Food Safety

We will get to the topic of food safety, please be patient.

I subscribe to (too) many financial newsletters. Partly because I'm compulsive about keeping my finger on the economic pulse, partly because I love the BS the marketing guys throw, and partly (mostly) because I love economist's humor."Rude Awakening" from Agora Financial is an example.
I want to stress that this article is from their public information and not subscription/subscriber based. I hope that if I plug them here they'll allow me to spread their wit and wisdom . That site would be http://www.agorafinancial.com . Check out this hilarious article:

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Joel Bowman, reporting from Taipei, Taiwan...

“That’s what I love about Americans,” declared a Polish businessman, seated to our immediate left. “They have an amazing capacity for optimism, no matter how bad things get.”

In Poland, the young man informed us, people don’t celebrate good news until after the event has been and gone, lest it be snatched from them at the crucial moment.

“You see this all the time,” chorused the Frenchman, seated directly across from us. “Even now, when the U.S. economy is going up in flames, the Americans still believe they can turn it around.”

“Well,” countered the only American at the table, “Call it a ‘Santa Clause’ viewpoint if you like, but maybe that’s what we need right now; a renewal of faith in our market; a resurgence of confidence.”

“Faith in the economy only counts if the numbers back it up,” a Taiwanese businessman added, reading your Australian editor’s mind.

This amusing geopolitical microcosm played out during a schmooze and booze event here in Taipei earlier this week. The hopeful American...the cynical Frenchman...the cautious eastern European...the calculating Asian...it might have been a United Nations gathering, except that this event was about building businesses, not obstructing them, and, as far as we know, no attendee’s ticket price found its way onto a taxpayer tab.

Perhaps the views expressed were a little generalized but, nevertheless, this international bevy of opinion provided us some welcome relief after the previous week’s green-shoots overload. The background to this friendly kerfuffle, of course, was that most major indexes suffered a mini-selloff during the week. On Wall Street the Dow slipped almost 3%, with the S&P 500 not far behind. Both measures sit more or less breakeven for the year.

(For those keeping score at home, the performance of the native measures of our other debate participants, are as follows: France’s CAC is about where it started 2009, following a similar trajectory as their “overly optimistic” American brethren; Warsaw’s WIG index is the second best of the selected bunch, up about 10% YTD after hitting its low a few weeks before the Americans; Taiwan’s Taiex, despite suffering a horrendous month of June after an overbought rally following the Chinese/Taiwan trade agreement, is up over 25% YTD; and finally, the Aussie All Ordinaries is higher by a modest 7% for the year.)

After imbibing a few more glasses of wine and exchanging a few more business cards, members of the micro-UN group found themselves back in approximately the same seating arrangement as earlier in the evening. The debate quickly rekindled.

“So are you saying my opinion is stupid because I choose to believe a recovery is possible?” the American woman resumed, baiting the Taiwanese fellow into battle.

“He didn’t say stupid,” the Pole intervened, saving the blushing Asian man, “he said premature.”

“No he didn’t,” the Frenchman protested, “You said premature...he said factually baseless. I said it was stupid.”

“And what do you think,” asked one of the debaters, addressing the Australian seat.

Sensing that things were heading into emotional waters, we decided to change tack. “Economics is such a stuffy subject,” we suggested. “Who votes we discuss religion instead?”

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Funny, huh? The point is, economists are always that funny, intentionally or not. Bernake cracks
me up, he doesn't even have to open his mouth. The minute he puts on that earnest, salesman's face I start giggling. Geithner, same thing. I think those guys have special training on saying absolute whoppers with a straight face. Or, perhaps that's their special talent, discovered early in life...the ability to deceive and have people swallow, even applaud the deception.
Here's another killer economist quote (I tell you, these guys are funny, almost as amusing as politicians..and when you mix the two it's a clown fest). This piece is also pulled from Agora Financial.

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By Dan Denning, editor of the Australian Daily Reckoning

When a large holder of U.S. dollars declares that the dollar is in “great shape,” should we believe him? My answer is, “Probably not.”

Russia’s Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin told journalists this week that the U.S. dollar is in “good shape.” He added that, “It’s too early to speak of an alternative [to the U.S. dollar].” These remarks came after Chinese and Russian officials have quite publicly suggested that the world’s financial system would benefit from using a currency that wasn’t being run by a bunch of inflationistas in America.

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Isn't that great? Inflationista. This Kudrin is the same guy who recently, and pointedly, authorized the exchange of American treasury Bonds to the IMF in exchange for a basket of global currencies. You have to love the sheer nerve.

Speaking of sheer nerve, I'm starting to see a lot of "non-starter "products being sold to newbie gardeners. And there are a lot of newbie gardeners. I'll get to them in a minute. Kindly. Let's go right now to the Gardener's Supply Company, and their new product, "The Zone". That sound you hear would be me retching in the background. "The Zone" is a very ugly bag that they are selling to wrap around 3" plants to protect them in the winter and raise them up a growing zone. So far so good, although I do wonder how light will penetrate this bag. I muse that it wouldn't matter if the plant in question drops its' leaves for winter dormancy...but those kinds of plants often don't need much if any protecting. I find the product information sadly lacking as to vital information concerning light and water penetration. The part that gags me though, is the price tag...$34.95. Real gardeners are a frugal lot. We go with straw and burlap, thankyouverymuch, agribon frost blankets at $4.00 each if the plant needs light. And please let me know if there's something cheaper. Because the whole, basic idea of gardening is frugality. I've changed clothes and showered twice today...I was unbelievable filthy. From gardening. And a bit sunburned and tired. I strained a back muscle slightly while heaving many 25 lb. bags of gardenthisandthat and spent money at the professional quality garden supply, which is not a hardware store or chi chi online store. I expect to receive at a minimum a five-fold return on my investment in the form of garden produce. Produce which I will can, freeze, dry, or cold storage so that we are still enjoying the benefits of gardening in the winter.

Which finally brings us to our topic, "food safety". I saw an article in "The Washington Post",
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061402741.html?hpid=topnew, which concerns the absolute tsunami of seed sales.
The article concludes that the public is buying extra seeds due to the economy and "food safety".
This kind of thing always sets my gears spinning. Ten years ago, did you ever hear this terminology, "food safety"? And what does that relatively new terminology mean to you, personally? The usage in the article seems to be that "food safety" is protection from recent infectious agents discovered in foods such as spinach. Okay, I'll buy that...people were plenty scared when that outbreak concerning spinach happened...and before that strawberries, and peanuts.

"Food safety" means something more to me though, and I think to a lot of the new gardeners out there. It's partly about E. coli outbreaks, partly about the FDA's jones to irradiate our food supply. But, referencing our previous topic of amusing international conversations, amusing politicians, amusing salespeople for investments....we, the people, are ultimately not that confident, and when it comes to our personal safety we are not that amused. "Food Safety" takes on a new meaning when we filter it through the political assurances that our money is good. If our money was good then they wouldn't need to tell us. If they spend a lot of time grinning and shucking on the national and international stage to tell us that our money is good...then it's not. And we'd better look to safety.