Our Awful Situation

Archive for June, 2008

Dow Chemical hiking prices 25%

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 25th, 2008

Dow Chemical Co. announced its second comprehensive price hike in less than a month to offset the “relentless rise” in costs for energy and related raw materials.

The Midland-based chemical company announced Tuesday it will raise prices by as much as 25% next month. That follows price increases of up to 20% that took effect June 1.

Jim Wesley of Survival Blog comments:

Ay carumba! Dow produces a huge variety of chemicals and compounds that go into everything from fertilizers to plastics. This is an alarming indicator of consumer price increases in the near future. When paired with fuel price jumps, this becomes downright frightening for near-future food prices at the consumer level.

Here’s an inflation “score board” Jim recently posted on Survival Blog:

Crude oil up 42.5%
Ethanol up 20.7%
Heating oil up 43.9%
Natural gas up 76.5%
Unleaded gas up 39.5%
Cattle up 1.0%
Corn up 58.8%
Soy beans up; 26.4%
Wheat down 2.2%
Coffee up 5.9%
Aluminum up 32.7%
Copper up 25.7
Platinum up 33.4%
Gold up 6.0%
Silver up 13.4%.
S&P 500 down 10.24%