December 19, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
An estimated 12 million children across the United States are currently facing hunger on a daily basis. With nearly 40 million people living below the government’s officially recognized “poverty line”, chronic undernourishment affects as many as 1 in 6 American children. In 2007 98% of US families with “very low food security” reported being afraid they would not have enough to make it to their next opportunity to acquire food, while 97%, reported that the food they bought was simply not enough to avoid going hungry, and that there was no money left to buy more.
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July 7, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
As the United States emerges from its national independence celebration, traditionally a holiday when citizens across the nation take to the roads to visit family, friends or vacation sites, regular unleaded gasoline has hit a record high price of $4.11 per gallon. With some economists having forecast an unusually slow driving holiday, and anecdotal reports [...]
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June 23, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A fast-unfolding food shortage is engulfing the entire world, driving food prices to record highs. Over the past half-century grain prices have spiked from time to time because of weather-related events, such as the 1972 Soviet crop failure that led to a doubling of world wheat, rice, and corn prices. The situation today is entirely different, however. The current doubling of grain prices is trend-driven, the cumulative effect of some trends that are accelerating growth in demand and other trends that are slowing the growth in supply.
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March 17, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
On Thursday of last week, we found on the same day reports that mortgage foreclosures were at an all-time high in the US, the US dollar had fallen to an all-time low against the euro ($1.56 to 1€), the Federal Reserve joined with other central banks to infuse $200 billion into capital markets, oil hit [...]
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February 6, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Lester R. Brown, EPI :: We are witnessing the beginning of one of the great tragedies of history. The United States, in a misguided effort to reduce its oil insecurity by converting grain into fuel for cars, is generating global food insecurity on a scale never seen before.
The world is facing the most severe [...]
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February 4, 2008 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The ‘Davos Conversation’ is a multimedia effort to bring online public together with major policy-makers, activists and economists, to broaden the scope of debate at the World Economic Forum. The question which was used as a platform for the online forum was “what one thing would make the world a better place?”
Individual citizens, government officials, [...]
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January 2, 2008 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Sentido.tv :: 2008 will be a year in which the integrity of election processes, the quality and resilience of cultivated soils, the availability of credit to consumers, the affordability of homes and rentals, and access to affordable vital staples like food and water, as well as the cost of transportation, will affect economies the world [...]
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December 14, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Lester R. Brown, EPI :: If you think you are spending more each week at the supermarket, you may be right. The escalating share of the U.S. grain harvest going to ethanol distilleries is driving up food prices worldwide.
Corn prices have doubled over the last year, wheat futures are trading at their highest level in [...]
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November 20, 2007 :: admin :: One Comment
As the crisis stemming from high-risk sub-prime mortgage lenders’ collapse in the US spreads, the real estate market beyond US borders is being hit by what observers are calling the ‘credit crunch’, taking for granted this will affect all international financial endeavors, such is the situation. The governor of the Bank of England has now [...]
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October 24, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
THE DROP IN THE DOLLAR’S VALUE AGAINST LEADING CURRENCIES WILL HAVE REPERCUSSIONS, WHATEVER THE IMMEDIATE CONSOLATIONS
Sentido.tv :: Americans living overseas see the front edge of the dollar collapse. Life in Europe seems to be twice as expensive as just a few years ago, as Euro-driven price-inflation meets the rapid drop in the value of [...]
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October 15, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Emily Arnold & Janet Larsen, EPI :: The global consumption of bottled water reached 154 billion liters (41 billion gallons) in 2004, up 57 percent from the 98 billion liters consumed five years earlier. Even in areas where tap water is safe to drink, demand for bottled water is increasing—producing unnecessary garbage and consuming vast [...]
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October 13, 2007 :: admin :: No Comment Yet
Lester R. Brown, EPI :: Peak oil is described as the point where oil production stops rising and begins its inevitable long-term decline. In the face of fast-growing demand, this means rising oil prices. But even if oil production growth simply slows or plateaus, the resulting tightening in supplies will still drive the price of [...]
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August 14, 2007 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Water is one of the “fundamental building-blocks of life”, as is often said in science, in biology classrooms, in medicine, theology, environmental policy debates, and in cosmology and space exploration. It is also a commodity whose economic reality is increasingly defined by chronic scarcity and often intensely uneven distribution.
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January 22, 2006 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
In the summer of 2005, the Economist magazine led with a story entitled “After the Fall”. The article discussed in detail the problems inherent in what appears to be the most expansive boom real estate has seen since records began, and of all markets studied, only Germany, Japan and Hong Kong were not contributing to the inflation.
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