According to the International Monetary Fund’s authoritative World Economic Outlook the world is facing “the largest financial shock since the Great Depression.” House prices are heading south, the house price bubble has well and truly burst and the whole housing market is freezing over. House building has virtually come to a stop. This is going to hit people in the advanced capitalist countries hard.

Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, puts our problems into perspective. “While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs.” We are confronted with actual starvation. He warns that the present food crisis will give us “seven lost years.” It means “lost learning potential for children...stunted intellectual and physical growth.” His colleague at the IMF, Dominique Strauss Kahn, concurs. He foresees that “hundreds of thousands of people will be starving.”

These people are strong on prediction but weak on prevention. There is a reason for this. They are the enforcers of world capitalism. Capitalism is ruled by strong, rich imperialist countries who strive to keep the rest ‘in their place.’ Free trade and free market capitalism has proved an excellent mechanism for keeping the many poor. Free markets have failed, so the enforcers demand more of the same.

Now capitalism is falling apart at the seams. Wheat, rice and cooking oil have virtually doubled in price in less than twelve months. It is madness that astronomic sums of money, enormous wealth, circle the globe and not enough finds its way to grow food for the poor. There’s a palm oil shortage. It takes 8 years to grow the trees to maturity, so soaring cooking oil prices are not just a hiccup. A socialist planned economy could have anticipated the increase in demand, but capitalist farmers just respond to price signals. By then it’s too late.

The Observer (April 13th) interviewed Kamla Devi from India. She has decided that, because of the food price rises, her family can no longer eat twice a day. Now they just have a midday meal of roti (flat bread) and vegetables. “When I go to the market and see how little I can get for my money, it makes me want to hit the shopkeepers and thrash the government...The rich are becoming richer. They go to the shopping malls and they don’t need to worry. The problem with prices only matters for the poor people like me.” There are hundreds of millions like Kamla, in households where more than half their income goes on food. For them, capitalism has proved a catastrophe.

Understandably there have been food riots in Egypt, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauretania, Mozambique, Senegal and Cameroon – so far. The poor world is in flames over the issue. Jacques Diouf of the Food and Agricultural Organisation warns, “There is a risk that this unrest will spread in countries where 50-60% of income goes to food.” It’s not a risk, it’s a certainty. Yet the FAO is devoting peanuts to alleviating starvation. It’s just not a priority for world capitalism.