The Argentine officials announced that they have plenty of wheat. As a result of predicted high crop yields from upcoming harvests, the government decided to issue 450,000 tons of surplus wheat.
The surplus wheat will be split up among three provences of Argentina. Those provences can then sell the wheat on the export market. The action was encouraged by the Argentine Interior Commerce Secretary, Guillermo Moreno.
Argentina has a policy of maintaining large wheat surpluses, for food security.
“The involvement is significant, because they are threatening more than 7 million hectares of crops planted in the spring-summer 2011, which are at risk for losing a harvest of 20 million tons of basic grains as well as lost income and liquidity of more 3.5 million basic grain producers.”-Salazar Arriaga, National Confederation of Corn Producers
To be sure Mexico’s agriculture industry is dealing with severe drought, but also flooding and…frost.
23 of Mexico’s 32 states are dealing with drought, but, now that the rainy season is about to start it looks like they’ll get hit with severe flooding, neither of which are conducive to growing crops.
In northern Mexico, winter is predicted to come on colder than normal, resulting in frost damage to many struggling crops.
Some of the worst hit states in Mexico are Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, Durango, Sonora, Chihuahua, Hidalgo, San Luis Potosí, Colima, Chiapas, Campeche, Yucatán and Zacatecas. Farmers in those states have lost too much of the growing year, which means it’s too late to plant anything.
In a hastily arranged press conference, on 04 August 2011, it was announced that the top three officials, in charge of nuclear power operations were fired.
More than four months after the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi, and with no end in sight, the Japanese government decided it was time for new blood.
Who’s being fired? Vice Minister of the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry, Matsunaga Kazuo. Director General of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, Terasaka Nobuaki. Director General of the Natural Resources and Energy Agency, Hosono Tetsuhiro.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and the Natural Resources and Energy Agency are controlled by the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry.
The announcement was made by the Minister of the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry, Kaieda Banri. Along with the dismissals, there will be a major reshuffling of all personnel within the Economy, Trade, and Industry Ministry.
Japan’s biggest paper maker, Nippon Paper Group, will lay off at least 1,300 workers and close at least five factories.
Part of the blame is on the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged three factories. Company officials say it’s not worth it to rebuild the damaged factories.
In fact business is so bad that Nippon Paper says it will close down factories, and lay off employees, as part of plans to cut production by 800,000 tons of paper.
And two industrial giants in Japan are merging in an attempt to save themselves. Hitachi and Mitsubishi will merge some of their businesses that are involved with energy and environment, to create a new company.
This continues a trend between the two companies. They’ve already created a joint rail transportation company. Analysts say eventually the two companies will fully merge.
In May the number of people getting help buying food hit record levels, again. This time more than 45 million individuals are on Food Stamps.
49 out of the 50 U.S. states recorded increases in Food Stamp recipients. Alabama leads the country with 36% of the people in that state needing help getting food.
Some government loans for college graduate students covered, or forgave, the interest payments while the student was still in school. Not anymore: “They will be responsible for the interest while they’re going to school, beginning in the 2012/2013 academic year.”- James Martin, Idaho State University Associate Director of Financial Aid
You can thank the Debt Limit deal just signed into law by President Obama.
For some students who have to take the maximum loans, it could mean paying $207.00 per month in interest, while they’re in school. That would mean they would have much less of their loans to live on.
Many graduate students at Idaho State said they might not be able to continue their higher education: “So I think taking away the subsidized, which most of my loans are, I don’t think I would have attended this program if they had done that.”-Chris Thurston
“You know, I know they have to make cuts somewhere, but unfortunately it’s the one that will affect me. But you just gotta do what you gotta do.”-Zach Migel
“If we don’t have the ability to pay for it, we’ll go for not the top notch schools, we’ll go for cheaper schools, cheaper programs.”-Sheila Mitchell
On top of the ending of the interest subsidies, the Debt Limit deal also ends a credit for students who make 12 on time loan payments.
The Japanese government announced they will create a new nuclear agency, to better respond to future nuclear disasters. This after it’s painfully obvious that the current plethora of government agencies, tasked with dealing with the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, have failed.
The latest plan to revamp nuclear regulators involves creating an agency who’s sole job is to act as first responders to any future nuclear accident. It will be created out of the current Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, and placed under control of the Environment Ministry.
The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency would continue purely as a regulatory agency.
The new first responder agency would also be responsible for monitoring of radiation levels, and control of radioactive substances.
The current Nuclear Safety Commission would be placed under the Environment Ministry as well, and act as an adviser to the first responders.
Of course the Japanese government still has to vote on the plan, but seeing what’s happening in Japan right now, any politician who’d want things to stay the same is nuts.
The number of households getting welfare in Japan hit a record number of 1.46 million. That’s households, not individuals.
The Japanese Welfare Ministry say it’s a rising trend, no thanks to the never ending nuclear disaster.
To make matters worse, Japan’s only domestic television maker, Hitachi, announced they will close up shop and move their factory to Taiwan. Of course this means more Japanese out of work. Hitachi officials say they had to make the move in order to compete with South Korean companies.
Other big name Japanese electronics makers, like Panasonic, Sony and Toshiba, all reported big loses in the past quarter. And it can’t be blamed on the nuclear disaster. The Japanese companies are having a hard time competing with other Asian nations.
This brings us to an important, and over looked fact: Japan is the second largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt (after China). Japan’s main market is the United States, yet has been losing out to companies from China and South Korea.
If things get bad enough for Japan, they will be forced to off load their U.S. bonds in order to make some money for their struggling systems. This could be why the U.S. has given Japan so much help battling the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Daiichi.
Yet another prefectural government announced they will begin radiation checks of their cows, after they discovered their cattle feed is contaminated with cesium.
That prefecture is Shimane, and it’s 708 kilometers (440 miles) south west of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant!
Shimane officials say they will begin blanket tests of their cattle starting next week.
Tests of cattle feed, at the end of July, came back showing high levels of contamination. As a result prices for cows from Shimane crashed. Officials are hoping their cows are not contaminated, because cattle farming is an important business for them.
“If the unemployment rate continues to rise, it will further damage investor confidence and force them to move away from U.S. Treasury securities, leaving the U.S. government no choice but to print money and depreciate its currency.”-Lu Zhengwei, Industrial Bank Co Ltd
Chinese officials say the U.S. Debt Limit Deal is not enough, mainly because it will not stop job loses, and it doesn’t cut enough government spending.
Zhu Baoliang, chief economist at the State Information Center, says U.S. government debt is too large to be resolved through normal measures such as tax increases and deficit reductions. Also, it is highly unlikely the U.S. government will significantly reduce entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, or significantly draw down troops overseas. All that means is at the very least the U.S. dollar will continue to lose value.
The Chinese are blaming their runaway inflation on the falling U.S. dollar. In June inflation hit 6.4% in China. The increase in costs is causing a drop in factory orders, which hits China where it hurts.
Chen Kexin, chief analyst at the Distribution Productivity Promotion Center of China Commerce, says no matter what happens now, inflation will pick up speed. He predicts oil prices will go back up to more than $100.00 per barrel, and copper could hit $10,000 per ton.
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt (the overall largest holder of U.S. debt is…the U.S. taxpayer via the U.S. Treasury). Many analysts in the United States think China has no choice but to keep buying U.S. debt, creating a false sense of security among U.S. leaders. But one analysts admits China is cutting back: “Beijing is probably not buying Treasuries as intensely as it did last year.”-Derek Scissors, The Heritage Foundation
Chinese analysts are pushing for their government to diversify their U.S. debt holdings, because the debt limit deal won’t help: “The debt crisis may have a negative impact on the fiscal spending of the U.S. government, which may drag down the U.S. economy for the rest of the year.”-Hou Zhenhai, Investment bank China International Capital Corp
It’s not just U.S. government bonds China has, but something called foreign exchange reserves. These bonds can come from corporations, like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The problem for China is most of its foreign exchange reserves are in U.S. dollars. Chinese analysts are warning of the “all your eggs in one basket” scenario; they think China will be dragged down when the United States finally sinks.
In fact, one analysts thinks the situation is so bad that China should stop investing into all foreign operations: “Because of the lack of mature overseas investment projects, the scale of China’s overseas investment is not big enough to absorb massive foreign exchange reserves in the short term. Therefore, to invest overseas is not realistic.”-Zhang Yi, Institute of Foreign Economy, the National Development and Reform Commission