On Thu, 07 Nov 2013 06:19:23 -0700, Stormin Mormon
wrote:

...snip....
I may be "preaching to the choir" here but just
imagine if some event were to occur that pushed
the cost of your favorite kind of canned beans from
$1.89 to just under $14.00! Yeah, you could change
brands or stop eating beans but what if the event
or events effected the entire food industry? What

To me, the most frightening aspect is that the petroleum industry a long
time ago learned that it could raise the rpice with impunity, ...by simply
removing the gasoline for a while. Price went from ?? to $2 instantly, yet
very few stations were burnt to the ground, and no one in Congress was
voted out.

Of course the justification for the increase was the instability in the
MidEast. Ok, so then if the crude cost so much, why did the top seven oil
companies then post the most outrages profits in history? Even as they
tried to shovel the money into tax exmpt investments, so they subtract
from those profits? What did they do with that money, they bought
farmland, like you would NOT believe. Of corse all the farmers encouraged
to 'borrow' easy money from govt sources with promises of fortunes and
promptly removing most subsidies further reducing profits until many, many
famers got into financial troubles and were foreclosed on and HAD to sell.
Making farmland readily available at incredibly low prices.

Now, oil companies armed with the knowledge that it is possible to raise
the price of a 'necessary' commodity to any level by simply removing it
for awhile have bought a huge percentage of food source lands... One must
wonder whether the same technique to increase profits will happen after
becoming completely entrenched in food source supply. And, let's add a few
laws to prevent people from growing their own food and you have an
interesting scenario.

Even utilities do not seem to be exampt from the effect. After moving to
AZ and being surprised at the cost of electricity; I noticed a pattern.
Everytime the evening news carried people complaining about the high cost
of electricity; we suddenly had power outages. Outages that lasted about
two hours, just long enough to panic you, but not so long as to lose
fridge and frozen foods, ...and no more talk about the high price of
electricity.