Soaring food prices to provoke massive civil unrest many times worse than scenes in Cairo

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, February 4, 2011

The National Inflation Association has issued a chilling new advisory in which it warns that the inflationary time bomb being created by the policies of the Federal Reserve will lead to American cities experiencing similar chaos currently unfolding in Egypt by 2015.

Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has been in power for three decades and in that time has managed to handle all manner of threats to the stability of his regime. But it was the huge unrest sparked by soaring food prices that finally led the Egyptian people to launch a revolution which is likely to see Mubarak forced out of office for good.

“Food inflation in Egypt has reached 20% and citizens in the nation already spend about 40% of their monthly expenditures on food. Americans for decades have been blessed with cheap food, spending only 13% of their expenditures on food, but this is about to change,” warns the NIA press release.

The NIA says that the world is in a state of “inflationary panic,” evidenced by numerous global revolts that can all be traced back to crippling food inflation.

“One thing NIA is almost 100% sure of is that come year 2015, middle-class Americans will be spending at least 30% to 40% of their income on food, similar to Egyptians today,” warns the NIA, advising Americans to stock up on storable food if they wish to avoid being impacted by empty shelves which have occurred in Egypt as a result of panic buying.

The report notes that the Obama administration will do nothing to cut the massive national deficit because Washington living within its means would cause a stock market collapse and a new Great Depression, “But at least it would save the U.S. dollar from losing all of its purchasing power. In fact, the standard of living for middle class Americans might actually improve if the government allowed the free market to put our economy into a depression, because goods and services would get cheaper.”

The report also notes that the M2 money supply rose by $54.2 billion over the course of two weeks alone last month, adding that by the time QE2 has finished, the overall money supply will have risen by 192 per cent, without even accounting for QE3 and QE4 which many analysts say are now in the pipeline. All this is contributing to a catastrophic loss of confidence in the dollar and is laying the groundwork for a hyperinflationary holocaust.

“At least in Egypt, their currency still has purchasing power and their citizens are trying to implement a regime change before it is too late. By 2015 in America, it will already be too late and the civil unrest here has the potential to be many times worse,” states the advisory.

As Tyler Durden writes, the NIA are notorious for their dire predictions, but most of what the organization forecast over the last few years has come to pass. “Love them or hate them, only the most self-deluded can claim that the NIA, and its predictions, have been incorrect so far in this monetary ‘printing’ cycle,” writes Durden.

In a November 2010 press release, the NIA warned that the Federal Reserve’s new quantitative easing program would cause “societal collapse” as soon as this year, and gave a price list for a number of items as an example of how hyperinflation would cripple the country. According to the NIA, within the next few years;

- A standard 24 oz loaf of bread will cost over $23 dollars.
- A 32oz package of granulated sugar will cost over $62 dollars.
- A 11.30 oz container of roast coffee will set you back over $77 dollars
- A 64 fl oz container of Minute Maid Orange Juice will cost more than $45 dollars.
- A Hershey’s Milk Chocolate 1.55 oz candy bar will cost over 15 dollars.
- A plain white men’s cotton t-shirt will cost $55.57.

Our prediction three years ago, based on UN documents, which was made six months before the collapse of Lehman brothers, that the world would be hit by massive food riots and anti-government unrest in the aftermath of an economic collapse, is now unfolding at an astonishing pace.

Global food prices have skyrocketed to new records in recent weeks, with many blaming Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke for enacting policies that have helped trigger political unrest in Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt and other countries.

Food prices are already above 2008 levels, when the dollar was even weaker than it is now and when oil prices hovered at around the $150 level, with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization insisting that they are only set to rise higher.

“The (UN FAO) index averaged 230.7 points in January, up from 223.1 points in December and 206 in November. The index highlights how food prices, which throughout most of the last two decades have been stable, have taken off in alarming fashion in the last three years. In 2000 the index stood at 90 and did not break through 100 until 2004,” reports the Telegraph.

Global hedge funds are now moving to corner the food and commodities market, with hedge fund manager Anthony Ward investing a purported £650m ($1 billion dollars) in the cocoa market by buying 240,000 tonnes of beans, enough to make 5 billion chocolate bars. Financial speculation on food prices has amplified volatile prices.