BLAMED FOR KEEPING THE PRICE FROM RISING FURTHER?  It's often a bad sign when People in Authority condemn speculation as a source of "artificial shortages, panic and a surge in prices." Yes, I'm talking about you, President Sarkozy.

Soaring grain prices, linked to adverse weather in major producing countries, have brought higher food costs and fanned social unrest in some countries, putting agriculture back on the agenda of world leaders three years after a similar food debate.

Like elsewhere in Europe, livestock breeders in France have been hard hit by climbing grain prices that account for a chunk of their production costs and that have not been offset by higher sale prices.

Let me see if I understand this ... hungry people in poor countries object to higher prices for cereals, and protecting French ranchers' rights to buy those same grains for lower prices is going to help ... how?

Then comes MSNBC agitator Ed Schultz, griping that gasoline prices are rising at the same time that inventories of gasoline already in country are currently high.  (It's transition time, the inventories of winter gasoline have to be drawn down while the inventories of summer gasoline are built up.  But a clean environment requires only seashells and balloons, nothing so mundane as inventories of the right formula for the atmospheric conditions on hand.)

He's encouraged in his griping by the cosmic convergence -- or so he thinks -- of Dennis Kucinich and Bill O'Reilly agreeing that commodity speculators are profiting to the expense of consumers.

Three Blind Mice, anyone?