Indian FM slams U.S. for feeding fuel tanks

U.S. policies on promoting biofuels and the prevalence of corruption in the U.S. dominated financial world are rapidly losing Washington its remaining friends across the world.

Governments whose peoples are dependent upon farming and who have large numbers of impoverished people to support are pinning the blame for rising food prices squarely, and rightly, on U.S. demand for biofuels. Indian Foreign Minister P Chidambaram has become the latest, and perhaps the most important, politician to link financial globalization (and the sub-prime scandal) with biofuels and the real economy.

As yet, there are no signs that the splendid rhetoric of people like Chuidambaram is to be translated into a direct challenge to U.S. power in the UN or elsewhere. The pressure is, however, mounting for a global agreement on food prices.

Hitting hard at the developed nations like the US for fuelling the price rise of food items by diverting them for production of bio fuel, finance minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday said if the world is serious about ending poverty, the way to start is to make food and fuel available at reasonable prices. He also held poor regulation and lax supervision responsible for the subprime crisis which triggered turbulence globally.

“While there is indeed supply-demand mismatch, there is no case for raising the prices so high that poor people cannot afford food any more. I wonder what has happened to the inspiring slogan, Make Poverty History. If we are serious about ending poverty, the place to start is to make food and fuel available at reasonable prices — prices at which people can consume adequate quantities of food and at which fuel becomes not a constraint but a growth driver,” Mr Chidambaram said in his lecture at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Posted by Szamko
Just tries to tell the truth.

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