Extremely enjoying this lawsuit filed by the California Public Employees Retirement System. Their beef? They bought into "structured investment vehicles" which were given AAA ratings by Moody's and Standard and Poors. It is not a terrible point? I mean, if things are going to be rated, perhaps there might be a point to the ratings. Also however it is weird that they bought in at all, as "information about the securities in these packages was considered proprietary and not provided to the investors who bought them." Would you buy that? Oh well maybe you would. Semi-related! In the world of subsidies and government interference, who is more evil, Goldman Sachs or the corn farmers of America? You can make a pretty good case for it being the corn farmers.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
18
Sounds like they've dug themselves into a cornhole.
Meanwhile, Goldman has America's finances by the Sach.
CORN THE SILENT KILLER
What's hilarious is that most of the problems that might come out of eradicating agricultural subsidies could be solved with... derivatives! And most of the reasons why agriculture is under attack in America have to do with... runaway finance! Everything is backwards, really.
OMG. That is the stupidest theory. I barely know where to start. Maybe pointing out that "corn farmers" haven;t been living high on the hog for the last 100 years (like GS). And I might add that now that commodity prices are down they're not doing so great, unlike billion-over-quarter-target-profits GS.
"As overabundant corn (and corn syrup, and everything else corn) is a major contributor to obesity, we need to include that too." Blaming corn farmers for america's addiction to fatty corn syrup is like blaming a Colombian cocoa farmer for America's cocaine use.
"Farmers have excellent political clout, and courtesy of Iowa's first-in-the-nation status, they've hijacked the entire system of electing a President." Mmmmmmmm huh. Ok. You mean that Iowans get to "highjack" the process of choosing from the 3 or 4 pre-chosen frontrunners who show up to their caucus?
Then there is also the idea that having a robust ag industry is actually a point of national security. And while the current system is an abuse of the original idea, it can be argued that the national health is better off making sure we maintain an ag level of actual commodities as opposed to, I don't know, an entire industry that doesn't actually MAKE anything but rampant speculation that results in boom/busts and in profits for the rich and massive unemployment for everyone else.
Finally, don;t forget that GS' wild positions on oil is in part what made ethanol fuel subsidies attractive to begin with AND that GS actually OWNS shares of the very commodity markets where all this evil corn is traded; isn't profiting off the corn farmer evil, while profiting off every other single possible thing, make one more evil?
so dumb. gah.
"Blaming corn farmers for america’s addiction to fatty corn syrup is like blaming a Colombian cocoa farmer for America’s cocaine use."
You make a good point. I believe we should have Apache helicopters bearing down on corn fields, wiping them all out with napalm.
Cocoa farmers are responsible for coca-ine?
My chocolate bar just got a whole lot zestier!
Wow, does this mean we corn czar?
we can haz a corn czar
My eBay ratings are also not to be trusted.
I imagine the corngrowers response will be along the lines of "Corn doesn't kill people, people kill people."
These arguments have a certain attractive form:
"X doesn't kill people, people kill people."
But more accurately: "People kill people with X."
The sad thing is, that X can be almost anything, including vegetables. And people will certainly continue to explore the possibilities.
It's my favorite catch-all! So far one of the only exceptions I've found is bloodthirsty zombies. They kill people.
If you really want people to "Be Less Stupid" you really should not be linking to half-baked shite like this. Embarrassing for you, Choire.
Speaking as someone who has worked as a finance lawyer in NYC for the last 10 years AND as someone who owns a small 100 acre family farm back in the Midwest, I can tell you that individual farmers in the heartland are literally scraping by even with the subsidies they receive (and yes, there are giant food production conglomerates that benefit too). The revenues realized from operating a family farm are laughably small (hence, why I went to law school) even compared to the combined annual compensation of just ONE junior I-Banker and his/her admin assistant, to say nothing of GS's record profits.
The high-fructose corn syrup tie-in in this piece is another crock. Less than 4% of the annual U.S. corn harvest goes to make HFCS. And guess what, it is just another refined sweetener, like molasses, sugar cane syrup and granulated sugar. I'm sorry to say that if food manufacturers suddenly replaced the HFCS with sugar in all the sweetened, processed food that you cram in your face, you would still be a fat-ass and not any more healthy.
Yes, sugar is used instead of HFCS in foods manufactured outside the U.S. and yes that is because we have protectionist tariffs in place here in the U.S. that make sugar significantly more expensive, but I would actually be okay with seeing those tariffs lifted.
Finally, can we talk about Weisenthal's picture on Clusterstock? Nice Wayfarers, you cleft-chin douche.
"In soda, it has been found that by using HFCS instead of pure sugar it can make the soda 10 times richer in harmful carbonyl compounds. According to one study, carbonyl compounds are elevated in people with diabetes and are blamed for causing diabetic complications such as foot ulcers and eye and nerve damage. Another study concluded that foods with increased fructose “produced significantly higher fasting plasma triacylglycerol values than did the glucose diet in men†and “if plasma triacylglycerols are a risk factor for cardiovascular disease, then diets high in fructose may be undesirableâ€Â. Sounds good, right?
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However, it’s not that sugar is good for us and HFCS is not. Both can be very damaging to our bodies, causing obesity, liver damage, heart disease, etc.. Pure sugar just happens to be a truly natural substance that has not been mixed in vats, chemically derived and played with, and used as cheap substitute in almost everything on the grocery store shelves. Everyone should limit the amount of sugar they ingest. But according to an article in SF Gate, “The body processes the fructose in high fructose corn syrup differently than it does old-fashioned cane or beet sugar, which in turn alters the way metabolic-regulating hormones function. It also forces the liver to kick more fat out into the bloodstream.â€Â
My sympathies to family farmers. I thought the idea of limiting the amount of subsidies farmers could receive and making the limit high enough to only impact corporate farmers was a good one. Farm subsidies also screw up foreign economies, as countries are obligated under trade treaties to allow in our subsidized corn and grains, which, because they are subsidized, can be sold for less than the local small farmers can raise it, causing them to abandon their farms and head to the US for work or join the squalor of their mega-cities.
http://www.thegoodhuman.com/2007/09/10/high-fructose-corn-syrup-vs-pure-sugar-is-one-worse-than-the-other/
I don't know what you mean by "pure sugar...is a truly natural substance." Almost all sugar consumed is heavily refined using chemical reagents such as phosphoric acid (which is also widely used in sodas), the health effects of which have also been found to be negative in some studies.
Whether HFCS is or is not more evil than cane sugar, it is clear that agricultural subsidies in the US are largely used to encourage farmers to grow a very narrow range of crops. Many processed foods, as Michael Pollan points out, are simply "clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat â€" three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.) For the last several decades â€" indeed, for about as long as the American waistline has been ballooning â€" U.S. agricultural policy has been designed in such a way as to promote the overproduction of these five commodities, especially corn and soy."
If farmers are only scraping by despite the $25 billion in subsidies they receive, isn't it reasonable to ask some questions about where that money is going and if some of it shouldn't be reallocated? As consumers, we are surrounded by artificially cheap (because of all of those Farm Bill subsidy dollars) artificially produced food. Making Cheetos cheaper than carrots seems pretty morally objectionable to me.
I'm all for supporting farmers, but I object to lining the pockets of Monsanto and subsidizing the cost of processed foods, which (as far as I can tell) is pretty much what the Farm Bill currently does.
But which is worse: high fructose corn syrup or aspartame?