Rice will probably climb to $2,000 per ton too because there seems to be a direct correlation now between the price of oil and the price of the cereal which is consumed by half of the world's population.
To speculators, rice and oil are one and the same thing--a commodity to be traded, hoarded, bartered and damn the consumers.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2008/may/17/yehey/opinion/20080517opi4.html
What Tony says is not difficult to imagine. This a very good summary of what might well happen. There is no mention of alternative energy and other efficiencies that will be more cost effective.
We had this situation in that last oil spike in the late 70's when the Seyyeds' Peak Oil men were at work. At that time the North Sea was going to be explored and once they came on stream, the price of oil hit $10. So the same sort of thing will happen.
Why will that happen? Well, companies like Exxon are not about to shift into solar or wind or any other energy. They stand to lose a lot of money, and the world is pretty much ruled by them. So they want the price to go up, so that they can find oil in more expensive areas, even though it literally comes out of the ground on its own in Iran.
One day the oil will not come from the Persian Gulf and that is what the West wants. When you factor all the head-aches associated with getting oil from such characters as the Seyyeds or Arabs, who make such a fuss about everything, then the West would rather dig deeper somewhere else.
But if Iran had its civilized citizens work for its own country; yes that means returning to Iran from Los Angeles and other megapopulated Iranian centres of the world, then Iran would become the most advanced nation in Western Asia. So the main problems is the oil and brain drain of Iran.
Sad to say it, but ask a poor man in Iran, what does he want to do, and he will tell you, that he wants to go to America. He has fallen for the life style he has seen on TV programmes. He knows he can have Ghormehsabzi in LA and he has more money in his pocket than staying in Iran.
This situation is nothing new. How many doctors I used to come across every holiday when I used to fly back to Iran in 70's when I was at a British boarding school. The doctors used to tell me, "oh you are from Shemiran", and your family is well connected. But I used to hit back saying,"but the people need your services" and they would say, how am I going to live to a high standard?
So we had a nightmare scenario in Iran in the 70's. Iran was not developing fast enough. The Shahanshah was told that he was aloser, and the money was going into his pocket, instead of basic infrastructure, so that doctors could serve and make money in Iran. I will not give you a boring history lesson of what happened next.
But look at the situation now. We have after a decade or so of relative calm, the country again being sqweezed big times for its intelligencia, and restricted even more by both the Seyyeds and their policies, which have had dire consequences for trade. People have had to set up shop in Dubai, and use all kinds of nifty ways to by-pass the American banks. In summary they ended up doing business with China. So Iran is dealing with China instead of US as it used in the times of Shahanshah.
So why is it that no one screams and shouts in the Western liberal press like they did then about this Chinese monopoly. The most we have heard was the leading article in the Economist about the new colonialist role of China. But that's it. There are no cartoons of Chinese rulers with the Seyyeds, like the ones we used to get of the Shah.
So the world has reduced Iran to an exclusive supplier of energy to western industries in China; the people will be siphoned off to America and Australia; and no one will be bothered to unite the intelligencia all over Iran in exile. The reason is simple. They do not want another Japan in Western Asia. Just suck our oil and brains.
