Bacon Prices Are Falling

Bringing home the bacon is getting a little easier.

Prices of pork products are falling as herds bounce back from a diarrhea-inducing virus epidemic that has killed millions of piglets over the last year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Hog futures -- contracts that obligate the buyer to purchase pigs at a certain price in the next month -- peaked last March at $1.1167 a pound. Now, next month’s futures are priced at about 69 cents per pound, according to the trade group Chicago Mercantile Exchange.

“Pork prices are getting cheaper,” Terry Roggensack, who co-founded the commodities research firm the Hightower Report, told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “It’s a positive.”

This chart, courtesy of Index Mundi, shows pork prices declining since October.

The number of deaths linked to the Porcine epidemic diarrhea virus, or PEDv, isn’t the only thing making things less expensive, Roggensack said.

The strength of the U.S. dollar and tumult in Russia sent exports tumbling to about 18 percent from a peak of 26 percent earlier last year, according to Roggensack's data. But the number of hogs being slaughtered rose to 2.316 million last week, a 4.6 percent gain from the same period last year. Unlike other commodities, such as gold, copper or crude oil, only a fraction of pork is frozen and stored for later use.

“For the most part, you’ve got to use it within a month or so of when it’s produced,” Roggensack said. “The domestic market needs to absorb an even bigger supply than it normally would.”

And how do you entice people to buy more of something? Make it cheaper.

How To Score A Free Burrito At Chipotle This January

While winter sinks deeper into a seemingly interminable cold and wet darkness, there is a light at the end of the month. On Monday, January 26, you can earn yourself a free burrito at Chipotle.

To do so, you'll have to buy an entree off the Sofritas menu on that Monday. Then, when you bring your receipt to a Chipotle between January 27th and February 28th, you'll be rewarded with a free burrito, bowl, salad, or taco order of your choosing (yes, you can go back to meat if you want).

Chipotle first introduced Sofritas -- its vegan, braised tofu option -- early in 2013. If you're tofu-averse, know that the filling reportedly tastes a lot like scrambled eggs. That doesn't sound so bad, does it?

If you really can't handle the idea of eating bean curd but want to score that free burrito, you could always pluck out the protein and toss it to your dog. This way, everyone wins.

H/T: FoodBeast

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Workers Sue McDonald's For Discrimination, Opening New Front In Franchise Fight

A group of former McDonald's workers from Virginia are suing their stores for racial discrimination and sexual harassment -- and they're taking the rare step of naming the world's foremost fast-food company as a defendant in the suit.

The 10 plaintiffs -- nine of whom are African-American, and one of whom is Hispanic -- say they were wrongfully fired last year and replaced with mostly white workers because their managers believed there had been "too many black people [working] in the store." The lawsuit (viewable here) alleges that women were harassed and groped and that minorities were subjected to racist taunts. It also claims that managers referred to one restaurant as "the ghetto store."

Although it's usually just franchisees that are sued under discrimination claims, in this case the plaintiffs are arguing that McDonald's itself should be held responsible for the actions inside a franchised store. They say the fast-food giant should have to pay damages because it sets companywide policies and has the power to enforce them.

"In order to maximize its profit, McDonald's Corporate has control over nearly every aspect of its restaurants' operations," the lawsuit asserts. "Though nominally independent, franchised McDonald's restaurants are predominantly controlled by McDonald's."

The plaintiffs in the suit have received legal assistance from the NAACP and the group Fight for $15, which advocates on behalf of fast-food workers. According to the suit, the plaintiffs had a combined 50 years working at McDonald's restaurants, 25 of them accrued by a 53-year-old shift manager who lost her job in July. The rest of the workers lost their jobs in a mass termination in May.

As the South Boston (Virginia) News & Record reported at the time, a total of 17 workers were abruptly fired from three McDonald's restaurants in the area. All three locations were run by Michael Simon, owner of Soweva, the company that franchised the stores. At the time, workers told the paper they were informed they "didn't fit the profile" that the company was looking for in its restaurants.

"Most, though not all, of the terminated employees are African-American," the paper noted. "Most of the workers who remain on the job at the local McDonald’s also are black. So, too, is [Soweva owner] Simon."

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say that their white supervisors wanted to drop black workers from the payrolls because the stores were "too dark," in a phrase attributed to one manager.

"I had no idea what they meant by the right profile until I saw everyone else that they fired as well," Willie Betts, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement Thursday. "They took away the only source of income I have to support my family."

Simon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement at the time of the firings, Simon denied that race was a factor, saying his company "has a strict policy of prohibiting any form of discrimination or harassment in hiring, termination or any other aspect of employment."

In the lawsuit, the workers allege that when they brought their concerns to McDonald's corporate, the company "took no actions to remedy" the firings. The workers are now seeking damages from the chain under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion or sex.

"We asked McDonald’s corporate to help us get our jobs back, but the company told us to take our concerns to the franchisee -- the same franchisee that just fired us," Pamela Marable, another plaintiff, said in a statement this week.

“We have not seen the lawsuit, and cannot comment on its allegations, but will review the matter carefully," McDonald's said in a statement Thursday.

"McDonald’s has a long-standing history of embracing the diversity of employees, independent Franchisees, customers and suppliers, and discrimination is completely inconsistent with our values," the company's statement continued. "McDonald’s and our independent owner-operators share a commitment to the well-being and fair treatment of all people who work in McDonald’s restaurants.”

The lawsuit in Virginia is just the latest salvo in a broader fight against the franchise model. McDonald's franchises roughly 90 percent of its stores, leaving the day-to-day operations to individual franchisees like Soweva. Since the franchisees run the stores, they're the ones that tend to get sued when labor law is broken. That's a major upside of the franchise model for companies like McDonald's.

But unions and worker groups have been arguing in court and before agencies like the National Labor Relations Board that big chains such as McDonald's should be held accountable for the working conditions inside the stores that bear their names.

Until now, that generally hasn't been the case. But that could be changing on some fronts. The NLRB's general counsel, for instance, has named McDonald's as a "joint employer" alongside several of its franchisees accused of violating labor law during the fast-food strikes. If the agency were to view the workers as employed under one big umbrella -- rather than by hundreds or thousands of individual franchisees -- it would be much easier for the workers to unionize en masse. As it is, the fact that McDonald's workers are technically employed by different franchisees means they would have to be unionized store by individual store.

Several lawsuits currently seek to hold McDonald's responsible for wage theft allegedly committed by its franchisees. As with the discrimination complaint in Virginia, the plaintiffs in those suits argue that McDonald's ultimately exerts control over the operations inside individual stores, and that it should be held accountable when the law is broken.

Your Chipotle Could Be Getting Carnitas Back Soon

Carnitas lovers rejoice! (Sort of.)

Finding carnitas during the ongoing Chipotle pork shortage may not be as hard as you originally thought. The Mexican chain is rotating the menu item through all of its restaurants, according to Chris Arnold, a Chipotle spokesman. Though one-third of its restaurants won't be selling carnitas until the shortage ends, that one-third will change periodically, so no restaurants are out of the protein for "extended periods," Arnold wrote in an email.

Chipotle suspended sales of carnitas last week after discovering that one of its pork suppliers wasn’t meeting its standards for responsibly raised meat. The news that the hottest fast food chain in the country was out of one of its few menu items made headlines, with carnitas fans taking to Facebook and Twitter to ask when the protein would be coming back.

When chipotle is out of carnitas pic.twitter.com/gVYZcIAP6N

— abby bova (@abby_bova) January 10, 2015

A carnitas fan mourns the loss.

The announcement also reminded Chipotle fans why they’re drawn to the chain in the first place. The burrito chain’s popularity has skyrocketed in recent years, in part because it sells itself as a fast food restaurant with a conscience -- hawking humanely raised meat and sustainably grown beans. At the same time, traditional fast food chains like McDonald’s are struggling to draw diners into their stores.

Despite Chipotle’s success, the carnitas shortage, which is now in its second week, highlights the challenges of running a large chain committed to serving humanely raised meat when there isn’t a lot of it out there.

Carnitas only make up about 6 percent of the entrees chipotle sells, Arnold said. The spokesman had some advice for those die-hard carnitas fans who want to make sure their local Chipotle is carrying the pork:

“The best way to know for sure would be to go.”

This Guy Just Made $1 Billion Betting On Oil Prices

You know what's cool? An oil-price collapse that saves you a few dollars when you fill up the Escalade. You know what's cooler? An oil-price collapse that makes you ONE BILLION FREAKING DOLLARS.

A hedge fund called PointState Capital is currently enjoying that second state of cool, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The New York firm has made a $1 billion profit from betting that crude oil would crater, according to the report.

In hindsight, it does seem like a pretty no-duh bet to make. Way back in May 2014, Bloomberg notes, PointState CEO Zach Schreiber publicly laid out a simple case for crude's impending collapse. Schreiber correctly noted that oil and gas producers in the U.S. were pumping too much oil out of the ground and setting up a huge price decline -- in other words, rapidly strangling the goose that was, at the time, laying golden oil-filled eggs.

Since Schreiber's presentation, crude has fallen from roughly $100 a barrel in May to less than $50 a barrel this week. Bada bing, bada boom, make a billion dollars. So easy.

PointState started out with a relatively meager $5 billion in 2011, founded by alumni of a much bigger hedge fund run by a more famous hedge fund manager, Stanley Druckenmiller. Now its leader, Schreiber, who used to quietly trade oil and other commodities for Druckenmiller, is suddenly at real risk of becoming a rock-star hedge fund genius whose every move is followed obsessively.

But everybody's a genius in hindsight. Foresight is a lot harder. Untold scores of hedge funds took the opposite bet of PointState and got themselves slaughtered.

A PointState representative did not immediately respond to The Huffington Post's request for confirmation or comment.

The hedge funds who made the wrong call aren't the only ones suffering: The U.S. oil and gas producers Schreiber mentioned are starting to make layoffs and production cuts.

It's worth noting that Schreiber got an unexpected assist from OPEC, which decided in November to stand back and watch oil prices go straight to hell, hoping to squeeze out some U.S. producers. Almost nobody expected that to happen -- it's possible that even Schreiber didn't see it coming. He didn't mention it in his May presentation, Bloomberg points out.

This is not the first big hedge fund win that seems obvious in hindsight. Most famously, John Paulson, founder of Paulson and Co., made between $3 billion and $4 billion in a single year betting on the subprime mortgage collapse that everybody should have seen coming.

These guys make it look so easy that they inspire others to invest their money in hedge funds, or even to start their own. The trouble is that most hedge funds are big failures, unable even to keep up with the broader stock market.

It's not as easy as the geniuses make it look -- even for the geniuses. Paulson's ride since the financial crisis hasn't been bump-free; he took massive losses in 2011 and 2014 on big bets gone wrong. The list of huge hedge fund disasters is at least as long as the list of huge hedge fund wins.

For Schreiber, now comes the hard part. Though that $1 billion should ease the way a bit.

What Obama Didn't Say About Rising Wages

By Jason Lange

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) - When President Barack Obama called attention on Tuesday to rising U.S. wages, he noted employers had not planned so many raises in years. But what he left out is that government data suggests actual wage increase are stuck in low gear.

"Today, thanks to a growing economy, the recovery is touching more and more lives," Obama said in his annual State of the Union address.

The president was not entirely triumphant in his speech, calling on Washington to help lift more Americans out of poverty by raising the minimum wage. He also said reforms to the country's education system were needed to help more people get high-paying jobs.

But in making a case that America had broken out of the economic doldrums, he said: "Wages are finally starting to rise again."

While it is true that earnings are rising, the problem with that statement is that multiple government surveys suggest income growth remains much slower than before the 2007-09 recession.

Average hourly earnings in the private sector rose just 1.7 percent in the year through December, according to the U.S. Labor Department.

On the eve of the recession, which began in December 2007, earnings were growing more than 3 percent every 12 months. Since 2010, they have averaged about 2 percent growth.

Obama also noted that a bigger share of small-business owners planned to raise wages than at any time since 2007.

That was an apparent reference to data from the National Federation of Independent Business from December, which genuinely lifted hopes workers were poised to get a pop in their paychecks.

But even relatively upbeat data on actual earnings suggests workers are not getting much in the way of raises.

A separate Labor Department survey on employment compensation showed wages growing 2.1 percent in the third quarter compared with a year earlier. That was the fastest pace since 2009, but still well below growth rates in 2007, when they were consistently above 3 percent. (Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Leaked Report Says World Bank Violated Its Own Rules In Ethiopia

This article was reported by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a Washington DC-based global network of 185 reporters in 65 countries who collaborate on transnational investigations.

Internal watchdog finds link between World Bank financing and Ethiopian government's mass resettlement of indigenous group

The World Bank repeatedly violated its own rules while funding a development initiative in Ethiopia that has been dogged by complaints that it sponsored forced evictions of thousands of indigenous people, according to a leaked report by a watchdog panel at the bank.

The report, which was obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, examines a health and education initiative that was buoyed by nearly $2 billion in World Bank funding over the last decade. Members of the indigenous Anuak people in Ethiopia’s Gambella province charged that Ethiopian authorities used some of the bank’s money to support a massive forced relocation program and that soldiers beat, raped and killed Anuak who refused to abandon their homes. The bank continued funding the health and education initiative for years after the allegations emerged.

The report by the World Bank’s internal Inspection Panel found that there was an “operational link” between the World Bank-funded program and the Ethiopian government’s relocation push, which was known as “villagization.” By failing to acknowledge this link and take action to protect affected communities, the bank violated its own policies on project appraisal, risk assessment, financial analysis and protection of indigenous peoples, the panel’s report concludes.

“The bank has enabled the forcible transfer of tens of thousands of indigenous people from their ancestral lands,” said David Pred, director of Inclusive Development International, a nonprofit that filed the complaint on behalf of 26 Anuak refugees.

Anuak children in Gorom Refugee Camp in South Sudan. Many Anuak fled Ethiopia during a government relocation campaign called "villagization". Photo credit: Andreea Campeanu/ICIJ.

The bank declined to answer ICIJ’s questions about the report.

“As is standard procedure, World Bank staff cannot comment on the results of the Inspection Panel’s investigation until the Executive Board of the World Bank Group has had the opportunity to review the Panel’s report over the coming weeks,” Phil Hay, the bank’s spokesman for Africa, said in a written response.

In previous responses to the complaint, bank management said there was no evidence of widespread abuses or evictions and that the Anuak “have not been, nor will they be, directly and adversely affected by a failure of the Bank to implement its policies and procedures.”

Because the panel’s report has not yet been published, some of the language may be revised before a final version is released, but its basic conclusions are not expected to change.

The report stops short of finding the bank responsible for the most serious abuses. The panel did not attempt to verify the widely reported allegations of forced evictions and human rights violations, finding that the question was beyond the scope of its investigation. The bank did not violate its policy on forced resettlement, the report says, because the relocations were conducted by the Ethiopian government and were not a “necessary” part of the health and education program.

Since 2006, the World Bank and other foreign donors have bankrolled the Promoting Basic Services program, which provides grants to local and regional governments for services such as health, education and clean water. The PBS program was designed to avoid funneling aid dollars directly to Ethiopia’s federal government, which had violently cracked down on its opposition after disputed 2005 elections.

By 2010, federal and provincial authorities had embarked on an effort to relocate nearly 2 million poor people in four provinces from isolated rural homes to village sites selected by the government. In these new villages, authorities promised to provide the relocated communities with health care, education and other basic services they had lacked.

The government relocated 37,883 households in Gambella, roughly 60 percent of all households in the province, according to Ethiopian government statistics cited by the Inspection Panel. The Ethiopian government has said that all resettlements were voluntary.

Many members of the Anuak, a mostly Christian indigenous group in Gambella, have said they didn’t want to move. Anuak and their advocates say that they were pushed off their fertile lands by soldiers and policemen, and that much of the abandoned land was then leased by the government to investors. The evictions were “accompanied by widespread human rights violations, including forced displacement, arbitrary arrest and detention, beatings, rape, and other sexual violence,” according to a 2012 report by Human Rights Watch.

The Human Rights Watch report and Anuak refugees’ complaint to the Inspection Panel contended that the bank’s money was being used by local and regional authorities to support forced relocations. For example, they say, money from the PBS initiative was used to pay the salaries of government officials who helped carry out the evictions.

The bank continued to fund the PBS program throughout the villagization campaign. The bank approved new funding for PBS in 2011 and 2012, and its support for the program continues today. Since the nationwide health and education initiative launched, Ethiopia has reported strides in reducing child mortality and increasing primary school enrollment.

The villagization campaign ended in 2013, and is believed to have resettled substantially fewer than the nearly 2 million people anticipated by the government.

The Ethiopia case is one of several recent World Bank-financed projects that have drawn fire from activist groups for allegedly funding human rights violations. These projects include a loan to a palm oil producer in Honduras whose security guards have been accused by human rights advocates of killing dozens of peasants involved in a land rights dispute with the company, and a conservation program by the Kenyan government that members of the Sengwer people say was used as tool for pushing them out of their ancestral forests.

In the Ethiopia case, the Inspection Panel decided that the most severe allegations of forced evictions and violence were beyond its mandate, in part because bank rules limited its investigation to only the most recent funding installment of the PBS program.

During its investigation, the Inspection Panel asked Eisei Kurimoto, a professor at Osaka University in Japan and an expert on the Anuak people, to travel to Gambella and help review the Anuak’s complaint.

Kurimoto told ICIJ that Anuak he spoke with told him Ethiopian authorities used the threat of violence to force them to move.

Ethiopian officials who carried out the villagization program “always went with armed policemen and soldiers,” Kurimoto said. “It is very clear that the regional government thought that people would not move happily or willingly. So they had to show their power and the possibility of using force.”

Inclusive Development International’s Pred said it is now up to World Bank president Jim Yong Kim to decide whether “justice will be served” for the Anuak. “Justice starts with the acceptance of responsibility for one’s faults – which the Inspection Panel found in abundance – and ends with the provision of meaningful redress,” he said.