Inflation and Rising Food Prices Lead to Riots in Haiti, Cairo, Next, Revolution?

There is no faster way to make someone angry than to reach into their wallet. To add fuel to the fire, steal the money that would have paid for their dinner, and catastrophe ensues.

A downright frightening facet of the global economic downturn is rising inflation. Some people—wealthy, the middle class in industrialized countries—can deal with the spike in the price, say, of rice. However, most of the world, lest it be forgotten that more than ten billion live on less than $2 a day, cannot simply buy a 36-inch instead of a 42-inch flatscreen television to balance the budget. The proof?

Food riots.

In the streets of Haiti, the most destitute state in the Americas, exactly such a disaster is taking place right now. In Cairo, where corruption had already mangled the bread industry, rising food prices have set off unrest there as well. Both countries are desperately poor; while there are nice hotels in Cairo, more than 74 million Egyptians live on less than $1 a day. People have also gone from wits end to violence in Cameroon and Cote d'Ivoire. Protests have hit Uzbekistan, Yemen, Bolivia and Indonesia.

The venerable World Food Programme of the United Nations, which feeds more than 70 million people every day, is now starved for cash and suppliers. World Bank President Robert Zoellick, after asking rich countries to go above and beyond for another $500 for WFP, said, "While many worry about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs."

Remember that unreasonable bread prices was an instigator of the French Revolution. From "A Popular History of France," by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot, "We could see the French flying over the roads, across fields and through hedges, in such numbers that the sight must have been seen to be believed.  There were in the outskirts of our town and in the neighboring villages, so vast a multitude of knights and men-at-arms tormented with hunger, that it was a matter horrible to see. They gave their arms to get bread."

A riot of desperation may unsettle Port-au-Prince, and Haitians are targeting President René Préval. From the Associated Press, "We heard the speech, but the speech is empty," said student protest organizer Herve Saintiles, 37. "We are going to hold the president responsible for all these problems." Holding officials responsible is one thing, revolution is quite another.

Perhaps the scarcity of resources, as a Malthusian demand of people around the world, has now become one of the defining characteristics of this globalized planet, one that stands in stark contrast to the French aristocracy two centuries ago.

And if revolution came in Cairo, in Port-au-Prince, or in Yaoundé, would we even want to see where it was headed?

UPDATE: Hait's Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis has resigned; Zoellick has said that 33 countries are at risk; Wall Street Journal front page: biofuels "appalling."

[Photo of the 18th-Century France from Gutenberg.]

Exxon Records Biggest Profit in US History, on Eve of Possible Recession

The Olympics are coming up, and excepting the host country—China—for risking the reputation of hosting the 2008 Genocide Olympics, all kinds of records will be set. Today, other accomplishments are gaining headlines. ExxonMobil, the world's largest corporation reported the biggest profit in the history of the United States: $11.06 billion.

That is tough to top, in any regard. The first, and obvious question: why, then, are gas prices still high? Click the image to the right to watch Jim Lehrer ask Chevron Corporation's Peter Robertson exactly that question. Chevron, while it fell short of ExxonMobil's record this quarter, itself set a company profit record.

"Over the last five years, we've earned $53 billion. And we've invested $53 billion," Robertson said. "Now, the precise number is a coincidence, but it's a fact. So, we invest. And, prices are going up. That tells us the market is saying we need more investment. We need more supply. Prices go up, we have more money to invest, we invest it, and hopefully that will bring on the supply over time."

Often, the word used to describe you or I at the short end of the pump, conveniently left out of Robertson's explanation here, is gouged. In general, the only people making more money in the United States than the oilmen are big-time bankers. Energy and money are the ones across the country making the windfall.

Only, this simple picture may soon grow far more complicated when you look at them both at the same time. As it turns out, Wall Street bankers have stuck a whole lot of wrenches in the country's economic gears. Subprime mortgages could be dragging the country into a recession. Say, for a moment, that the developing world doesn't keep US growth afloat. Americans lose houses, savings, and the extra wallet cash that makes $3.05 a gallon doable.

Oil companies do as they may—government doesn't regulate gas prices, after all, it taxes them, yes? At the same time, then, let the tens of billions go into, as Mr. Robertson explains it, reinvestment into the oil industry. Because, looking further down the line into the latter half of the 21st century, surely there's a future in driving around gas-guzzling vehicles with the passenger and back two seats empty, right?

"Supply over time," as Robertson says, may be a goal, but he knows, as we do too, at least according to the federal Government Accountability Office, that time is running out.

The last five years of ExxonMobil's stock price, roughly the time of the Iraq war:

(Chart from Yahoo!.)

The Inquirer's World Water Crisis Watch

The Inquirer is now fixing its eyes on what could be the next truly global humanitarian crisis: the fight for clean water.

Only a fraction of the world's water is fresh (or, not salty), and already a billion people a day lack adequate resources for drinking and bathing.

As an introduction, click on the image to work with an informative interactive map put together by the BBC which indicates a number of flashpoints around the world where catastrophe looms.