sara Lee have already announced that they will rise [sic] their prices come January.'

Read more...

>>>READ MORE

Banksters Inflate Speculative Food Bubble, U.N. Offers Global Governance Solution

Speculative Food Bubble

'Never let a good crisis go to waste. The international bankers are taking advantage of the "food crisis" by driving up food prices in what is shaping up to be a classic case of a manufactured bubble.  It is also looking like a clear model of Problem-Reaction-Solution methodology. Create the food inflation problem (of course profiting all the way up), force an enraged reaction among the public, and take more sovereignty away with the solution of global food regulation.'




Read more...

>>>READ MORE

General Mills Signals Faster U.S. Food Inflation: Chart of the Day

 Eat Your Wheaties Before Next Month

Source: Bloomberg

'General Mills Inc. showed where U.S. food prices are headed by making some of its breakfast cereals and baking products more expensive, according to Christopher Growe, a Stifel Nicolaus & Co. analyst. As the CHART OF THE DAY shows, retail prices for food are lower than they were in May though the cost of farm commodities has soared. 

The food component of the U.S. consumer price index and a gauge of agricultural-product prices, compiled by UBS AG and Bloomberg, were used to make the comparison. General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, Chex and Wheaties, will raise cereal prices on Nov. 15. The increase will affect about 25 percent of its cereal production and amount to a “low single-digit” percentage, Kirstie Foster, a company spokeswoman, wrote today in an e-mail. 

Prices for some baking mixes are set for “a mid single- digit increase,” effective Jan. 3, Foster wrote. The company’s product lines include Betty Crocker, Bisquick and Pillsbury. “While General Mills may be the first of the large food companies to really press higher on pricing, we believe many others may follow,” Growe wrote. “It’s just a matter of time, given what is coming down the pike in the way of inflation.”

The UBS Bloomberg Constant Maturity Commodity Index for farm products jumped 50 percent between June 7, when it fell to this year’s low, and yesterday, when it set a record by closing at 1,770.479. The previous high was set in July 2008.' 

 View Chart (a must view)

>>>READ MORE

How the financial markets create hunger and make huge profits

Chicago Board of Trade Corn pit. 1993

'The deregulation of global agricultural markets was part of the economic deregulation driven by the World Trade Organization (WTO), the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It was a process initiated by the Breton Woods Agreements of 1944 to standardize international trade and marketing policies to facilitate global trade [9].

'It eliminated government intervention in agricultural markets, dismantling global commodity agreements, price supports, and other mechanisms that had helped stabilize global supplies and prices. The WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture, and other multi-lateral and bilateral free-trade agreements including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), opened up markets in the developing world to an increasingly powerful global agribusiness industry.

The consequence of deregulation was [10] “to replace local market access for the majority of small farmers with global market access for a few global transnational companies. Thanks to non-existent anti-trust enforcement and rampant vertical integration, [t]hree companies - Cargill, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), and Bung - control the vast majority of global grain trading, while Monsanto controls more than one-fifth of the global market in seeds.”'

Read more...

>>>READ MORE