The Great Sugar Shakedown

[Billy T]

I looked it up...the actual figures for US sugar consumption are 46.7lbs of sucrose and 37.7lbs of HFCS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup
...

Why a graph that should be here does not print, I don´t know. It is from: http://vegetarische.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/total-sugar-consumption-in-u-s-vs-germany/
So I give its data showing the rapid and accelerating increase with time of US per capita sugar consumption.

Pounds of sugar per American consumed annually
1970: 122
1980: 123
1990: 137
1995: 150
1998: 155
1999: 158 Note this one year increase is three times larger than in the decade 1970 to 1980! No wonder there is an "explosion" of obesity and Type II diabetics in the USA. Sugar causes serious health problems in Brazil too but of a dental nature: Half the rural population is chewing on a piece of sugar cane about 8 hours each day. By the age of 30 more than half of their teeth have been pulled - not accurate data - just from my own observations.

Day later by edit: You are probably seeing the bar chart. I don´t (or any figure, old or new). Almost sure my ISP has put a software filter into message streams coming to me that removes large blocks of bits by dropping all between [ img]....[/img] to cope with inadequate capacity - For a few years, they had "rolling blackouts" in only parts of their "service" area at a time for a few hours during peak demand. That was probably manually done. This new filter seems to be in action 100% of the time.
Please don´t anyone comment that the animation in their post is rare footage of Marylin Monroe dancing nude as I can´t see it is or is not true.


In 9 years (1990 to1999) the increase in US per capita sugar consumption grew 21 pounds. Thus in the 12 years (1999 to 2011), even if we falsely assume only a linear rate of increase one can expcted it to grow 1/3 more or by28 pounds. 158+28 = 186 pounds, significantly more than my 100Lbs which was based on memory of facts I read a decade or more ago.

Also note the section of wiki you quote your data from has the following introductory warning:
“…This article or section reads like an editorial or opinion piece and may require cleanup. Please improve this article by rewriting this article or section in an encyclopedic style to make it neutral in tone. …”

Perhaps you just did not notice that, or were you “cherry picking” from self labeled doubious data wiki thinks needs review They do give ref [40] as their source of your falsely low level of US sugar consumption. But if you go there, another section of wikipedai called “Economic Research Services,” you data comes from has this stated at the top as a warning:

“…This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. …”
I.e. there is zero foundation for your data - it is just the opinion of someone not giving any evidence in their contribution to wiki.

Many sources dispute your totally false (probably just one pesons´s wiki unfounded entires) data. Here from the FDA:

“One hundred and fifty-six pounds. That's how much added sugar Americans consume each year on a per capita basis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Imagine it: 31 five-pound bags for each of us. …” as quoted at: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=56589 but it is a little low as from a few years ago.

SUMMARY: Yes, my 100Lbs guess is wrong – it is at least 70 or more pounds higher and growing every year. (A major reason why type II diabetics is increasing as rapidly as it is according to many experts. That medical cost may be greater than the increase in food costs.) Again, the major cost is the jobs lost in the US candy industy which can not export as much as it imports due to the higher domestic price of sugar (and to some extent the lower quality chocolate possible with HTCS replacing sugar.)

If we assume your 25 cents per pound difference between domestic and global prices and use 160 lbs as the average sugar consumption than the annual cost to American is $40 per year – all to give millions to 1300 sugar growers! Again I ask: How DUMB can US Voters Be ?????? Why are you trying to defend this abusive nonsense as “beneficial? Do you have a relative who is one of the 1300?

 

[Billy T]

Question on display of photos & charts: i.e. with

I thought perhaps my new Portuguese key board´s / might be misread, so I whet to tthe "BRIC thread" to copy a [/img] that worked. To my surprise NONE of the many images that were displaying there currently is. (Yet the instructions for display are still in the text when you look by quoting)

Perhaps others are seeing displayed the bar chart graph I wanted to display in last post - i.e. my Brazilian service provider is editing out things that tke a lot of bits?
Or is all of sciforums now without graph and photo display? - not just my local problem.

Comments, please.

 

[adoucette]

MF Global was apparently doing fine until they let that dipshit Corzine place billion dollars bets on carry trades.

Mark my words: A slight slap on the wrist at most.

I'm not saying he didn't make very bad bets.
But being stupid isn't illegal.

 

[Michael]

I'm not saying he didn't make very bad bets. But being stupid isn't illegal.

Betting with other people's money IS illegal. Not to mention lack of legal due diligence. Just because you are the CEO of a company does not give your free reign to do anything you like with the company. Particularly betting more than it's worth on the Euro.

I wonder, if he didn't have a 'corporation' to hide behind, would he still have bet all those other people's money knowing his money would make up the difference.

I mean, you didn't see Corzine dipping into his own bank account to cover this bet - yet he stood to gain 10s, maybe 100s, of millions if his bets paid off. No. He instead stole from American farmers future. Many who are now F*cked. We're talking salt of the f%cking earth here who were protecting their farm investments on future contracts. THEY were stolen from.

Tofteland (Dean) had $253,000 in an account with the brokerage firm, money he planned to use to cover his farm's operating loan. As MF Global went bankrupt last fall, customers' segregated accounts were raided in clear violation of exchange rules. When the dust settled, more than 38,000 MF Global customers -- including thousands of farmers, ranchers and grain operators who used the firm to hold money for transactions on the futures market -- were out more than $1.2 billion.

On a recent February day, Tofteland points to the stirrups hanging in his barn. They've been there since the 1930s, when the first tractor arrived. Nearby, his fields stretch nearly to the horizon.

His seed bill last year was $230,000; fertilizer cost $150,000. In addition to his own land, he farms acreage he rents at a cost of $450,000. He has another $1 million tied up in equipment, plus four full-time employees. "We're talking big numbers, and you're taking all these risks," he says. "And you can get hailed out, droughted out, flooded out at any time."

The entire monetary system is broken. Severed from reality - which was, IMO, baked in the cake A La The Federal Reserve. It no longer serves it's purpose. It's become a gambling casino for those well connected. .... It's been proven that the elite were given the headsup pre-GFC that those weasel goat f%ckers at the Federal Reserve were going to bail out various companies, aka shove the debt onto the US tax payer. Giving these F%cking crooks yet another opportunity to screw us over.

The Federal Reserve will collapse under it's own incompetence. When is hard to say, but, it will happen.

Anyone with two ounces of decency would grab Corzine by his neck and twist it. I truly hope if any American farmer even begins to think about suicide, he thinks about Corzine first.

Mark my words while farmers lose their farms he'll get aslap on the wrist at best.

 

[Michael]

Question on display of photos & charts: i.e. with

I thought perhaps my new Portuguese key board´s / might be misread, so I whet to tthe "BRIC thread" to copy a [/img] that worked. To my surprise NONE of the many images that were displaying there currently is. (Yet the instructions for display are still in the text when you look by quoting)

Perhaps others are seeing displayed the bar chart graph I wanted to display in last post - i.e. my Brazilian service provider is editing out things that tke a lot of bits?
Or is all of sciforums now without graph and photo display? - not just my local problem.

Comments, please.

I don't know but I think my Japanese keyboard is the same as yours. I used Shift + 7 to make a ' not the ` above the @ sign. Also you might need to switch to Microsoft IME from and from Portuguese to English (if you're using a Portuguese language pack)?

 

[adoucette]

Betting with other people's money IS illegal.

And so far nothing has come to light to indicate that Corzine or indeed anyone at the company, was aware that it was doing so.

Not to mention lack of legal due diligence. Just because you are the CEO of a company does not give your free reign to do anything you like with the company. Particularly betting more than it's worth on the Euro.

Agreed, and he is likely to be personally libel for quite a bit of this, but that will be a CIVIL matter though.

My guess is he will be out millions of dollars at a minimum, but assuming it wasn't due to anything criminal, the actual judgements will be more in line with who really was responsible at the company for this occuring and in that you keep ignoring the CFO and the CIO and both of them are potentially more involved with the "poor accounting system", that may have been the key to how this happened.

Trustee James Giddens said in a statement on Thursday he may assert claims for breach of fiduciary duty and for violating rules governing the segregation of client funds. Giddens referenced "individuals at" MF Global's parent company and its broker-dealer, but did not name potential targets.

Giddens' spokesman, Kent Jarrell, said the individuals include officers, directors and other employees, but declined to say whether former Chief Executive Jon Corzine was among them.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/12/us-mfglobal-hearing-idUSBRE83B1G520120412

Consider you said MF Global was "doing fine" but clearly their accounting systems weren't BETTER before Corzine showed up, and in fact were probably in place for a decade or more before he ever showed up.

As to your vignette, let's make the stakes clear:

Barclays is already offering 92c on the dollar to take over debtors claims (which means Barclays knows they can pay everyone back at that rate and their legal costs and still make money) and Seaport is up to nearly 93c on the dollar.

So this rancher you reference, the one with over $1 million in assets (not including land) and ~$1 million in annual expenses and who had $253,000 at MF Global, is only out ~$18,000, which is tax deductible, so NET loses would be (assuming that big an operation, a decent tax rate) around $14,000.

Perspective Michael.

http://newsandinsight.thomsonreuter...bal_clients_see_recovery_prospects_improving/

 

[Billy T]

up dating prior comments:

I spent ~10 minutes or so in the chocolate area of my large supper market. Hersey has about 10% of the shelf space, but all of it is made in their Brazilain factory in San Roque, SP (Sao Paulo state) with Brazilian sugar and coco, so it is competive - none imported. - It may even be gaining some market share as Hersey is a relatively new brand for Brazilians, I think.

 

[Michael]

Perspective Michael.

You don't get to attempt to rob a bank, get caught, return most of it and call it a day.

He should do life in prison.
He should loose everything he has repaying every single f%cking penny with interest as well as compensation for any and every lost nickel in emotional stress and lost time and prosperity.

But, you know what's going to happen? NOTHING. Hell he won't step in front of a jury. Not unless it's a show trial where he pleads the 5th. Once his buddy Obama pulls the get out of jail for free card, just like Bush did for his mates, he'll walk scott-free. I bet he isn't even loosing sleep let alone loose his fortune. I bet they hold another "CONgressional hearing" and call it a day. He pays a minor fine, probably a couple million if people like me make a fuss, less the 0.5% of his total wealth. The American Cattle go back to their pen, show's over.

Mark my word: Slap on the wrist at best.

 

[adoucette]

You don't get to attempt to rob a bank, get caught, return most of it and call it a day.

And there is no evidence that he robbed anything Michael.

He should do life in prison.
He should loose everything he has repaying every single f%cking penny with interest as well as compensation for any and every lost nickel in emotional stress and lost time and prosperity.

So now you believe someone doesn't get the PRESUMPTION of innocence?

 

[Carcano]

If we assume your 25 cents per pound difference between domestic and global prices and use 160 lbs as the average sugar consumption than the annual cost to American is $40 per year – all to give millions to 1300 sugar growers!

We are not giving millions to 1300 sugar growers Billy...we are *keeping* millions of dollars in wealth that re-circulates within the domestic economy, including taxation.

Those 1300 growers dont just sit on the money...like pipe smoking gnomes.:bugeye:

 

[Gustav]

indeed...no
they trickle it down to off shore bank accounts

 

[adoucette]

If we assume your 25 cents per pound difference between domestic and global prices and use 160 lbs as the average sugar consumption than the annual cost to American is $40 per year – all to give millions to 1300 sugar growers! Again I ask: How DUMB can US Voters Be ?????? Why are you trying to defend this abusive nonsense as “beneficial? Do you have a relative who is one of the 1300?

You would be using grossly wrong assumptions.

Let's start with your chart that is labeled "The Rise in American Sugar Consumption".

The problem is, that's NOT just White Sugar, but all sweetners.

This is the real figures for White Sugar, about 60 lbs per person, about 1/3rd your "assumption":

And as to the 25c per pound price difference, not hardly.

First you have to not look at Global Prices, but IMPORT prices FOB the US ports for comparison, and that price isn't nearly as low as the Global price.

So the import price was ~22c per pound over most of this period

Vs US prices

So the US prices averaged 26.6 c per pound over that same period.

So the reality is about a 5c per pound difference, not your gross assumption of 25c a pound.

So instead of your $40 per person, it works out to ~$3 per person.

And your assumption that it goes to the growers is totally slanted.

The cost of getting sugar from sugar beets, which is our standard source of sugar is simply higher than it costs to get it Tropically grown Sugar Cane, so our production costs are simply higher. This is not a windfall to the sugar growers.

 

[Michael]

And there is no evidence that he robbed anything Michael.

$1.2 Billion dollars missing is evidence.

So now you believe someone doesn't get the PRESUMPTION of innocence?

As I said: Slap on the wrist at best. Then the Cattle go back to their stalls.

It's funny, I remember reading about various Roman court cases and wondering how on Earth did people let them get away with this sort of bullshit? Like a Roman General who was assigned to a Greek colony. He had a fetish for cutting off the faces of woman and children. He just liked doing it. He'd cut their noses, ears, cheeks. Pretty gruesome stuff.

Most Roman's didn't give two shits.

The Greeks decided they'd petition the Emperor in Roma and along they all came missing bits of their face. Romans were so appalled they exiled the General to an island. Somehow, no one knows, he came back with a bunch of gold. He was welcomed with opened arms.

AND I wondered what kind of crazy people Romans were. Actually, not much different than us in many ways.



As I said: Slap on the wrist at best. Probably not even that.

 

[adoucette]

$1.2 Billion dollars missing is evidence.

But that is not evidence that Corzine did anything wrong.

Again, you are just presuming that he is guilty as if he was the only one at the company who could possibly have done something wrong.

Which is just silly.

 

[Michael]

As for protection sugar:

1) It's not moral to steal from one group of Americans, non-sugar producers, and give to another, sugar producers. To make candy producers pay to support higher sugar prices is asinine and, again, immoral.

2) It may not "seem" like much, miking the general public out of just a bit more, but it is to people who need sugar. Else Coke and Pepsi wouldn't have switched to HFCS and candy manufacturers wouldn't have resorted to trying to sneak in sugar via other means (as part of other products they'd then melt down to recover the sugar).

3) It's not in the mandate of the government to "protect" one group from the free-choice of another. It's simply not what government is supposed to do. When you give in and choose the road of immorality, well, as they say, you can swim in shit and expect to come out smelling like anything other than a rose. Example: Military industrial complex. They are given TRILLIONS of dollars while the next generation can hardly afford school.

$Trillions. Not to mention the bogus wars. That's the slippery slope. And we're at the bottom of the slide.

 

[Michael]

But that is not evidence that Corzine did anything wrong.

Again, you are just presuming that he is guilty as if he was the only one at the company who could possibly have done something wrong.

Which is just silly.

No, other people were involved as well. And YES that is evidence that Corzine did do something illegal.


You know, it's no wonder OJ Simpson walked scott-free. I mean, I swear.

 

[eyeswideshut]

No, other people were involved as well. And YES that is evidence that Corzine did do something illegal.

Naaah, he was totally clueless, thats why they got multimillion bonuses, for drinking coffee and watching porn...

 

[adoucette]

As for protection sugar:

1) It's not moral to steal from one group of Americans, non-sugar producers, and give to another, sugar producers. To make candy producers pay to support higher sugar prices is asinine and, again, immoral.

It's NOT stealing from any group.
We can't grow sugar cane in our country, we get our sugar from sugar beets, which is slightly more expensive than getting it from sugar cane and so we provide tarriffs so we will have a viable sugar industry in the US and not be totaly dependent on imports. Which, for our balance of trade is a GOOD thing.

2) It may not "seem" like much, miking the general public out of just a bit more, but it is to people who need sugar. Else Coke and Pepsi wouldn't have switched to HFCS and candy manufacturers wouldn't have resorted to trying to sneak in sugar via other means (as part of other products they'd then melt down to recover the sugar).

Yeah, it comes down to ONE QUARTER per person per month, so your big rant about a "sugar shakedown" is total unadulterated BS.

3) It's not in the mandate of the government to "protect" one group from the free-choice of another. It's simply not what government is supposed to do.

Nope.
You have shown that you are totally clueless as to the purpose of a government.

 

[adoucette]

No, other people were involved as well. And YES that is evidence that Corzine did do something illegal.

Well that's friggin amazing, you know something which has yet to make the papers, the internet or indeed any news outlet, so WHAT evidence do you have that Corzine did something illegal Michael?

Bet you won't post anything.

 

[Billy T]

...... it comes down to ONE QUARTER per person per month, {added food costs} so your big rant about a "sugar shakedown" is total unadulterated BS

The added cost to American´s food is not nearly as important as the loss of jobs. One major candy company* moved to Canada to lower their cost of sugar.

I´m not good at seaching but did find some old data showing US imports ~150% more chocolate than it exports and financial speculation that Nestle will buy Hersey. The cost difference between global and domestic prices makes it hard for the US candy makers to export (perhaps just to not become taken over candidates), it is adding to US balance of payments problems, and reducing tax revenue (both from the closed or moved out of US companies and the US workers who don´t have those jobs).

You are quite skilled at finding information - can you find more recent data than I posted on the negative impact on jobs, the balance of payments and the reduced revenue to the IRS the excessively high domestic sugar price makes by having less candy production in the US and more imports?

* Also I know from my research in my large Brazilain supermarket (see post 47) That Hersey does not export to Brazil. Instead they have built a big factory (with lot of jobs) in San Roquo, SP to enjoy the lower cost of Sugar and Coco, which is produced in NE Brazil.

BTW, I did not ASSUME an $0.25, but clearly stated I was using the value assumed by Carcano:

{post 41} ... Here from the FDA:

“One hundred and fifty-six pounds. That's how much added sugar Americans consume each year on a per capita basis, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Imagine it: 31 five-pound bags for each of us. …” as quoted at: http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=56589 but it is a little low as from a few years ago. ....
Again, the major cost is the jobs lost in the US candy industy which can not export as much as it imports due to the higher domestic price of sugar (and to some extent the lower quality chocolate possible with HTCS replacing sugar.)

If we assume your 25 cents per pound difference between domestic and global prices and use 160 lbs as the average sugar consumption than the annual cost to American is $40 per year ...

Note also in post 41 I did not make a big deal over the cost added to US food but instead specifically said it was the lost jobs (so also lower taxes paid) and greater imports to export ratio that was important (for balance of payments).