Jack Kosko from Old war planes tell a new story still has the car, complete with bill of sale, that he met his wife in 60 years ago. It's a '48 Mercury. "I have alot of soft spots", Kosko said.
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Some men have life-changing experiences in their youth. Others spend their lives dreaming. A few have the opportunity to work through these moments later in life.
In Fawn Township, a group of retirees is turning discarded aviation memories into working studies of history.
Some men have life-changing experiences in their youth. Others spend their lives dreaming. A few have the opportunity to work through these moments later in life.
In Fawn Township, a group of retirees is turning discarded aviation memories into working studies of history.
Jack Kosko flew 18 missions in a Grumman TBM Avenger as a radioman during World War II.
"It took me out there and brought me back," Kosko said of the Avenger.
One of the planes made a bad landing on the aircraft carrier USS Langley. Kosko salvaged an altimeter and voltmeter before the bomber was pushed into the sea.
Today, the first Avenger Kosko ever restored still flies at the Mid-Atlantic Air Museum in Reading, carrying those gauges with it.
Kosko owns the Fawn Township property where the group gathers about twice a week to restore the old planes.
One of the men, Bill Butler, remembers how his father, a naval aviator during WWII, would take him to air shows.
"I can't fly, and I like to watch," said the Sykesville, Md., resident of the hobby, "so this is my big chair."
Frank Darney, of Jefferson, was an Air Force mechanic during WWII and with the Maryland National Guard for almost 40 years.
"We never had to do much with these planes back then other than daily inspections," he said.
While working to reconstruct the bomber doors of the group's second Avenger, Darney said, "This gives me something to look forward to."
Progress here isn't measured by time. It can take more than five years to reconstruct a vintage aircraft. But as Kosko will tell you when you meet him, "There are no problems, only challenges."
I met four people this weekend that define peace.
William Jenkins, a WWII draftee, found himself in a German POW camp for his 19th birthday. He came home to Hanover and married a German woman.
Dalea Lynn's house was gutted by a fire and her husband was killed by police while in their custody in Springettsbury Township. She likes her Wrightsville neighborhood and has a poster on her front lawn supporting the local police.
James Abram, of South Carolina, and Bill Hoff, a resident of Jefferson, became lifelong friends in 1966 while fighting the Vietnam War. Sunday, the two men were followed by a combined family of 28 people.
It's a telling story of two car companies from a business summary today.
One car company is planning to print paper, the other build cars.
Shares of General Motors (GM: 1.83, 0, 0%) were down 25% in pre-market trading after the car maker said it would issue 60 billion new shares, use that money to pay the government and its union, and then do a 1-100 reverse stock split.
Ford Motor Co. (F: 5.8618, n.a., n.a.%) said will spend $550 million to convert a SUV plant in Michigan to produce a Ford Focus that will be available globally next year and a battery-electric powered version by 2011. fox.news
No one wants to touch the sacred "free market" concept that is no longer free in the face of a world controlled by aging monopolies.
Corporations like profit and consumers like cheap goods. We are all locked in step pending a tipping point.
There was worry about "Made in America" stipulations built into the new stimulus package. It was said that it would touch off "trade wars". How can we have a trade war if we make nothing. When was the last time other than food, that you saw "Made in U.S.A." on anything you purchased.
The current stimulus package is just continuing the cycle of large corporations borrowing wealth from the future of taxpayers. If anything, it's consolidating the banks and corporations into BIGGER ones that will need BIGGER stimulus as they hold us hostage with fear of failure.
It all has a feeling of paying off Frankie more every month so he doesn't come into your Deli on Avenue Q in Brooklyn to break your knuckles after he has already broken your nose.
What will have to happen as the course continues is that the standard of living in the U.S. will have to erode to a point where salaries can compete with China and then the transportation costs will exceed the benefit. That process hardly makes an economy grow.
So we borrow from our future and we continue to accept white collar crime that continues without meaningful prosecution. There is no deterrent in a society where capitalizing yourself is above all else. The stock market is proof that people don't trust investing in such a system.
Maybe it's time to look the depression in the eye, reset the free market, and hope the next generation of American business leaders born from poverty can rule the world with a sustainable moral order.
Calvin Weary stood beside a black wall with the word "slavery" inscribed on it Tuesday night at William Penn Senior High School. The word was surrounded by bright red hand prints, some of which were smeared as if the person who had left them was falling down.
The hand prints represent one of the evils of America's past -- "the blood lost in slavery," Weary said.
Weary, the director of performing arts at the school, had assisted students with constructing the Black History Month Labyrinth, an interactive multimedia display that will be open throughout the week to students.
The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday. washingtonpost.com
- Increased burning of coal in developing countries to make consumers cheap goods and larger corporate profits without environmental standards. An increased western standard of living world wide.
- Arctic permafrost melting which could release hundreds of billions of tons of carbon and methane into the atmosphere. Methane is 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.
- Warmer weather is driving stronger winds that are exposing deeper layers of water, which are already saturated with carbon and not as able to absorb as much from the atmosphere
- Carbon is making the oceans more acidic, which also reduces their ability to absorb carbon.
- More vegetation-covered land in northern latitudes appears and absorbs much more of the sun's heat than snow-covered terrain making the surface hotter rather than reflecting heat.
- Fires such as the recent deadly blazes in southern Australia have increased in recent years, and that trend is expected to continue. Wildfires contribute about a third as much carbon to the atmosphere as burning fossil fuels
As she neared what was left of the sanctuary at Shenberger's Chapel United Methodist Church in Chanceford Township, Bollinger said she saw a sign, a testimonial to her faith and belief in God.
Looking over the burnt pews, collapsed ceiling and fallen church bell tower, Bollinger saw a painting of Jesus Christ, hanging on the only surviving wall left in the century-old sanctuary.
Shenberger's Chapel United Methodist Church, in Chanceford Township, was destroyed by fire Monday. The church first started at his family's farm in a one-room schoolhouse in 1868, Miller said. The congregation later moved about a mile down the road to its current site, where it hastily built a church in 1893. The church was rebuilt in 1898 after the original building was falling down.
It's a privilege and always inspiring to witness people empowered during trying times and find power beyond themselves or money to move forward.
When I first started my career in journalism 24 years ago, companies didn't provide diversity training.
During the mid-1990's diversity training became a mandatory element of office life, but it always centered on a black/white, male/female balance.
Dr. Bill Hunter, president of Global Competence Consulting out of Nazareth, Pa. takes a global approach with a goal of making participants "the others". Hunter ran a program this week at Northeastern Senior High School in Manchester, Pa.
The goal today is to make you feel as though you are "the other". "The other" for every one of you is different. You each fit into your own cultural box in some way.
Your kids, my kids need to be ready for the global workforce. And in doing that they're not going to be living in that bubble I grew up in. They're are going to be working in a multi-national, multi-racial, multi-cultural, multi-linguistic workforce and if they can't thrive and in fact succeed in that environment they're going to be lost.
--- Dr. Bill Hunter
Wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase year over (American Wind Energy Association).
In contrast, the coal industry employs about 81,000 workers. (2007 U.S. Department of Energy report)
Coal employment has remained steady in recent years though it's down by nearly 50% since 1986.) Wind industry employment includes 13,000 manufacturing jobs concentrated in regions of the country hard hit by the de-industrialization of the past two decades.
cnnmoney.com/greenwombat
I followed a retired York police officer (1968-91) and his daughter on a 17 hour odyssey through the millions who gathered to welcome President Barack Obama.
Although they had tickets, their efforts fell short of the grand theater.
As we walked away, a group gathered around a car with open doors. White people, black people, a soldier, a lady sat on the cold granite curb with her dog - some seated, some leaning into the car to get closer.
The muted reverberation of amplified reality bouncing from ancient granite buildings mixed with the soft tinniness of the Ford's dashboard radio.
A melting pot with the flavor of an FDR radio moment listening to President Obama say,
"...of our prosperity, on the ability extent opportunity to every willing heart, not out of charity but because it is the surest route to our common good..."
Neighborhoods everywhere have experienced transformations similar to Chrystal Sexton-McEachin's Chestnut Street neighborhood in York, Pa., and recently, the Golden Globe-nominated movie "Gran Torino" dramatized some of the challenges that result.
Since moving more than 25 years ago to her home on the 100 block of North Pine, Sexton has observed a neighborhood in flux. Her community organizing work has focused on bridging differences.
Nolt's Excavating, of Lancaster County, has begun slowly dismantling the 146-year-old Felton Mill on Main Street in Felton, Pennsylvania. The project should take one month.
Josh Nolt said that "there is alot of value in the wood that's here, and material, and we are going to save as much as possible rather than sending to the salvage yard or put it to waste"
The borough, which has owned the building since 2001, was forced to vacate the former grist mill three years ago when officials learned the historic landmark was structurally unsound.
Continue reading VIDEO Civil War mill recycled into the future.
The organizers of "Be a Santa to a Senior" were worried this year after not receiving a healthy response to their giving trees. The trees were hung with names and placed in a few public locations. Sarah Hevner, office manager at Home Instead, though that the response was due to a sluggish economy.
After an article in the York Daily Record in November, the gifts started pouring in. Today the gifts were presented to the seniors.
Having grown up in a time when people had to do more with less, these historic faces beamed with very simple tokens of Christmas.
A pin, a bottle of body wash, even just a box of tissues wrapped in holiday paper brought shouts of joy and tears of appreciation.
It reminded me of how far our economy has deteriorated. Making more out of less has evolved into making more out of credit and trying to make more out of speculation, fraud and a ballooning federal deficit. Making more out of capitalizing on cheaper labor markets while making less to buy those products at home.
Making more out of less has morphed into less and less out of investing more and more.
Hope came today from the anonymous people who capitalized on those small dreams from the wish trees placed in Boscovs.
The auto bailout died in the Senate after representatives wanted to see wage concessions from workers.
During these endless hearings on the auto bailout, I heard a speaker say that a worker in China is paid $2 a day to assemble a vehicle and a good engineer can be had in India for $10K a year.
The idea of globalization was always marketed as creating new markets for American goods, but realistically for a whole segment of the population it always meant ultimately lower wages and an erosion of their accustomed standard of living for an immediate promise of higher profit for those with the capital to run a company.
For workers, it meant cheaper goods to buy more with less. I can remember Wal-Mart's huge patriot colored banners that said "Made in U.S.A". I can remember then they quietly disappeared.
What's happening now is that people who make less, have less to spend, dragging down the entire economy. It's been a slow process that hit warp speed with the realization that credit needs to be payed back.
Our balloon of wealth has popped, and the balancing act of the free market is re-proportioning the wealth. Resources should now be placed on raising the standard of living and demands by developing nations to come in line with U.S. expectations.
When an auto worker in China makes $14 an hour, there will be no economic reason to outsource a U.S. job.
Flinchbaugh Engineering Inc., in Hellam Township, is thriving in the current economy combining the close proximity of the production process, a local secure site to preserve intellectual property, and an Employee Stock Ownership Plan that gives employees stake in their future.
Flinchbaugh is on the receiving end of the outsourcing equation.
I was listening to U.S. Rep Ed Markey of Massachusetts, chairman of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, address the automakers the other day on C-SPAN as the hearings kept grinding away.
He brought up the idea that Detroit has worked on the premise that you can litigate and advertise your way to profit. If you don't want to meet mileage standards then sue the government agency trying to force you to meet them and then once you have something profitable keep selling it even if it goes against a global trend of sustainability.
Meanwhile, other companies innovate and fill the void that is reality ultimately taking the market.
U.S. Rep. Todd Platts, from York County, commented on the auto bailout earlier this week in this video.
I had the opportunity to hang out with some students from Mumbai, India at Penn State York.
As an American, who often sees India as yet one more country in the world to compete with for jobs and contributing to further eroding my standard of living by defining my future as "what the market will bear", these moments are precious windows into the human soul. A moment to step back, stop running around, and see that we are not so different and share common dilemmas.
The United States terrorist targets of 911 were aimed at our financial system and military. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon were targeted because it was believed that our money and our military power is what make us whole.
The story of the Taj Mahal hotel slices much deeper into the heart of a people.
Industrialist Jamshetji Tata was refused entrance into Watson's hotel in the 19th century because he was a native, he swore revenge, and built the Taj in 1903. The hotel was even built facing away from the port to snub the British who for hundreds of years used the disorganization of kingdoms in India to wield wealth and power.
The Taj became the most spectacular and successful hotel in Mumbai.
Beyond that, for generations the bulk of the hotel's post-tax profits have gone to a number of the city's charities; even since Tata's Indian Hotels Company went public in 1970, a large proportion of its shares, held by the Tata Trusts, have continued to fund these charities. guardian.co.uk
The Taj is a global symbol to the people of India of perseverance, overcoming racial boundaries and using good fortune to help the masses. An even more sinister target than our 911.
General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler had a combined US market share of 51.8% in December 2007. As of Oct. 2008, their market share declined by 5.1% to 46.5%. Toyota and Honda, during that same nine-month period, increased their US market shares by 3.1% to a combined 28.4%.
In 2007, the Big Three sold 18 million autos for $387.5 billion. In 2007, Toyota and Honda sold 12.2 millions cars for $304 billion.
In the US, the Big Three directly employ 242,000 people and an estimated 2.5 to 3 million indirectly.
Ford received a $1.29 billion tax refund in 2007 while General Motors paid $37.16 billion in 2007 taxes.
After a public relations massacre last month when pan handling CEO's seeking a bailout from consumers cruised in on jets that cost $20,000 for the day, Tuesday was a day of reckoning.
This time, the big three drove cars to Washington.
"There is not a Plan B," said GM Chief Operating Officer Fritz Henderson. " Absent support, the company can't fund its operations.
The chief executives of GM and Ford, stung by the public relations mess caused by recent comments at congressional hearings, said they will be willing to accept salaries of $1 a year. Ford plans to sell its five corporate jets, while GM will stop using corporate jets. cnn.money
In 1978, Lee Iacocca took on the challenge of transforming Chrysler for just $1 in compensation which was saved after he sought and landed a loan guarantee from Congress in 1979.
Chrysler went on to use those resources to build the K car platform on the success of the Omni, Horizon twins. These fuel efficient front-wheel-drive cars would be considered junk by today's standard, but for a country fresh out of a 1970's Arab Oil Crisis, they were great frugal tools from a manufacturer with a history of building big Detroit iron.
I was driving through Virginia today and filled up at $1.65 a gallon
- The American Automobile Association says traffic will be down 1.2% this year, meaning about 400,000 fewer Americans.
- Passenger numbers are expected to fall off about 10% compared with last year wsj.com
Columbia gas announced a 20% rate reduction starting next month in response to a lower wholesale price for natural gas. ydr.com
A cooler summer, a warmer start to fall and an overall erosion of the commodities market due to the expectation of a weak economy have helped lower the price.
The last time gasoline sold for around $1.65 in York was around December 2003.
The kiosk that served York when trolleys ran the streets has been reconstructed by the Kinsley Education Center. Kinsley and the city are hoping to get some community support to get copper roof replaced.
York once had a county wide electric rail mass transit system.
York's street railway is a dream of tomorrow
(greenmesh 7/2006)
OPEC is scrambling to tighten up supply as the price crude has dropped 56 percent decline in 16 weeks. Even when they moved to close the flow today, the price continued to fall.
Some effects beyond making U.S. drivers happy and adding a stimulus to the U.S. economy.
nytimes.com
- With fewer petrodollars now flowing to the Gulf, Russia and other regions, a major source of global liquidity and investment in places like the United States and Europe is beginning to shrink.
- Iran's representative said that prices below $90 a barrel would hurt.
- A continued drop in oil prices, and a tough domestic economy, could jeopardize the position of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was elected on a populist platform and who faces re-election next year.
- Some analysts believe Hugo Chávez needs $100 a barrel to finance his expensive social programs and continue his international activism.
It appears that low oil prices hurt the people who don't like us very much, foreign oil producers don't have the money to buy up our stuff in the U.S. and we don't really have any control over the supply of oil when OPEC's members control 40 percent of the world's oil exports.
Look for more OPEC drops in supply if the price of oil doesn't increase.
I think I will "help" out those suffering from low oil prices by not driving my car tomorrow.
America didn't become the greatest nation on earth by spreading the wealth, we became the greatest nation on earth by creating new wealth. (McCain at last night's debate.)
This is a key phrase motivating both campaigns and the undercurrent of voter despair.
Before globalization, creating new wealth meant capitalization resulting in more domestic jobs. Today that end more often means "spreading" wealth and power to China, and other developing nations with cheap labor pools and sending our energy dollars to oil producing nations in a global oil market.
It is no longer a simple formula of trickle down economics. It's more rolling pin economics where the roller pin has an oval shape and the dough is spread thin where it is least profitable.
That is the reality of global free trade and the dough in the United States is getting thinner. As some of the bakers get stronger and beat away the other bakers, a few fat bakers roll all the dough.
However, the free market in the United States has always been balanced with a democracy that once the majority believes it is no longer prospering, moves to conserve it's resources.
The old-school conservative thinking that motivated my grandparents to save rolls of string and hoard things in their basement long after the depression was over is different from modern conservative thought.
My "conservative" grandparents would have been repulsed at people who drive huge SUV's and demand drilling when the future of oil is a one way downward spiral. My grandfather would be in the garage retrofitting a bicycle with a lawnmower engine when gasoline got over $2 a gallon. He was a successful small business owner whose employees worked for him for decades and never desired a union even when they were petitioned by a local.
Beneath the blind moral eye of the fat bakers who rule a "free market", those who eat the cookies are always the one who call the shots in the end.
What we use and don't use - in our innovation we change the play of the game.
Given the current economic conditions, I think we all can agree that the U.S. needs a new economic/industrial policy.
CEO's Say US Needs New Industrial Policy.... a variety of economic statistics as evidence that the U.S. industrial sector is suffering overall. He noted that manufacturing currently makes up less than 12% of the U.S. economy, compared with nearly 22% of the U.S. economy three decades ago. cnn.com/money
I call it the Moral greening of Capitalism... There is a possibility of a depression, taxpayer buyout of bad debt insulating the risk in free-market with socialism, decades of outsourcing, do nothing energy plans that promote dependence and suck the life out of the economy... consumers, who sweated to create the wealth in the first place, taken hostage, roughed up and mugged.
I get up in the morning excited about the future of the day, next week, ten years from now.
The future: a simple concept to guide principles.
Continue reading VIDEO Pzaltzgraff outlets, distribution closes.
I was thinking about this while lying under my
motorcycle doing the 6000 miles service.
Being green around the year 2000 meant driving a tiny hybrid Honda Insight with a "Save the whales" bumper sticker plastered between those funky rear fender skirts. These lone conservers were few and far between navigating a sea of SUV's, consuming 5 times the fuel, labeling them liberals.
I have never understood the label liberal because it's often applied to one who chooses to conserve resources (or reduces profit?); which would be conserve-ative..? It's one of those strange spins of economic-politics, like having a trade embargo with Communist Cuba for 40 years when Communist China has become our dominant trade partner and labor force.
The innovative minds of yesterday that invented (and capitalized on) modern convenience, today capitalize on those inventions and innovate new layers of surcharge and ownership, adding layers upon layers of costs to consumers.
Green today means more about marketing than solution. Under the complicated layers of production of products and energy delivery, consumers have realized that they need to take steps to simplify and extract value out of everything that empowers their existence, but are left with more green static than tools to fix problems.
Capitalism is this wonderful/horrible thing where opportunity seems unlimited yet the long-term prognosis screams metastasized cancer without a moral thread sewing the futures of consumers together.
CEOs have replaced feudal lords. It's questionable which leader has a greater motivation to support their underclass.
I ran across this interesting, ranting article from a South Africa paper, How hybrid cars cause hunger thetimes.co.za The hybrid part doesn't make sense, but the historical perspective is fascinating.
The author relates modern agribusiness selling food stock to the highest bidder (corn for ethanol) to the emergence of apartheid where black people were forcibly removed from fertile farming land, relocated to unproductive land and forced to work on big commercial farms as underpaid laborers..
Patel points out that in the 2000 years before the British arrived in India, famines occurred once every 120 years. After the British imposed the market on India's agricultural production, famines occurred every four years.Despite the shortcomings of feudalism prior to the arrival of the British, India's landowners fed peasants when harvests were bad. For millennia, a moral economy prevailed, which ensured that nobody starved.
Continue reading Moral greening of capitalism.
Some domestic hybrid vehicles I would love to see:
The hybrid car segment is maturing with some players just jointing the team. While some car makers refine their markets, other's blast forth with hopeful new hybrid concepts.
Honda, who is probably wishing they had a few 60+ mpg hybrid Honda Insight's (built from 1999-2006) to sell will introduce a new $19K dedicated hybrid car that looks very much like a Toyota Prius and is expected to get 60 mpg. Cheaper to buy and more miles per gallon than a current Prius.
Honda is going to execute this by using platform parts from the tiny Honda Fit with a smaller Integrated Motor Assist engine assembly than is in the current Civic Hybrid.
I always wonder why cars like The Honda Fit (28 city/34 highway mpg) and the Smart car (33 mpg city and 40 mpg) don't get better mileage. If a Chevy Impala can get 30 on the highway, why can't a super tiny car get better mileage than 34. I could get 30 mpg out of a 6-cyl 1968 Plymouth Valiant built 40 years ago and it was a crude, clumsy chunk of car.
The Prius itself, around for a decade, will morph into a bigger, more powerful car yet promises a few more mpg than the current Prius.
Something dopey happens to small, efficient cars on long production runs. They often get larger and dumber. Lets hope Toyota doesn't wreck a good thing.
GM and Chrysler...
Continue reading Hybrid/green car marketing doesn't always make sense.
Our 15th president James Buchanan probably never campaigned as the green candidate, but there was a plumbing system in his former Lancaster home, Wheatland, that collected water from the roof. The system dates back to around 1840.
Tap water was a rare luxury in the early part of the 19th century and though the house is about 5 miles from the center of Lancaster, five miles of rutted roads was pretty far out into the county - no running water, no electricity. This didn't stop American ingenuity.
The system collected water from a pipe in the roof and filled a cistern in the attic. The huge cistern was constructed of ferris metal plates and rivets. Water fed by gravity was piped down to a shower, tub and bidet in a room beneath the cistern
The water wasn't heated, but a hot attic would transfer heat to the metal cistern and large bodies of water generally take a long time to cool after a hot day. A guess would make this water about 50 degrees warmer than anything dipped from a well after some good sunny days of an unventilated attic.
According to Patrick Clarke, executive director for The James Buchanan Foundation, not much is currently known about the system. Clarke is in the photos.
I supposed the clinical thing to do would be to calculate cost vs. environmental impact and come up with a nice squeaky green conclusion, but recently my conclusions seem to be made more out a belief that our open ("free" doesn't really apply) market for energy needs to be placed in check by the only force that can bring change.
Calculated, individual consumer choices multiplied by millions of people.
My friend Matt has a company car with paid gas for personal use. He said to me today, "I don't care if the gas is free - I just want to use my motorcycle because it doesn't use (uses half) gas." In 2004, he purchased (which he can't sell now) a Chevy Suburban that gets 15 mpg and never considered the price of gas.
My neighbor Chuck's new full-sized pickup is now collecting dirt around the wheels for sometimes two weeks at a time. He drives a 115 mpg scooter to work.
My retired neighbor on a fixed budget told me today, "I am going to hold on to my economic stimulus check so i can pay for fuel oil this Winter" A tax money give-a-way to spark the economy, funneled into the oil machine that is squeezing the economy in the first place.
We are entering the uncharted free market waters. Huge global energy monopolies that use raw materials that are irresistible to investors and tied to everything as a reason to make it more expensive. We can't regulate it, tax it or force it to do anything. The concept of oil just got too big in business and in our hearts.
The only force that can save the world from suicidal greed; the consumer stands alone with a choice to become super hero or victim.
I like the electric lawn mower more than the gas, simply because it does not use gas. It's two gallons of gasoline that went unsold this Summer.
How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountaintop it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make -- leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone -- we all dwell in a house of one room -- the world with the firmament for its roof -- and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.-John Muir, naturalist, explorer, and writer (1838-1914)
There also has been growing demand for commodities from public pension funds and university endowments that invest via special products linked to commodities indexes. However, these investment flows could slow amid sharp criticism in Congress that they are helping drive up food and energy costs. wsj.com
it's easy to blame greed and corruption for the run on commodities that has pushed up the price of gasoline and food, but your retirement and college may be cashing in on commodities.
With the banking/financial industry a mess and real estate in decline, the number of investments that can make money are few.
The money goes where the money grows.
