In Business News …
The beatings will continue until morale improves – the BBC reports that Austerity ‘may last until 2020’. George Osborne just can’t understand why laying off thousands of people and slashing government spending while increasing taxes during a recession hasn’t managed to balance the budget and made the British economy grow, so he is going to continue to do it for another 5 years. He is really puzzled that the only bright spot was when they spent all that money and hired all those people for the Olympics.
Since playing with the price of oil wasn’t evil enough, the CBC reports that corporations have been playing with the price of Chocolate:
Authorities in Canada have charged the food giants Nestle and Mars, together with a network of independent wholesale distributors, in an alleged conspiracy to fix prices of chocolates.
The Competition Bureau in the capital Ottawa said it has uncovered “evidence” suggesting price-fixing.
Nestle Canada, Mars Canada, and the distributors ITWAL have been charged.
The Bureau said the Canadian division of the US confectionary company Hershey co-operated with its investigation.
What do they have to do before we start throwing CEOs in prison? First they steal homes, and now they are going after chocolate. When will people agree that enough is enough?
8 comments
Coffee.
That is the breaking point, methinks ;).
It’s time to get in on the ground floor of guillotine manufacturing … needles, yarn, and instructions included with every unit. 😈
itwal, is that like a cross between cousin it and a narwhal?
I know that the “I” is independent, the “W” is wholesalers, and the “AL” is alliance, but the “T” isn’t obvious, although it might be tobacco, as the organization started by apparently supplying convenience stores with tobacco products and candy in Ontario. It is the largest wholesaler in Canada, but it is apparently an umbrella organization for independent wholesalers that allows them to benefit from the buying power of the entire system.
The reason I mentioned coffee is that apparently there is a coffee blight hitting parts of Latin America. They say. I have my suspicions about what is actually going on…
Coffee is definitely going up in price. The commodity markets are where the big money is made these days.
Yep. I really don’t know anything about anything, but even I’ve been picking up hints that commodities might be the next hot thing, after real estate and stocks crashed so spectacularly. And I’d bet good money that the rampant inflation I see with every trip to the grocery isn’t solely due to the rise in transport costs.
The rise is transportation costs is a result of a price for oil that has nothing to do with supply or demand of anything other than oil futures shares, just like every other commodity we buy.