THIS YEAR'S INFLATION

The New York Post yesterday carried the prices of commodities, metals, bonds, etc. and reviewed their performance for 2010. Gold, for instance, closed at $1413.10 an oz.; up 29% for the year. A sign that people are afraid of other investments...not good news unless you are holding gold.

Three commodities that have some bearing on hemp, as they could be replaced by or sourced from hemp, are soybeans, cotton and ethanol. Soy is up to $13.66 a bushel, a 31.4% change from last year; cotton, however, is up much more dramatically - closing at $1.40 a lb., up 85.8%. This is making for runaway inflation and more expensive clothes, not to mention, a lot of water wasted on this thirsty monocrop.

Ethanol is at $2.36 a gallon, just under the price of petrol here in the US - and would be even cheaper if it were made en masse from hemp and other farm wastes.

John Crudele in his article about the US economy notes that consumer spending is up 5.5% -which is being toted as a good sign, but he notes that some of this spending is merely money spent on higher prices at the pump - and, he might have added, on clothing now that cotton spot prices are almost double those of last year.

So again, it is time for America to grow hemp. Ease the demand on water and create a commodity that can be produced on US soil for a change. But I doubt the Post will ever tell us such a truth.