Inflation, comma, food.

From the Bureau of Labour Statistic’s October numbers:

Energy of course the big performer, but not for this post. We are interested in agflation, that lovely term of art coined by The Big Picture. To wit (from the Associated Press, via Yahoo Finance):

Wheat, Soybean Prices Finish Sharply Higher on Chicago Board of Trade; Livestock Closes Higher

Agricultural futures climbed sharply Tuesday on the Chicago Board of Trade, with a big jump in wheat and soybean prices.

Wheat for December delivery rose 17.25 cents to $7.735 a bushel; December corn rose 3.75 cents to $3.8125 a bushel; December oats gained 1.5 cents to $2.77 a bushel; January soybeans jumped 16.5 cents to $10.87 a bushel.

Beef and pork futures advanced on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

December live cattle rose 1 penny to 96.17 cents a pound; January feeder cattle rose 0.75 cent to $1.0957 a pound; December lean hogs gained 2.82 cents to 54.82 cents a pound; February pork bellies rose 3 cents to 92.4 cents a pound.

Um, good thing I’m vegan?

Business Week and consumer crunches

Their article is worth it if only for the image:

Eh? Eh? It’s actually horizontal in the print version – nice of them to build a web version specially for us. The article proper doesn’t have much to offer, beyond that which is already playing out: household wealth is declining with house prices, ergo consumption is declining. Perhaps to the point of recession, but definitely to the point of shitty macro numbers for a long time to come: one can compare, for example, those expenditure forecasts with the new and improved numbers being put out by the Federal Reserve.

Sixteen pages’ worth of enjoyable reading (opinions differ).

Back at Business Week. They conclude also that export earnings are likely to be the real stabiliser for the US macroeconomy:

Conventional wisdom is that consumer spending makes up 70% of gross domestic product. While technically true, that figure is deceptive, because so much of what Americans buy these days is made overseas. Compared with the early 1980s, which was the last time consumers cut back, much more of what Americans buy is made abroad. Today, imports of consumer goods and autos run about $740 billion a year. That’s fully one-third of consumer spending on goods outside of food and energy. As a result, most of the spending cutbacks won’t cost Americans their factory jobs—those factory jobs have mostly fled offshore anyway. Workshop China, in contrast, will get hurt.

What’s more, it’s still a low-rate world for most nonfinancial corporations, which have access to relatively cheap funds for expansion and capital investment. Asia and Europe are continuing to expand, with German and French growth accelerating in the third quarter. Exports of aircraft and other big items are likely to rise, too, supplying the U.S. economy with an extra lift. In other words, globalization has made consumers less central to the American economy.

Something else I didn’t know what that American credit cards (as held, and presumably with the existing lines of credit) still have USD4tr left to be spent (on). God help the economy if we do, of course.

Election day

For me, anyway. And not before time. How on Earth could the coalition’s numbers be tracking upwards?

I love the people over at Oz Politics.

Three attempts in 5 years to change my electoral enrolment, and I’m still listed as where I lived with my brother as an undergraduate – 7 years ago. Perhaps somebody down-town at the Consulate-General can offer an explanation. One, of course, is the electorate itself: Grayndler.

Call me a conspiracy theorist. Over here, I could vote for where I wanted; instead, I’m stuck voting where, frankly, it doesn’t matter (usually. I vote for Green candidates anyway – guilt-free, thank you preferential voting system! – so I always have the hope of pushing the liberal party from their spot in 2nd place).

Oh well. I get to keep my record: 28 years of age (going on 29, now) and never voted in my own electorate. I’m just never in the right place at the right time. Good thing voting is compulsory and our laws force the government to facilitate the vote of every Australian (exceptions being Indigenous people. I’ll see if I can dig up numbers on that).

” … People should be entitled to know how their water bills are being spent.”

Mr Turnbull, the Minister for the Environment, announced yesterday he would order the Productivity Commission to review the dividend policy of every capital city’s water utility and require water bills to show all fees, including dividends paid by state-owned corporations to state governments.”State governments have been treating these businesses as cash cows and running them in ways that a commercial business in that industry would never be run,” Mr Turnbull told the Herald.

“It is quite unusual for businesses that are growing and are great long-term businesses to be paying out 100 per cent of their profits in dividends … People should be entitled to know how their water bills are being spent.”

These manner of claims are amusing always because of their hypocrisy. The last people that the people need lecturing them on transparency are bloody politicians. Perhaps Mr Turnbull might like to address some of his colleagues on our entitlement to know how our money is being spent on detaining asylum seekers, and locking up their children away from schools? Just a thought.

In an incentive-based model similar to Kevin Rudd’s health plan, Mr Turnbull said yesterday a re-elected Coalition government would direct investment in water infrastructure towards states which reinvest profits from their utilities.

“We want to use some incentives for more appropriate policies and financial management, ” he said. “The concern we have is that the more the Commonwealth moves into urban water, the more the states use that to take cash out of their own water companies.

Funny – it wasn’t all that long ago that the government had been busted spending all their infrastructure money – money scheduled to last ’til 2010 – on electioneering.

An election-year increase in spending from the Government’s $1.6 billion Water Smart Australia Program – set aside to cover large-scale water infrastructure projects – has drained it nearly dry, despite it being meant to last until 2010.