Pbenjay's Blog

As I walked into Costco today and if you have been in one, you know they have a big board posted with the gas price of the day.  Actually in case you hadn’t figured it out yet, this only applies to those stores with gas pumps.  Today the gas price per gallon was $3.47 for regular.  WTF?  Last week I posted on Facebook that it was $3.35 which was already a BIG jump from the week before when it was $3.15 per gallon!

So this got me to thinking of some weird domino effect or as to what Wall-Streeters refer to as global economy.   Well maybe…. for days, no actually weeks, I have been hearing news about how horrible our corn crop is going to be.  No rain – small corn, shriveled up corn, maybe no corn.  And that means the cost of feed for cows and steers is going to go up in price due to the shortage.  Also, anyone even vaguely familiar with our basically unhealthy diet in America which seems to be based in high fructose corn syrup knows that if there is a shortage of corn, then all the products that have corn in them, will also rise in price.  It’s been estimated that upwards of 70% of our processed foods contain some corn product.  Wow, I guess EVERYTHING is going to go up in price.  Oh dear….too bad we don’t have corn in our salaries, paychecks, or commissions.

Last I knew and I admit I don’t know much, corn or corn byproducts were not in gasoline. So how does the drought in the Midwest which is destroying the corn crop, cause the weekly rise in gas prices?  That’s one hell of a domino theory!

Or are we paying more at the pump because Syria is in the midst of a civil war?  Or because Spain’s economy is slipping away although I doubt we import much gasoline from Spain.  Maybe it’s because Greece is still not out of the economic woods or because Brazil is enjoying a robust economy.   

Food for thought in the form of Amuse Bouche du Jour!  I’m assuming many people know more about this than me – See articles below.

Related articles

• Low Yields and Drought Cause Corn Prices To Surge (ibtimes.com)
• Drought Drives Up Cost Of Meat (detroit.cbslocal.com)
• Food corporations’ big drought play (salon.com)
• Midwest drought likely no boon for Central Valley corn farmers (sacbee.com)
• Beer Prices Won’t Be Affected By The Drought (businessinsider.com)
• Corn prices rally to new record high (buzz.money.cnn.com)
• Drought leads to sticker-shock at grocery store (click2houston.com)
• High Fructose Corn Syrup is Not Sugar, says FDA (smartypantsvitamins.com)