And You Thought the Marc Rich Pardon was Scandalous
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George Will:
To review: Ethanol requires corn (or sugar). Impose, by government fiat, an artificially high demand for corn, and the price of corn rises by simple supply and demand -- as does every food made with corn, from breakfast cereal to the milk you put in that cereal (corn is used as cow feed) to tortillas to meatloaf (again, cattle feed).
Meanwhile, as corn prices rise, farmers: (a) seek new farmland, which means deforestation (great for combating global warming, right?), and (b) reduce their planting of other crops in order to switch to corn, raising the price of, for example, soybeans (hence more expensive soy milk) and barley (hence more expensive beer).
Incidentally, ethanol does nothing to reduce global warming. Go figure.
So, our ethanol mania -- touted by some as our single most "enlightened" public policy -- raises most food prices around the world, kills trees and does not reduce carbon emissions.
Remind me again how this is a market failure? And remind me why we should think the Clintons' lesser half is likely to be less morally defective regarding it than her pervert husband was?
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Meanwhile, for more on the Riady family's dubious history with the Clintons, see here. For those who need a refresher course on Marc Rich, see here.
Bill Clinton, by executive edict, declared 1.7 million acres of Utah to be a national monument. Under those acres are the largest known deposit -- more than 60 billion tons -- of low-sulfur, clean-burning coal. The second largest deposit, the value of which rose because of Clinton's action locking up an alternative supply, is in Indonesia and is owned by a member of the Indonesian Riady family, of fragrant memory, which was generous to Clinton's 1992 camp.The article generally is a review of the market distortions being imposed not only on Americans but the whole world due to our irrational, warm-fuzzy-feeling ethanol mania.
To review: Ethanol requires corn (or sugar). Impose, by government fiat, an artificially high demand for corn, and the price of corn rises by simple supply and demand -- as does every food made with corn, from breakfast cereal to the milk you put in that cereal (corn is used as cow feed) to tortillas to meatloaf (again, cattle feed).
Meanwhile, as corn prices rise, farmers: (a) seek new farmland, which means deforestation (great for combating global warming, right?), and (b) reduce their planting of other crops in order to switch to corn, raising the price of, for example, soybeans (hence more expensive soy milk) and barley (hence more expensive beer).
Incidentally, ethanol does nothing to reduce global warming. Go figure.
So, our ethanol mania -- touted by some as our single most "enlightened" public policy -- raises most food prices around the world, kills trees and does not reduce carbon emissions.
Remind me again how this is a market failure? And remind me why we should think the Clintons' lesser half is likely to be less morally defective regarding it than her pervert husband was?
---
Meanwhile, for more on the Riady family's dubious history with the Clintons, see here. For those who need a refresher course on Marc Rich, see here.
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Posted by Kip on
2 February 2008
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