So I was watching the morning financial reports over coffee this morning (As I normally do). This fellow, Wolfgang Klein from RBC Dominion Securities is a regular on CityTV. I always thought he was a little myopic in his commentaries on oil, but this morning he said something that nearly made me fall out of my chair.
He was talking about the President's speech last night, specifically the section about ethanol. He said something to the effect that if the US devoted 100% of it's corn production to ethanol, it would only account for a tiny percentage of it's fuel consumption.
Of course, we've all known about this for a long time. But to hear it on the morning financial report on the most widely watched morning news program in Canada was absolutely astonishing. But it didn't stop there.
He and the host went on to talk about how this ethanol initiative was causing food riots in Mexico and how meat prices were rising because meat producers use corn as an input. He even mentioned the corrosiveness of ethanol making it impossible to ship it by pipeline.
I couldn't believe how frank and open they were being. All that was missing was a tirade about government subsidies and I'd swear he was a poster here.


