Nothing much happened in the markets yesterday…so that is what we will write about, nothing much. Besides, we don’t have much time anyway…we’re headed out to the desert…out of range of the Internet.While everyone else invested in corn, wheat or rice – all of which have been soaring – we put our money into cattle. Recently, you could barely give cattle away.

“People were getting rid of cattle,” our old friend Doug Casey explained to us today. “They all wanted to get the cattle off the land so they could plant soybeans. But that killed the cattle market, of course. Don’t worry, though. Cattle will come back.”

Okay. We weren’t worried anyway. Still, we’re headed up to the Andes, to see how our beef cattle are doing.

In the meantime, many people think the feds have done it. By aggressively cutting rates and pushing money out to the banks…and helping to save Bear Stearns…they’ve turned it around. It is as if they had diverted a giant meteor; the world is saved.

Hallelujah.

But what does it mean, anyway? Let’s say they were successful? What would that mean? Have they somehow erased Americans’ debts? Are all those upside down homeowners now flipped over so they’re sunny side up? And how about all that subprime debt…and all those leveraged loans for mergers, acquisitions and buyouts that didn’t quite work…and all those hedge funds who stretched so far to get into the most dangerous investments at the most dangerous time? Have all these mistakes somehow been wiped away?

Oh, dear, dear reader…we feel a religious experience coming on. Somehow, we have all been forgiven our sins…the slate has been washed clean…our errors have been pardoned by an authority more powerful than God himself – the feds.

Could it be?

If it is not…then what does it mean when they say the feds have ’succeeded’ in averting a real crisis? What, exactly, have they averted? If they have not erased the mistakes, what have they done with them? If they have not prevented people from getting what they’ve got coming…who, then, is going to get what those people had coming?

Ah, there’s the rub…if the mistakes cannot be magically made to vanish…then someone will pay for them. Perhaps then, the ’success’ is really in shifting them…from the people who deserve to pay to the people who don’t…that is, to the general public and the taxpayer?

Personally, we like mistakes. It is our mistakes that made us what we are. Yes, we would happily erase a few of them from the record, if we could. But inasmuch as all of them contributed to what we are, getting rid of any of them might have drastic consequences…causing the whole universe to slip into some kind of alternate reality. We might disappear too…why take the chance?

The feds must like mistakes too. As near as we can figure, ’success’ – for them – must mean getting people to make more of them. That’s why they are lowering borrowing rates – so an over-indebted nation can borrow more. And that’s why they’ve given out tax ‘rebates,’ so that people who spend too much can spend more.

And if they spend and borrow more, what does that mean for the future? The next generation must spend and borrow less. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s what ’success’ really means…

…robbing the next generation. Spending their money today so they will spend less tomorrow.

*** It looks like the end is near…for ethanol at least.

Take Basehor, Kansas-based ethanol plant, Ethenex Energy for example. This company opened its doors in the midst of the ethanol boom two years ago, when “Corn was the cheapest it had ever been and ethanol was skyrocketing,” former Ethanex president and chief executive officer Al Knapp said. “There was a land rush for people to build ethanol plants.”

But today, with the price of corn hitting $6 a bushel and the price of ethanol falling, Ethanex was “definitely held captive by the capital market.”

The company filed for Chapter 11 late last month. And more and more this sort of scenario is playing out for ethanol plants.

“I have gotten about ten emails like [the story above] from farmers in Illinois, MN, Iowa, Wisconsin and Indiana. Either ethanol plants under construction that have ceased or plants that are declaring Chap. 11. Looks like the ‘dream’ of the new gold rush in corn based ethanol is starting to unravel, and fast.

“I am headed out to Minnesota on the 17th and will be visiting a few farms and hog operations as well as a feedlot as well as an ethanol plant (under construction) in Janesville Minnesota. It will be interesting to get a sense of what the sentiment is now as compared to the last two years that I have talked to farmers. Somehow I think a lot of the euphoria is gone, corn at $6 will do that since it has made input costs skyrocket.”

We know that long time DR-sufferers where never fooled by the great ethanol swindle. It was clear that the dream of this corn-based fuel was to be short-lived.

There is a way that America could get close to energy independence…and it has nothing to do with corn. Byron King recently discovered the only company that has the inside track on tapping a huge oil deposit within U.S. borders – one estimated to be triple the size of Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves.

In the latest report from Energy & Scarcity Investor, you’ll find out all about how the breakthrough technology that this company uses could put thousands of dollars in your pocket.

Right now, you can subscribe to Byron’s Energy & Scarcity Investor for the lowest price we’ve ever offered – but only for a limited time. Act now…

*** As we’ve been saying…there is no advantage so great that the authorities can’t waste it…

Colleague Garry White explains how the oil producers are squandering their windfall revenues:

“The latest data available on World Energy consumption is for 2003 from the World Resources Institute. The figures represent total energy consumption per capita in units of kilograms of oil equivalent (kgoe) per person.

US: 7,794.8
UK: 3,918.1
UAE: 10,538.7
Qatar: 21,395.8
Kuwait: 9,076.0
Bahrain: 10,250.5

“The U.S. is decried as the gas-guzzling capital of consumption…but this is only partly true. It is actually the residents of the Middle East who are the largest consumers of energy in the world. With a wealth and population explosion added to the mix, oil-rich countries are facing an unprecedented energy crunch.

“Middle East governments were more generous in subsidising oil products than governments anywhere else in the world during 2007, according to the IMF. While oil prices rose strongly through the year, governments in the Middle East passed on just 58% of the increase in the cost of importing petrol.

“Egyptians paid just $0.23 for a litre of kerosene at the end of 2006, compared with the $2.25 a litre paid by consumers in Turkey, which passed on more of the increase to consumers.

“The region’s governments also passed on an average of 67% of the increased cost of diesel to their consumers, a smaller amount than governments in any other part of the world. Yemen spent a staggering 9.3% of GDP on energy subsidies in 2006, the most of any country in the region.”

And from Horacio Pozzo, our man here in Buenos Aires, comes word that you can fill your gas tank up in Venezuela for only $3. Still, the economy of Chavez’s country is a disaster. The shelves are empty, and the inflation rate and the murder rate are both at record highs.

*** And here is a name from the past:

“This week Japan’s former vice-minister of finance Eisuke Sakakibara predicted that fresh turbulence in the currency markets over the next six months is likely to see the yen ‘break 90 to the US dollar.’” writes colleague Manraaj Singh.

“Maybe you’ll remember Sakakibara from the late 1990’s when the financial media dubbed him ‘Mr. Yen’ for his ability to move global currency markets with his pronouncements. He’s predicting that the market turmoil triggered by the U.S. subprime crisis is unlikely to go away for ‘a year or two’ and that there may be more shocks to come from Europe over subprime exposure.”

Until tomorrow,

Bill Bonner
The Daily Reckoning

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