One of the big news items the last couple of days has been about a butter shortage in Japan.  It seems like a really trivial story.  I mean, really.  Not enough butter to go around?  But the cost of butter is not only on the rise in Japan, there is often a shortage of stock.  Want to buy some butter?  You're lucky if the store still has some and some stores limit what they have to one per customer. But what separates this story from the silly section are three ...