Why 2013 will be a year of crisis ?
By David Frum, CNN
Contributor
September 3, 2012 -- Updated 1501
GMT (2301 HKT)
Editor's note: David Frum is a contributing editor at Newsweek and The
Daily Beast and a CNN contributor. He is the author of seven books, including a
new novel, "Patriots."
(CNN) -- Prediction: 2013 will be a year of serious global
crisis. That crisis is predictable, and in fact has already begun. It will inescapably
confront the next president of the United States. Yet this emerging crisis got
not a mention at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. We'll see if the
Democrats do better.
The crisis
originates in this summer's extreme weather. Almost 80% of the continental
United States experienced drought conditions. Russia and Australia experienced
drought as well.
The
drought has ruined key crops. The corn harvest is expected to drop to the
lowest level since 1995. In just July, prices for corn
and wheat jumped about 25% each, prices for soybeans about 17%.
These
higher grain prices will flow through to higher food prices. For consumers in
developed countries, higher food prices are a burden -- but in almost all
cases, a manageable burden.
Americans
spend only about 10% of their after-tax incomes on food of all kinds, including
restaurant meals and prepackaged foods. Surveys for Gallup find that the
typical American family is spending one-third less on food
today, adjusting for inflation, than in 1969.
But step
outside the developed world, and the price of food suddenly becomes the single
most important fact of human economic life. In poor countries, people typically
spend half their incomes on food -- and by "food," they mean first
and foremost bread.
When grain
prices spiked in 2007-2008, bread riots shook 30
countries across the developing world, from Haiti to Bangladesh, according to
the Financial Times. A drought in Russia in 2010 forced suspension of
Russian grain exports that year and set in motion the so-called Arab spring.
Since the
days of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the Egyptian government has provided subsidized
bread to the population. A disk of round flat bread costs about a penny. In the
later 2000s, however, the Mubarak government found it could not keep pace with
surging grain costs.
As Egypt's
population doubled from 20 million in 1950 to 40 million in 1980 and now more
than 80 million, Egypt has gained first place as the world's largest wheat
importer. The price rises of 2007-2010 exceeded the Mubarak government's
resources. Cheap bread vanished from
the stores. Discontent gathered. In the August 18 issue of the British magazine
The Spectator, John R. Bradley, an Arabic-speaking journalist long resident in
Egypt, described what happened next:
"The conversations of tiny groups of Cairo's
English-speaking elites, and their Western drinking companions, were a world
apart from talk among the Egyptian masses. ... The main hope of those who
poured into Tahrir Square was shared by the revolutionaries in Tunisia: that
sudden and radical change would miraculously mean affordable food."
And if
food prices surge again? China is especially vulnerable to food cost
inflation. In just one month, July 2011, the cost of living jumped
6.5%. Inflation happily subsided over the course of 2012. Springtime hopes for
a bumper U.S. grain crop in 2012 enabled the Chinese central bank to ease
credit in the earlier part of the summer. Now the Chinese authorities will face
some tough choices over what to do next.
The Arab
Spring of 2011 is sometimes compared to the revolutions of 1848. That's apter
than people realize: the "hungry '40s" were years of bad harvests
across Europe. Hungry people are angry people, and angry people bring
governments down.
Will 2013
bring us social turmoil in Brazil, strikes in China or revolution in Pakistan?
The answer can probably be read in the price indexes of the commodities
exchanges -- and it is anything but reassuring.
http://www.cnn.com
Semoga krisis di tahun 2013 tidak pernah terjadi. Amin
No comments:
Post a Comment