The upshot of Ben Bernanke’s speech at the economic symposium at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at least to most interested observers, is that the Federal Reserve will enact a new round of quantitative easing at their next policy meeting the week of September 10.

Monsanto and others who market genetically modified plant seeds appear eager to promote themselves as the solution droughts. But if our burned planet forces us to use GMOs because only those crops will stand up to the heat and lack of water, the least that we can do is to inform the public of what they’re eating. California will have a ballot measure in November that would force mandatory labeling of GMOs on all food product that use them.

The Federal Reserve Board of Governors opted again to do nothing after their two-day meeting, remaining pat despite clear evidence of a slowing in the economy and a miss on their two mandates, on maintaining full employment and price stability.

The drought conditions in the Midwest show no sign of letting up, and if you believe the overwhelming amount of evidence on climate change, amounts to something approaching a new normal. So the first thing I’d say about this projection of food prices as a result of the drought is that, in a constantly warming world, this can only get worse.

After watching as they missed both their employment and inflation targets, the Federal Reserve pronounced themselves ready to act, but in the same sluggish, ineffective ways they have over the past couple years. There are few things the Fed might do to help, and they should do them, but they’re no substitute for direct fiscal stimulus.

It’s time to really focus on this major US drought, which has sent commodity prices for corn and soybeans soaring, leading to a likely jump in global food prices. You know it’s bad when the Financial Times gets on the case.

After three months of ugly job growth, poor retail sales, missed inflation targets and forecasts of minimal economic growth (most analysts reduced their estimate to around 1.1% for the second quarter of 2012), Ben Bernanke finally announced his willingness to “be prepared” for further steps to boost the economy. He didn’t say when.

We can assume that Fed action taken in August will be muted and incomplete and not nearly enough to grow the economy. And that will be by design. The Fed doesn’t want growth. That might impact the only mandate they care about.

Over the past few days, members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors have begun to prepare the ground for another round of monetary easing. The arguments for this are simply that unemployment is coming in above target, and inflation below target, so in order to get back on track, the Fed must act. But this has been true for years, and the Fed has not acted as it can.

An important meeting takes place at the Federal Reserve, where the concerns about inflation have been well above the concerns for the unemployment crisis. Today, with the economy at stall speed, the Fed’s policymaking board meets for the next two days to decide whether or not to change course, and they have more options than they’ve considered so far.