On his radio and television shows, professional crazy person Glenn Beck has been letting us know for months now that Weimar style hyperinflation is just around the corner, that we're going to be buying McDonald's sandwiches with barrels full of “Woodrow Wilson dollars,” and that we should all stock up on canned food because “an ear of corn could be eleven dollars.”

And Beck has been widely panned for these predictions. Economists called his claims “crazy.”

Now, lo and behold, food prices are rising. According to the Wall Street Journal, "[g]lobal food-commodity prices soared in recent months, and more increases are expected to come." What are we to think of this development? Is it possible that Glenn Beck was right?

No. Not even a little bit.

As recently as January 4, Beck was on television claiming that the source of rising prices was not the forces of supply and demand, but was the fact that “they have a plan....What are the problems they're creating?...Food prices going up. Why? We're printing too much money, devaluating our own currency.” The following night he said "[i]t's only a matter of time before we experience the same thing that is happening in Europe with inflation and everything else." According to Beck, food prices are increasing because of irresponsible government monetary policies. He sees Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany in our immediate future.

For an explanation of why Beck doesn't win any prizes for prescience, I turn the blog over to an unlikely source - Eric Bolling, Megyn Kelly and Fox News:

BOLLING: We're having a - like a confluence of bad things going on right now. Our supplies are already low in - of food, corn, rice, coffee, sugar, wheat - supplies low. Now we're finding out the USDA tells us that guess what? The crops that were expecting to come out in the next - at least the two harvests may be light as well which means prices are on the rise.

[...]

KELLY: And the thing is, they're not only talking about higher prices, which is a big enough concern. But they're also talking - the World Economic Forum apparently warning that a rising global population, greater prosperity are putting unsustainable pressure on resources and they say Eric we could be looking at the specter of shortages, which would lead to social and political instability, geopolitical conflict and irreparable environmental damage. I mean this is something that could affect us on a, on many levels. [Fox News Channels's America Live, 1/13/11]

As Bolling explained, supplies are already low and are in fact coming in below expectations. As Kelly explained, a rising population and greater prosperity are going to increase demand for resources in the coming decades. Now, I'm trying to remember back to Econ 1 what happens to prices when supplies go down and demand goes up. Oh that's right. Prices go up.

Indeed, the New York Times is reporting that recent massive flooding in Australia “is proving every bit the catalyst for rising commodity prices as the 2010 floods in Pakistan and the wildfires in Russia were. Flooding in Australia has roiled Asia-Pacific markets for coal, cotton, wheat and sugar.” Scientific American is reporting that “food prices hit a record high in December thanks to crop failures from a series of extreme weather events around the world.”

Fortunately for Glenn -- and his viewers -- his studio is a mere 10 minute walk from the respected Jesuit institution Fordham University. Hopefully he'll heed my advice, take a twice weekly break for few of the five hours between his radio and television shows, and sign up for an econ extension course.

Update and full transcript of the America Live segment can be found below the jump.

KELLY: Fox News Alert on the world food supplies. We have been tracking this story for a few days now and it is getting quite some attention. Food supplies getting very tight, and on the commodity markets food prices soaring to levels never before seen. It has been gradually showing up in our supermarkets and you're going to pay for it in your pocketbook. And Fox Business Network's Eric Bolling has been warning about this and now says it could get much worse. We did, we had you on two weeks ago with the Corn Flakes -

BOLLING: Remember these? Yeah remember this?

KELLY: And it's happening. What exactly is happening globally that is affecting us in our local supermarket?

BOLLING: We're having a - like a confluence of bad things going on right now. Our supplies are already low in - of food, corn, rice, coffee, sugar, wheat - supplies low. Now we're finding out the USDA tells us that guess what? The crops that were expecting to come out in the next - at least the two harvests may be light as well which means prices are on the rise. All coupled with - I don't know if you watch it - at the bottom of the screen once in a while you'll see an oil rice go by - $92 a barrel. $91.48 right now as we speak. Those prices are going up. Here's the issue, Megyn: When corn prices went up, when rice and wheat prices went up two years ago in 2008, it sparked food riots. Now that was on the heels of a $147 barrel oil and $4 gasoline. We're only, and I say only in relationship to 147 - we're only at $92 a barrel. If we were to go back to $147 a barrel like last time that would push all these prices 60% higher? That's a big problem. Because these prices are high right now on the wholesale level, they're making their way to the supermarket. Go to the supermarket, check out prices.

KELLY: And the thing is, they're not only talking about higher prices, which is a big enough concern. But they're also talking - the World Economic Forum apparently warning that a rising global population, greater prosperity are putting unsustainable pressure on resources and they say Eric we could be looking at the specter of shortages, which would lead to social and political instability, geopolitical conflict and irreparable environmental damage. I mean this is something that could affect us on a, on many levels.

BOLLING: Not could - will affect us. You see this, I'm holding up rice right here because in 2008 when oil went to $147 a barrel, rice prices spiked to $25 per 100 metric tons. But right now we're around 20, if we were to see that again, last time the food riots you saw on the side of the screen would pale in comparison because people aren't as well off. The last time this happened was on the heels of a very robust world economy. We're not there right now. They, Megyn they were actually giving out cards, credit cards to buy rice so people wouldn't starve. It's a bad situation, getting worse, and if we do, if the globe does grow like you mentioned, it's only gonna push prices up substantially higher.

KELLY: And now they're also talking about how this flooding in Australia, which there's apparently a lot of cattle ranches that have been affected by the flooding and so now importers here in the United States that rely on that mean to fill orders for restaurants and so on are saying they're gonna have to look elsewhere and that may cause some problems because there's been problems importing meat from South America and places, so now Americans could be affected in more ways than they know.

BOLLING: Let me show you how this works. Australia is known for producing two things: A lot of meat and a lot of wool. What happens with the meat? Meat prices rise, they've been going up. Wool prices, what else do you use besides wool or a complementary item? Cotton. Cotton traded today the highest its traded for 147 years of trading, an all time. Prices affect each other so when things like flooding happen in Australia or storms happen elsewhere they push prices higher and bottom line is: your grocery prices are going up.

UPDATE: That didn't take long. Shortly after this post went up, Beck, while shilling for advertiser Goldline International, directly connected the actual facts that “food prices are going up” and there have been “food riots...around the world” to the imaginary fact that “we're devaluing our money.”

From the January 14 edition of Premiere Radio Networks' The Glenn Beck Program:

BECK: First a commercial break. Sponsored by Goldline. 1-866-Goldline, or goldline.com. The food prices are going up. You've seen, um, you've seen these things, you've seen that there are now riots around the world - food riots, believe it or not, around the world. Part of this has to do with how we're devaluing our money. It makes things more expensive in other parts of the world. It also makes it more expensive for us to buy - you know we buy a lot of our sugar, you can't, I don't think you can even buy sugar. Don't we have some sort of import tax or export tax or something, I don't know, there's some weird sugar thing. We have to buy all of our sugar. Well, when we buy our sugar, if our dollar is worth less then we have to pay more for sugar. Sugar, flower, cotton is the highest its been in history. They say that 30 percent - 30 percent increases in our food - err um, our clothing coming this spring. Because it took a while to get from the fields to the store, but everything else happens quickly. Oil, sugar, flour, food. The hedge against inflation has always been gold. Please call and do your own homework. Don't take my word for it. Do your own homework. A lot of risk in buying Gold. 1-866-Goldline. 1-866-Goldline or goldline.com

As for Professor Beck's scientific statement that “there's some weird sugar thing,” I don't really know how to refute that because if you listen closely, he doesn't actually try to imply that he has any idea what he's talking about. But for the record, according to the US Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service, the United States uses a system of quotas and tariffs to govern sugar imports, which come mostly from Latin America. The U.S. government also has a Refined Sugar Re-Export Program “designed to facilitate the use of domestic refining capacity to export refined sugar into the world markets.” I of course have no idea what that has to do with what Beck was trying to talk about, but the overall message is clear: Be afraid. Be very afraid. And buy gold, “the hedge against inflation.”