Kevin Williamson of National Review Online explores a malodorous deal involving the federal government and cheese.
The federal government proposes to buy a small mountain of cheese from America’s dairy farmers, valued at $20 million. It does not have any particular use for all that cheddar, most of which will end up in food banks or quietly sent to a landfill.
Rather, it — we, taxpayers — is buying a mountain of cheese because America’s dairy farmers are not very good at some parts of their job, especially the part about planning for the future.
The day before yesterday, you could not lay your hand on a block of cheese that was not spoken for. Cheese prices were strong, in no small part because of strong demand abroad, especially from China, where the discerning palates of the new affluent classes have a deep appreciation for the subtle flavors of Made in the U.S.A. cow-juice sediments. With demand strong, dairy farmers invested in new production capacity and started flooding world markets with Vermont’s finest . . . right around the time the Chinese stopped hollering whatever the Mandarin is for “Laissez les bons temps rouler!”
American dairy farmers, like all of those financial geniuses who were flipping houses back in 2006, fell into one of the oldest errors: the belief that prices move only in one direction — up. That leaves them with too much cheese and too few cheese-eaters.
So, who is going to eat those losses? The people who made the bad investments?
No. Not them.
Open wide.
