Good thing I drink mainly tea these days:
Coffee makers across the country are doing the same as they struggle to absorb the surging cost of green coffee.
Green coffee is used to make the different blends of coffee you buy at cafes or grocery stores, and poor growing conditions in South America and other coffee-growing countries have led to fears of an imminent supply crunch.
Those supply fears have also caused coffee futures to soar. Prices on the futures market are up a whopping 95% over the past 12 months.
As a result, some brands have been forced to make even more drastic increases than Starbucks.
Wonder how long it will be before we find out this is because of some bullshit scheme cooked up by the sociopaths at Goldman Sachs?
Baud
On the bright side, maybe a Nation too sleepy to drive will cause gas prices to go down.
Note to self: Contact Goldman Sachs about cornering the market on tea futures.
Just Some Fuckhead
I’ve been warning about Peak Coffee for years but you fuckers ignored me.
Jenny
dump the crap into boston harbor.
El Cid
This is all because of the Obama government spendin’.
kdaug
Goldman Sachs manipulating commodity prices? Futures up 95%?
Unpossible.
It’s simply unfavorable growing conditions in every coffee-growing country on Earth.
Nothing to see here…
Joshua Norton
Yeah, yeah. They’ve been trotting out this tired story every few years since coffee was a nickle a cup. Maybe this will cut back on the Starbucks across the street from Starbucks around the corner from 3 other Starbucks.
Jenny
Coffee: too tasty to fail.
General Stuck
The speculation bonanza with the world getting shook down by a bunch of pin heads in three piece suits, could not be expected to not spread. Next there will be a reported tree crunch on supply, due to whatever, and a role of shit paper will cost you dearly.
There is no good reason to keep gas prices at 3.90 a gallon, but they won’t be going down until and if dems run the entire government again, and put a little uncertainty on the table as to what whacky libs might do.
Just Some Fuckhead
People shouldn’t drink coffee anyway. It’s bad for you- causes health problems- and the short term environmental effects in the toilet at work are unforgivable.
I say we put a $5 dollar surtax on every cup of coffee, which should lead to people drinking less coffee and more water.
opal
I’ve already had to scale back to Chock Full o’Nuts.
How much more can I sacrifice?
JPL
@opal: Why drink coffee at all.
PeakVT
Somebody needs to come out with caffeinated milk or orange juice or something. Maybe caffeinated donuts.
CJ
Invisible hand, will of the free market, etc etc. You just need to trust the market, everything will be fine.
Jenny
No wonder my husband never has a 2nd cup of my coffee
Hawerchuk
Note that Vietnam’s entry into the coffee market depressed prices significantly starting in the early 1990s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee_production_in_Vietnam
Martin
This is because the CRA (Caffeine Reinvestment Act) encouraged all of those black people to buy coffee they couldn’t afford. Macchiato drinkers are the real victims here.
Martin
@Hawerchuk: Fucking commies.
Tom Levenson
Sort of on-topic, but I just finished having coffee with my guide through the next several days in Bogota, and it turns out that she was involved in making the documentary about the search for the next Juan Valdez…it took them a year to find him, apparently, and in the end they were able to identify a campesino who could play the role.
I don’t know why, but I love little stories like this.
And yes — the coffee is very good down here. They know their arabica in these hills (mountains to you, sir).
I’ll ask how this year’s harvest is doing, anyway. As long as I’m too jet lagged and hypoxic to blog, I might as well be doing something useful for the Balloon Juice Borg.
Warren Terra
Anyone who hasn’t done so should read “The Food Bubble”, an essay published in Harper’s by Frederick Kaufman. (The copy at the Harper’s website is subscription-only, but the link goes to a copy on Kaufman’s own site).
Foxhunter
Heh. I’m in charge purchasing at my office, coffee being one of the routine items. Staples, where we buy our substandard joe, recently put the squeeze on our purchase counts. Used to be able to buy unlimited tubs of Folgers, now we are restricted to 4 per order/per week.
Tough times for the junkies.
Failure, Inc.
@General Stuck: Used to be that the suits had the decency (read: were terrified of the mob) and kept their speculating confined to bullshit company valuations (aka stocks) and stuff that other rich people trafficked in, such as gold, precious stones, etc.
Now they’ve figured out that the mob is glued to a TV set and no longer has the musculature to even get off the couch, much less hunt them down like dogs and impale their heads on pikes. Not only that, but the rubes have been dumbed down enough to believe any bullshit lie told to them by anyone, and the motherfucking gloves have come off.
Be prepared to be milked like the cows you are, sheeple. You’re going to find that the vampire squid had an insatiable appetite and will eat anything – and I do mean anything.
This week it seems to like coffee and gasoline.
Handsome Stranger
@opal: Great. Just great. Now I’ve got the Chock Full o’Nuts jingle stuck in my head.
eastriver
Java Jive. Meh.
Peet’s is my person fuel. It’s cheaper than four bucks a gallon. So it’s a damn fine deal.
Quit yer bitchin’, bitches.
hilts
OT
MSNBC has announced that Ed Schultz will be given a one week suspension without pay for “unacceptable” comments Schultz made, calling Laura Ingraham a “right wing slut,” and then, in a second comment, a “talk slut.”
h/t http://www.mediaite.com/tv/breaking-msnbc-suspends-ed-schultz-over-unacceptable-remarks
bemused
Not so long ago, a shitload of cocoa beans were bought up. I don’t remember who or how long it was held but I didn’t notice a huge price increase in my favorite dark chocolate bars.
Villago Delenda Est
@Failure, Inc.:
This, this, this.
Until the blood of these maggots flows through the streets (or at least a few of them actually go to jail for theft), it will not change.
Suffern ACE
http://hubpages.com/hub/Rice-Coffe
Rice Coffee – it’s in your future.
Poopyman
OT, but there’s a late resurgence down in So Much Awesome in One Place. Some good, late entries.
Linnaeus
Maybe the fine folks at GS are using Robert Vaughn’s weather control scheme from Superman III to monopolize the coffee market.
uptown
Don’t most big coffee companies have long term contracts with their suppliers? This makes the spot market much more volatile, as there is a only a small percentage of the crop actually available to trade.
opal
@Handsome Stranger:
Sorry. You might like this jingle better.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Time to put on the old curmudgeon hat.
I remember ancient times when people prepared most of their own food/beverages, including coffee. My sneaking suspicion is that if you take the necessary ninety seconds a day to meet your needs, you will, and for a reasonable price regardless of what the world commodity markets are doing. But seeing as this is America and ninety seconds is vastly more difficult than driving the Chevy Suburban two and a half miles to the local express stand, I don’t expect my sneaking suspicion to be heeded.
ruemara
1. I have stockpiled beans in the event of such a disaster.
2. Ditto for cocoa powder
3. I will cut a bitch who even looks at my stockpile the wrong way. I’m a cook, these things are sharp.
greg
Even with these increases, green coffee beans costs as much per pound today as they did in 1977. I wish a lot more things were available at 1977 prices.
Marcellus Shale public dick.
@opal:
You could have to get by like Mrs Gingrich III . Nuts Full of Chalk.
ChrisS
I too switched to tea since my SO is british, so let’s just say we have a lot of PG Tips in the pantry.
I was drinking 3-4 cups of a coffee in the morning before switching to diet pepsi for the remainder of the day. I was probably taking in 1,500 mg caffeine a day. And I was suffering for it …
Now I’ve switched to about 50 mg.
Sloegin
Bastich speculators probably have about a half dozen Liberian-flagged supertankers full of beans parked offshore.
Oh slip me a slug of the wonderful mug
an I’ll cut a rug just as snug in a jug
Drop a nickel in the pot joe
Takin it slow
Waiter, waiter, percolator
Just Some Fuckhead
@ChrisS:
*How British IS She??*