food

For 99.9999% (our estimate) of Americans, there is great news on the way - retail bacon prices are about to plummet. However, with food accounting for 14% of CPI, we suspect the pork-price-pounding is about to become Janet Yellen's new 'transitory' problem.

In the first half of the year, the best performing commodity in the tradable universe was the USDA Boxed Pork Belly Cut 200lb, which had risen 87% year-to-date, with the media reassuring that the demand was not just seasonal.

Authored by Michael Kern via Crypto Insider,

Protests continue to rage in Venezuela as inflation soars to unprecedented levels and the price of oil remains low. The country’s national currency is now worth less than fictional gold in Azeroth, the setting of the popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game World of Warcraft, pushing Venezuelans to bitcoin to hedge against the nation’s struggling economy.

So, What Happened?

Authored by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

In my lifetime, I’ve had the misfortune of being present in two major natural disasters and one violent social crisis. Each taught me valuable lessons.

In the aftermath of a natural disaster, there’s the danger of the loss of shelter, services, and food. In most cases, people who experience the loss of shelter and services realise that “things are bad all around” and they tend to do the best they can, accepting that life will be hard for a period of time.

This morning, BofA has released a humongous, nearly 200-page "primer" on the global sharing economy which in the eyes of Wall Street and Silicon Valley is the biggest disruptor behind virtually all 21st century business models. Since it is impossible to summarize the report, which will be largely ignored by most of BofA's clients who will instead focus on the hundreds of charts scattered throughout, we will simply summarize the basics as laid out by BofA, and then present some of the more interesting charts, with the remainder to be published in subsequent thematic posts.

Via Priceonomics.com,

Americans love the genre of cuisine generally known as "Mexican food". The cuisine of our southern neighbor has been ingrained in our culture since the early 20th century. In many respects, it has evolved beyond its origins to become something uniquely American (think Tex-Mex and giant breakfast burritos).