We have all heard the horror stories of the hunger in Haiti….but Haiti is NOT alone…

“Feeding America” said 37 million people, including 14 million children, needed emergency food aid each year, more than 10 percent of the U.S. population of 300 million. It based the figure on 61,000 interviews and 37,000 surveys of local charitable agencies.

That compares to 25.3 million people in 2005, when the group released its last quadrennial study.

Although the U.S. economy returned to growth in the second half of 2009 after nearly two years of recession, unemployment has remained stubbornly high at 10 percent. Feeding America reported last September that unemployment has played a major role in rising demand for emergency food.

A recent report has shown:

The “Great Recession” of 2008 and 2009 has spread poverty to millions more US children, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institute. The report, “The Effects of the Recession on Child Poverty,” estimates that a large number of states witnessed marked increases in child poverty in 2009.

In 2008, one in five US children under age 18 lived in families below the official poverty level, according to Census Bureau data released in September 2009. The figure now is significantly higher, according to Brookings researcher Julia B. Isaacs. The census poverty statistics for 2008 “lag considerably behind current economic conditions,” Isaacs writes. “Job losses and wage reductions occurring in 2009 were obviously not captured. In addition, many adverse events in 2008 were only partially captured.”

Between August 2008 and August 2009, food stamp use increased by a staggering 24 percent, and monthly caseloads increased by 7 million—from 29.5 million to 36.5 million people—a 24 percent increase. “This extraordinary increase means that roughly 3.4 million more children were receiving SNAP benefits in August 2009 than a year earlier,” according to Isaacs.

The report states that eight states were likely to have experienced a “particularly high risk” of poverty in 2009, “reflecting a combination of high child poverty in 2008 and very high increases in use of nutrition assistance between 2008 and 2009.” These states, all in the US South or Southwest, already had child poverty rates greater than 20 percent in 2008, even prior to the surge in food stamp use. They are: Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The report warns that both “public agencies and private charities” will “face significant strain” in providing aid to these children in the near future.

There seems to be nothing done that is releiving the problem of growing hunger in the US….the US sucks and guess what?  We are NOT alone…..

A report commissioned by the charity Save the Children documents a sharp rise in the number children living in “severe poverty” between 2004 and 2008. According to the report by the New Policy Institute, “Measuring Severe Child Poverty in the UK,” more than 1.7 million British children were living in conditions of “severe poverty” and fully 4 million are living in poverty.

When the report is broken down into regions and the larger urban areas, a picture emerges of entrenched poverty. London, the centre of big finance, also “has the biggest proportion of children living in severe poverty, accounting for around one fifth of all children living in severe poverty in the UK—over 300,000 children.”

Severe poverty is defined as those families earning 50 percent below the average (median) income, after housing costs “where both adults and children lack at least one basic necessity, and either adults or children or both groups lack at least two basic necessities.”

The report states, “This means that families living in severe poverty make ends meet on less than £12,220 a year (for a couple with one child). That equates to less than £33 per day to cover all basic essentials such as food, utility bills and clothing. In addition, children and parents are missing out on the things that many families take for granted, such as celebrating a birthday or taking a week’s holiday away from home.”

The Save the Children report points to a situation in which measures to tackle child poverty have “slid into reverse.” The report calculates that 1.46 million children lived in “severe poverty” in 2004-05 and four years later the number had grown to 1.7 million. Save the Children said this “means that around two-fifths of all children living in poverty in the UK were living in severe poverty” in 2007-2008—an increase from 11 percent of all UK children in 2004/05 to 13 percent.

These are only two of the world’s major powers and if they are suffering you can imagine how hungry they are in say, Rwanda or some small third world country that has a problem anyway…..

No matter what you believe is the problems…the truth is that there is NO demand…consumers are NOT spending….and when that happens all economic activity ceases, with the exception of the speculators and gamblers in the stock markets…..someone has got to find a way to create demand……if not….it will be a very hungry recovery…..