Daily Archives: 14 December 2011

The Butter shortage in Norway

open quote Many Norwegians who live close to Sweden do their grocery shopping across the border where prices are lower, but to import butter has proven more difficult.

“They (Norway) have, as we see it, very restrictive trading politics, borderline protectionist,” Jonas Carlberg at the Swedish Dairy Association (Svensk MjÃ¶lk) told daily Dagens Nyheter, adding that the high custom duty is a way to protect domestic production in Norway.

But the shortage has made people turn to desperate measures, according to news agency TT.

A Russian man was caught on Friday trying to bring 90 kilogrammes of butter over the Swedish border to Norway without paying the custom duty. close quote (Read more)

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Prices spike as butter shortage spreads through Norway (Read more)

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A comment from reddit:

open quote In Norway, all milk and butter production is ruled over by an old and state-sanctioned cartel/corporation called TINE. The goal of TINE is to raise the prices on dairy products as high as humanly possible; with this, they have great success. For example: Currently, one litre of milk costs 14 Norwegian kroner = 2.431184 US$. Keep in mind that 1 US gallon = 3.78541178 litres and you can calculate the price/gallon for yourself…

As a result of this huge overprice, the result is the same as it always have been: overproduction. More is being produced, than sold. So what happens?

TINE implements quotas; each farmer is only allowed to produce x amounts of milk each year. This year, however, the production was smaller than otherwise due to the weather. So what does TINE do?

Nothing. Every grain of their being is geared towards reducing production, so they have no ideological idea that they can even do anything else. In spite of this shortage having been advertised from months and months away, they never increased the quotas for the farmers that could produce more.

I would also like to point out a couple of dirty tricks the TINE corporation uses to shut down any and all competition:

They have invented the Jarlsberg cheese, a cheese that was made exclusively to use much milk; they also lobbied for export subsidies for said cheese. We use milk worth 90 NOK to produce Jarlsberg, then it is exported for around 35-40 NOK; the other 50 NOK, around 8-9$, are subsidized by the state. This way we pay the Americans to eat our surplus milk storage and keep prices high.

Oh, and they have also blocked our enjoyment of Edamer. You see, some time ago dutch edamer cheese got popular in Norway. TINE lobbied the department of agriculture and had a tariff put up, then started producing their own shitty copies.

Same story with feta cheese. Around the early 2000’s, Arla corporation that operates in Denmark/Sweden started marketing and creating a market for feta cheese in Norway. They made great success with this. What happened then was that TINE sent a little letter to the agricultural ministry, which was, as per custom, precided over by a previous TINE CEO, and had them reinterpret the rules creatively. Previously imported cheese was judged based on the weight of the cheese itself; feta cheese on the other hand is lying in an oil solution to give it taste. Now the rules were suddenly interpreted so that the oil solution is counted as part of the cheese, thus doubling the import tolls on feta cheese. Oh and suddenly TINE launched their own shitty feta rip offs on the market as well.

tl;dr: The “butter crisis” is a result of a centrally planned Soviet-system of milk production, coupled with a rush for profit by the TINE corporation. As a result the consumer is sucked dry by the unscrupulous monopolist cunts. close quote

Capital flight within EU, unmanagable Euro-debt

Gold Tumbles Below $1,600

open quote Gold broke below $1,600 an ounce for the first time since early October, as a sharply weaker euro and losses in other markets prompted investors to raise cash by selling precious-metals holdings.

Gold, which has tarnished its image as a haven in recent months by moving in step with riskier assets like stocks and other commodities, tumbled 5% Wednesday as a broad-market rout saw investors shed holdings in favor of cash. close quote (Read more)

Zero Hedge: Gold “Rehypothecation” Unwind Begins: HSBC Sues MF Global Over Disputed Ownership of Physical Gold.
open quote physical gold in the hands of the very same insolvent financial syndicate of daisy-chained underfunded organizations, where the premature (or overdue) end of one now means the end of all, is also just as unsafe, if not more. Which is why we read with great distress a just broken story by Bloomberg according to which HSBC, that other great gold “depository” after JP Morgan (and the custodian of none other than GLD) is suing MG Global “to establish whether he or another person is the rightful owner of gold worth about $850,000 and silver bars underlying contracts between the brokerage and a client.” The notional amount is irrelevant: it could have been $0.01 or $1 trillion: what is very much relevant however, is whether or not MF Global was rehypothecating (there is that word again), or lending, or repoing, or whatever you want to call it, that one physical asset that it should not have been transferring ownership rights to under any circumstances. Essentially, this is at the heart of the whole commingling situation: was MF Global using rehypothecated client gold to satisfy liabilities? The thought alone should send shivers up the spine of all those gold “bugs” who have been warning about precisely this for years. Because the implications could be staggering. close quote

U.S. Navy was just forced to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels from an Obama-connected firm at an outrageous $16 per gallon

open quote olyndraGate was no isolated case of corrupt government misspending. The U.S. Navy was just forced to buy 450,000 gallons of biofuels from an Obama-connected firm at an outrageous $16 per gallon.

The massive Obama stimulus was supposed to generate millions of jobs, but the $535 million loan guarantee it gave to solar panel maker Solyndra on the eve of its Chapter 11 bankruptcy illustrated the fundamental incompetence of Obama’s neo-Keynesian economic ideology.

Now we find the Navy partnering with the Agriculture Department to purchase hundreds of thousands of gallons of alternative biofuel in place of standard JP-5 fuel for Navy aircraft — the biggest federal purchase of biofuel ever.

It’s part of the White House’s “we can’t wait for Congress” strategy as the 2012 election year looms. But JP-5 typically costs less than $4 a gallon. . . .

A look at the lucky seller of this environmentalist version of the proverbial $600 Pentagon toilet seat indicates that the move is not just wasteful, but ethically suspect.

As J.E. Dyer noted over the weekend on the Hot Air Green Room, “a member of Obama’s presidential transition team, T. J. Glauthier, is a ‘strategic advisor’ at Solazyme, the California company that is selling a portion of the biofuel to the Navy. Glauthier worked — shock, shock — on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.” close quote (Read more)

Attorney General Eric Holder wants you to patriotically snitch on your neighbor

He should go back to arming Mexican drug cartels.

open quote On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder urged Americans to fink on their neighbors and report intellectual-property offenses like popping or hawking unapproved pharmaceuticals and downloading music and movies illegally.

The announcement at the White House came as the Justice Department kicked off a public campaign against intellectual-property theft, which like all successful wars against societal scourges, will have public-service announcements on MTV.

“Fortunately, we can all be part of the solution. Anyone who suspects an IP crime can visit cybercrime.gov, fbi.gov, or iprcenter.gov to report suspected offenses,” Holder said. “The public’s proactive attention to these issues can help us to disrupt the sale of illegal goods; to prosecute the individuals, gangs, and international criminal organizations that profit from these activities; and to stop those who would exploit the ingenuity of others for monetary gain.” close quote (Read more)

Rupert Murdoch Lobbies Congress To Restrict Internet via SOPA

open quote News Corp. honcho Rupert Murdoch threw his weight behind Congress’ attempt to restrict the Internet, personally lobbying leaders on Capitol Hill Wednesday for two measures that purport to combat piracy.

Murdoch’s media empire is among some 350 large corporations that have come out in favor of the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, as well as the Protect IP Act in the Senate.

Both measures would require Internet operators to police activity online, and would mandate Internet giants like Google and AOL (the parent company of The Huffington Post and an opponent of the bills) and credit card companies to take down sites that have content deemed to be in violation of copyright rules.

The battle has pitted huge content generators like Disney and the motion picture industry against their online competitors, with each side reportedly spending some $90 million on lobbying efforts. close quote (Read more)

Feds produce over-the-top anti-piracy films

open quote The U.S. government wants you to know, when you buy pirated goods, the terrorists win.

A new series of advertisements produced with U.S. taxpayer money is ruffling some feathers among opponents of anti-piracy legislation being considered by Congress. The short films take a highly dramaticized approach to showing the largely made-up world of piracy being run by gangs, thugs and child slavers, all of whom are allegedly supported through illegal downloads and bootleg products.

Nevermind that the facts do not bear these allegations out: the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC) is making the case anyway. close quote (Read more)

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Swiss Govt: Downloading Movies and Music Will Stay Legal

open quote One in three people in Switzerland download unauthorized music, movies and games from the Internet and since last year the government has been wondering what to do about it. This week their response was published and it was crystal clear. Not only will downloading for personal use stay completely legal, but the copyright holders won’t suffer because of it, since people eventually spend the money saved on entertainment products.

swissIn Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the entertainment industries have been complaining about dramatic losses in revenue due to online piracy.

In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings were presented.

The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change. close quote (Read more)