In his column “Exporting inflation”, Gil Smart observes: …“I’ve spent much of the past two weeks watching the events in Egypt unfold, and wondering just how much of a role our own country had in it.
“In many ways, the spark that set off the political unrest was economic in nature. Mubarak is absolutely a dictator and his regime corrupt, but the political conditions in Egypt had not changed materially over the past three, six, 10 months. But economic conditions have.
“Bread prices have spiked; even with extensive government subsidies and ration cards, the price of bread in Egypt is 30 percent higher than it was a year ago. The average Egyptian spends 40 percent of his monthly income on food. When you live on less than $2 a day, as 40 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people do, and you’re already spending about 80 cents of that meager two bucks on food, you simply can’t absorb the added costs…”
WATCHDOG: Smart then goes on to make the case that “Quantitative Easing” by the Federal Reserve has pumped up commodity prices throughout the world and that the higher prices for such staples as bread and rice have added to the unrest of a large part of the Egyptian public. Two wags of the tail for this informative, thought provoking column.
