Roubini: Jump in food, energy prices ‘can topple regimes’

[Barrett808]

A surge in food and energy costs is stoking inflation in emerging markets and causing riots that may topple governments, said Nouriel Roubini, the New York University economist who predicted the financial crisis.

Global food costs monitored by the United Nations jumped 25 percent last year, reaching a record in December, and crude oil traded in New York is at $86.38 a barrel, about 53 percent more than its average over the last decade. There have been protests in Algeria and Egypt, and Tunisia’s President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled the country on Jan. 14.

“In emerging markets, it’s leading to rising inflation, to reduction in disposable income, it’s leading to riots, demonstrations and political instability,” Roubini said in an interview in Davos, Switzerland, today with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “The Pulse.” “It’s really something that can topple regimes, as we have seen in the Middle East.” ...

Roubini: Jump in food, energy prices ‘can topple regimes’

[customerserviceguy]

1. Unrest in the Middle East

always produces a rise in the price of oil, making this whole thing a vicious circle.