The economics of milk are weird. There's a lot of subsidy there but it clearly isn't enough. Meanwhile Borden isn't a dairy farmer they're a dairy processor so they're middle man between us and the cows.

One of my jobs involves... solitary confinement, shall we say. And we had a cast that we'd cut off from civilization for like six weeks, maybe seven. And one of the guys goes into the pantry and opens the fridge and pulls out a thing of chicken and goes "HOLY SHIT FOR CHICKEN?" because the price had tripled in six weeks. That woulda been January 2008.

The price of milk is a fundamental. If you buy groceries, you probably know what it costs. If you don't buy groceries, you're out of touch with your voters. Turn that fundamental into a variable, people are gonna get itchy. And I've been seeing a lot more variability lately.

I don't remember craziness over milk - not too surprising, I wasn't in the industry. But I do remember the rice riots. Not a lot of mentions of American tomfoolery, but there were cops called and news stories at a couple Costcos in California.

It's always Costco.

Why the rush for milk? Dairy Farmers Of Canada, a trade group there, notes that Canadian dairy farmers don't receive any government subsidies to produce milk. Meanwhile, just across the border, US farmers do receive a subsidy. The result, speculates KIRO, means that milk costs more in Canada than it does in America.