In a sign of the times, the mighty Starbucks (NASDAQ: SBUX) is in retreat. The iconic coffee company will be closing 600 U.S. stores and laying off as many as 12,000 employees.

So I had a flashback recently. (Not an acid flashback, mind you — never tried the stuff — but a market flashback). It was almost 10 years ago on the nose: August 1998. I was a wet-behind-the-ears college grad, and I’d just flown into Reno/Tahoe for a job interview with Commodity Resource Corp. I’d never seen Tahoe except in pictures (though, of course, I’d heard how amazing the place is).

Last week was a thing of beauty for the bears. The major indexes were all hit hard, with the Dow and the S&P looking ready to explore new depths. The Dow also closed below 12,000 on Friday, an area of psychological importance.

Corn prices surged to a record high today following flooding the Midwest.

Reuters reports that “front month July corn on the Chicago Board of Trade rose to a contract high of $7.57-3/4 a bushel, up more than 3.5 percent from Friday’s close, while July 2009 soared to an all-time peak of $8.07.”

Get ready to pay through the nose for food, says Brian Hunt in DailyWealth:

The states of Iowa and Illinois are the world capitals of corn production. Over 27 million acres there are devoted to growing corn.

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The relationship between BP and the shareholders in its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, Russia’s third largest oil firm, has very publicly fallen apart, reports Britain’s The Guardian newspaper:

Yesterday BP and the Russian shareholders were forced to acknowledge differences over strategy, with the Russian billionaires who own 50% of the company arguing that TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil producer, should be able to expand abroad even if that meant its coming into direct competition with BP itself.

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