The Global Elite Causes a Global Awakening

It's little appreciated among conservatives (in my estimation) that much of the responsibility for the overthrow of the Tunisian government and now the riots in Egypt were caused by the global elite. More specifically, the decision by Ben Bernanke of the Federal Reserve, the U.S. government, and the European Union to print money has caused a spike in commodity, including food, prices. The riots in Tunisia started as a response to those food prices and the inability of the average Tunisian to afford them. Egypt is the world's largest wheat importer. In Jordan, thousands of demonstrators called for the prime minister's resignation amid anger about "rising prices, inflation and unemployment." Take a look at a recent chart of the Continuous Commodity Index, and note that it's near an all-time high.

The constituents of the CCI can be seen here; note that food including grains, as well as energy - which also impacts food prices and increases the cost of living to the common people - make up a majority of the index. The rise of the CCI, just like the rise of global stock markets, can be directly attributed to money printing. The recipients of newly printed money largely consist of major banks, which sell their Treasury bonds to the Fed, and which in turn invest that money in assets, in this case real assets, i.e. commodities.

Zbigniew Brzezinski - remember him? - has called the recent riots and demonstrations the start of a "global political awakening", and being a fully paid-up member of the global political elite, he thinks that a bad thing.

The global elite has screwed up badly. All of their money-printing and bailouts of the politically connected has caused inflation of the basic materials which people need to live, mainly food and energy. As such, their program of developing and/or imposing an increasingly globalized government is at major risk of coming undone. The Keynesian program caused Egypt.

In the course of writing this, I came across a column by Larry Kudlow that specifically blames Ben Bernanke for the food riots in North Africa - so this isn't just my own fevered imagination.

Update: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

The surge in global food prices since the summer – since Ben Bernanke signalled a fresh dollar blitz, as it happens – is not the underlying cause of Arab revolt, any more than bad harvests in 1788 were the cause of the French Revolution.

Yet they are the trigger, and have set off a vicious circle. Vulnerable governments are scrambling to lock up world supplies of grain while they can. Algeria bought 800,000 tonnes of wheat last week, and Indonesia has ordered 800,000 tonnes of rice, both greatly exceeding their normal pace of purchases. Saudi Arabia, Libya, and Bangladesh, are trying to secure extra grain supplies.

The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said its global food index has surpassed the all-time high of 2008, both in nominal and real terms. The cereals index has risen 39pc in the last year, the oil and fats index 55pc.