Aired 05/20/08 Anuradha Mittal (Oakland Institute) http://www.oaklandinstitute.org on the global food crisis. World food prices rose 39% in the last year. Rice alone rose to a 19-year high in March -- an increase of 50% in two weeks alone -- while the real price of wheat has hit a 28-year high. Food riots erupted in Egypt, Guinea, Haiti, Indonesia, Mauritania, Mexico, Senegal, Uzbekistan and Yemen. For the 3 billion people in the world who subsist on $2 a day or less, the leap in food prices is a killer. They spend a majority of their income on food, and when the price goes up, they can't afford to feed themselves or their families. Obvious causes: increased demand from China and India, rising fuel and fertilizer costs, increased use of bio-fuels and climate change. But less obvious causes have also had a profound effect on food prices. In the last 30 years, the US, the World Bank and the IMF have imposed devastating policies on developing countries. By requiring them to open up their agriculture market to giant multinational companies and persuading them to specialize in exportable cash crops, they have turned developing countries that used to be self-sufficient in food into large food importers.

Robert Bryce is a journalist in Austin, Texas and the author of Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron (PublicAffairs, 2002; a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year) and Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate (PublicAffairs, 2004). Bryce was a reporter for the Austin Chronicle for 12 years, and is now the managing editor of the Energy Tribune. His most recent book is Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence" (PublicAffairs 2008), which the New York Times said he wrote “with all the gusto of a hunter clubbing baby seals.”

Aired 04/29/08 KEVIN PHILLIPS, Author," THE POLITICS OF RICH & POOR; AMERICAN THEOCRACY" And his newest - "BAD MONEY: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism." KEVIN PHILLIPS describes the consequences of our misguided economic policies, our mounting debt, our collapsing housing market, our threatened oil, and the end of American domination of world markets.

Guns Over Butter - Terry hosts "The Rachel Maddow Show" (Hour 3-April 14)

JOSEPH STIGLITZ is University Professor at Columbia University in New York and Chair of Columbia University's Committee on Global Thought. In 2001, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his analyses of markets with asymmetric information. His work has helped explain the circumstances in which markets do not work well, and how selective government intervention can improve their performance. Stiglitz was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers from 1993-95, during the Clinton administration, and served as CEA chairman from 1995-97. He then became Chief Economist and Senior Vice-President of the World Bank from 1997-2000. His book, Globalization and Its Discontents, was translated into 35 languages and has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Other books include Fair Trade for All, Making Globalization Work, and his newest (with Linda Bilmes) THE $3 TRILLION WAR. Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. According to the book, Americans will spend decades treating the physical and psychological wounds of Iraq veterans — and when the economic consequences of the invasion are taken into account, the costs are staggering. http://www.josephstiglitz.com