Spengler: The hunger to come in Egypt

Devalued dollar, Asian demand for grain, chaotic politics = starvation.

The currency will collapse; the government will print IOUs to tide things over; and the Egyptian street will reject the IOUs as the country reverts to barter.

It will look like the Latin American banana republics, but without the bananas. That is not meant in jest: few people actually starved to death in the Latin inflations. Egypt, which imports half its wheat and a great deal of the rest of its food, will actually starve.

Half of Egyptians live on $2 a day, and that $2 is about to collapse along with the national currency.