invisible crisis

Just before the housing bubble burst, things looked really good. Excitement was in the air. Credit was easy to come by and housing tracts appeared out of nowhere as so many mushrooms before dawn. There were new houses everywhere you looked, and more were being built all the time. Furthermore the houses changed hands in the blink of an eye. Everyone was getting richer and richer all the time.

Very few people had an inkling that anything was wrong or could go wrong. The prevailing mantra was housing will always go up. It has always gone up and it will always go up. Never mind that the population is aging, never mind that many people already owned two and three houses. Housing always goes up. There is no such thing as a national housing market, all housing is local, and local looked good. And then the bombshell hit.

Currently, there is a food crisis. It is hardly visible from where we are and as one San Diego reader to another blog remarked: supermarket shelves are full and people are obese. What food crisis? But the food crisis is as real as the housing crisis. It just hasn't hit the US yet. Being one of the richest countries in the world has its advantages you could say. But it will hit and it will hit hard. First the farmers will benefit some more, and then everyone will be in dire straits. Everyone except the well to do. Unless of course things really go out of hand. You never know.

One thing about bubbles and catastrophes of this kind is that things always look the best right before the implosion. Witness all the overweight people. Witness all the wasted food everywhere. Nevertheless, we are about to experience a major food implosion. Many countries have already seen riots and more riots are sure to come. Better get ready for the storm. Food prices are rising at astronomical rates, and they are rising to levels that will hurt middle class consumers. But it won't stop there. There will be shortages too. It won't be pretty. And there won't be any quick solutions. So much for biofuels you might say.