Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 26, 2022 | Sundance
A key metric in the data released by Wal Mart is not their upfront sales and profit. The recessionary KPI (key performance indicator) is a significant increase in same store sales of 6% (excluding fuel), yet the outcome of that increase in customers is a decrease in profit because the purchases are food.
[Keep an eye on this and we will likely see a similar increase in foot traffic at Aldis]
(VIA NBC) […] Walmart, which is the biggest grocer in the U.S. and often considered a bellwether for the overall economy, said more customers are turning to its stores, which are known for low prices, to fill their pantries and fridges. But they are skipping over general merchandise that they can live without.
Walmart said it now expects same-store sales in the U.S. to rise by about 6% in the second quarter, excluding fuel, as customers buy more food at its stores. That’s higher than the 4% to 5% increase that the company previously expected. However, that merchandise mix will weigh on the company. Groceries have lower profit margins than discretionary items, such as TVs and clothing.
“The increasing levels of food and fuel inflation are affecting how customers spend, and while we’ve made good progress clearing hardline categories, apparel in Walmart U.S. is requiring more markdown dollars,” CEO Doug McMillon said in a news release. (read more)
Discretionary spending is gone. Blue-collar and white-collar middle-class consumers are in a financial hunker down mode. We will see several tiers of socioeconomic strata start to shift down now. Stores like Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods will become more of a luxury and indulgence.
Consumer confidence continues to drop:
(The Hill) – Consumer confidence slipped for the third straight month in July as sky-high prices dampened demand for products and services, according to a new survey.
The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index, which tracks consumer attitudes and buying intentions, dropped from 98.4 percent last month to 95.7 percent in July, its lowest level since last year. (read more)
As the economic situation continues to unfold, new terminology will be adopted to hide and disguise reality. As we have just witnessed the White House redefine “recession” so too will they redefine “unemployment” to something like “transitional workers.”
We can expect to see government officials say something akin to, “our transitional workforce may expand for some time as our economy shifts.” Meaning unemployment may rise as the Green New Deal is implemented by executive fiat. This is how they operate.
We are in an era of great pretending. [ GO DEEP ] That is our problem. It’s not just what they are doing, it is our willingness to pretend they are not doing it. As long as denial remains a survival mechanism, because acceptance is just too painful to admit, no corrective action is possible.
Our economy is being intentionally guided into a declining status in order to bring forth the “transition” they desire.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 26, 2022 | Sundance
Just in case you were unaware Ms. Harris wants you to be aware:
“Good afternoon. I want to welcome these leaders for coming in to have this very important discussion about some of the most pressing issues of our time. I am Kamala Harris. My pronouns are “she” and “her.” I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.”
.
The cultural Marxists are working overtime to make people believe this is now the acceptable social norm. It’s not, it’s just plain weird and goofy.
[Transcript] …”I’ve asked these leaders to come in so that we can discuss these issues and pay attention to the fact that the Dobbs decision and the act of the United States Supreme Court to take away a constitutional right, that had been recognized, from the people of America will impact a lot of people and differently in some situations. And we need to be responsive to these issues and also lift up the voices of all people who will be impacted and the way that they will be impacted. So that’s why we are convened today. And I will add a couple of points of the impact in terms of the direct impact that we anticipate there will be from the Dobbs decision”…
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 26, 2022 | Sundance
Yesterday, Senator Chuck Grassley sent a letter [pdf HERE] to Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, notifying them of whistleblower allegations from within the FBI that senior leadership in both Main Justice and FBI are involved in a coordinated effort to cover-up criminal activity related to Hunter Biden.
The whistleblower allegations, in combination with the documented history of DOJ and FBI misconduct, culminate in Senator Grassley stating:
“If these allegations are true and accurate, the Justice Department and FBI are – and have been – institutionally corrupted to their very core to the point in which the United States Congress and the American people will have no confidence in the equal application of the law. Attorney General Garland and Director Wray, simply put, based on the allegations that I’ve received from numerous whistleblowers, you have systemic and existential problems within your agencies.” (LINK)
Unfortunately, what this amounts to, is Senator Grassley is telling Chris Wray and Merrick Garland, the leaders of the institutionally corrupt activity, that they are systemically corrupt. Which is akin to telling a criminal that he is engaged in unlawful conduct.
Our friend Techno Fog breaks down the outlined allegations succinctly HERE. Absolutely none of the information contained in the allegations is surprising or new to anyone who has followed the details of Main Justice and FBI activity through the past several years. What Grassley outlines is simply evidence, supportive evidence, of what has been transparently obvious to those who have reviewed the DOJ and FBI conduct.
The U.S. Dept of Justice and FBI are now political institutions that have abandoned their originating mission in order to become the domestic equivalent of the Soviet-era FSB. Their joint targeting mechanisms have been redesigned to support the interests of corrupt DC politicians, specifically the interests of democrats. Grassley is admitting what has been visible for years.
Senator Grassley is telling the corrupt DOJ-FBI leadership that people in the organizations are outlining the detailed behavior of their corrupt leadership. However, with zero oversight involved; and with democrats in charge of all committees that would be responsible for such oversight; and with institutional media in alignment and agreement with the corrupt institutional intents of the DOJ/FBI; the frustrating question becomes, “and“?
I mean, who are we kidding?… If republicans were in charge of the Senate Judiciary, Reform/Oversight, or Intelligence committees, do we really believe that anything would be different? Before responding to that cynicism remind yourself, they were, for four years, January 2015 through January 2019 republicans were in charge of oversight.
It was exactly when republicans were in charge of Main Justice and FBI oversight, that Main Justice and FBI were targeting political candidate Donald Trump.
The letter from Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley, despite the major allegations it contains, carries absolutely no pretense of a process for the systemic institutional corruption it outlines. Instead, the letter asks AG Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray to review their own corrupt conduct and/or do a better job of hiding their corrupt activity.
This fundamental flaw in the oversight issue is the Edward Snowden conundrum. When the intelligence agencies are corrupt, and the heads of the corrupt intelligence agencies are in direct alignment with the corrupt heads of the intelligence agency oversight, where exactly is the whistleblower with evidence of criminal corruption supposed to go?
This is why and how the Fourth Branch of U.S. Government is now the superseding apparatus above all other branches. {GO DEEP} This is why and how Barack Obama, John Brennan and Eric Holder created it, cemented it, and made it impervious to any effort to remove it.
The Fourth Branch of Government is evil Sauron and Washington DC is Mordor. The J6 committee is creating and dispatching Orcs to defend it. The corrupt media have aligned with it, and the institutions in/around it are self-aware and fully autonomous. To mix metaphors and overlay their ability to monitor every single aspect of every life that might seek to challenge or destroy it, Skynet -the end game outlined by Snowden- has been activated.
On August 1, the European Commission will begin to reduce its demand for gas with no alternative in place. Unsurprisingly, our computer states that a Panic Cycle will begin in August or September and go into Q1 of 2023. Europe must reduce its gas consumption by 15% (45 billion cubic meters). In comparison, Russia delivered 150 billion cubic meters to the EU last year. Russia’s largest gas provider, Gazprom, has threatened to cut off Europe from gas entirely. Europe has no alternative solutions at this time. Therefore, they’re implementing a “Save Gas for a Safe Winter” plan in Brussels.
Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen claims that all member states will suffer from their proxy war with Russia, albeit some more than others (e.g., Germany). “It’s important that all member states contribute in the saving, the storing and are ready to share gas,” she said. Let us see how friendly this bloc really is when it comes to sharing an essential resource in limited supply.
Member states are now required to submit energy plans to the Commission by the end of September and update plans every two months until March 2023. There is proposed legislation that would allow the Commission the authority to declare a “Union alert” and impose mandator gas caps on member states.
The bloc plans to fill its gas storage capacities to 80% by November, but that may be a lofty goal. European Commissioner for Energy Kadri Simson expressed pessimism in interviews. “We risk ending this winter with empty storage, which will be impossible to refill in time for the next heating season,” she warned, as this crisis is only beginning. Simson and others are calling on the public sector to reduce demand.
This will fall back to the citizens, who will be asked to limit their consumption and abandon comforts for a proxy war they never voted on. Frans Timmermans, the Executive Vice-President of the Commission in charge of the European Green Deal, has already suggested people switch off lights and electrical appliances and reduce AC/heater usage. No one will stop these politicians from flying around on their jets, surrounded by bodyguards in numerous SUVs, while they make the people suffer for their poor policies.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 25, 2022 | Sundance
The White House is expending a tremendous amount of communication effort over the past 48 hours trying to convince the American public that the economy is good, and we are not in a recession.
Yesterday it was Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Today National Economic Council Chairman Brian Deese, White House Economist Jared Bernstein and even Joe Biden himself, all declaring that despite the economic contraction you may feel, see and even quantify, we are not in a recession. WATCH:
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 25, 2022 | Sundance
As oft repeated, in order for severe ideologues to retain their insufferably bad policy they must pretend not to know things. However, in the case of food shortages, the pretending about the origin of the problem has severe consequences.
Vladimir Putin’s military action against eastern Ukraine had nothing to do with the severe food shortages and inflation in Sri Lanka {link}. Nor does Putin have any influence over the Dutch government trying to stop food production {link}. Additionally, Putin has no control over Justin Trudeau’s decision to limit harvest yields by blocking the use of nitrogen-based fertilizer {link}. More importantly, it was not Vladimir Putin who forced all the western politicians to sign up for a new ‘climate friendly’ energy program that is destroying the ability of western farms to generate higher yield crops.
You do not need to be a farmer to understand that nitrogen/phosphorus-based industrial fertilizer has been the reason why farm yields have generated massive amounts of food on a global basis. The United States, Canada, the U.K. and places like the Netherlands have massively increased their ability to generate food for export, in large part due to the success of improved fertilizer and crop saving modern pesticides. Take those farming advancements away under the guise of climate change and you get a global Sri Lanka.
Those western climate and energy policies create downstream consequences. The decision to chase a new global energy policy under the name “Build Back Better,” in combination with short-sighted EU sanctions against Russia, and you get food shortages. And boy howdy are they trying to avoid taking responsibility for it.
It was not Vladimir Putin who told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz their proactive recommendation to switch from crop-based biofuels to human food would be blocked. That G7 decision was made by Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden. {link} Even more significantly, it was not Russia who threatened the multinational energy companies about investing in Africa for expanded natural gas supplies for their fertilizer needs. That threat came from the same western government alliance, per their instructions from the World Economic Forum group {link}.
It was predictable {JUNE 21st} {June 30th} and {July 6th} that western government leaders would seek to avoid responsibility for the food crisis they created, and now we see more western media trying, desperately, to frame the Putin is to blame for global food shortages in order to protect them.
NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shocked the world, forced Western countries to respond, and is driving up the cost of energy and food across the globe. High prices in the United States may spell electoral disaster for President Joe Biden’s administration in November’s congressional elections. However, the most urgent economic, social, and human crises are unfolding in poorer countries where populations face war, spillover-driven inflation, and more expensive foreign-currency debt. (more)
Joe Biden, NATO, the G7, the European Union, the World Bank, USAID, and every western leader in the United States and Europe has stated there will be food shortages.
They are not saying there might be shortages; their statements are emphatic, there will be shortages.
Accept this basic cornerstone. Then ask why not a single proactive step has been taken by any of the aforementioned institutions or governments to alleviate what they declare is a certainty. Why?
Simple question, “why?”
If all of the western nations, non-govt organizations and heads of state, are aware of a coming food crisis, why is there no proactive response?
It is a question that even the most hardcore leftists will not answer, because there is only one answer. No action is being taken because they do not want to take action. No effort to avoid the crisis is being done, because they do not want the crisis avoided.
Peel all the layers of obfuscation and causation away, and what we find is the epicenter of the food shortage is directly the result of the Build Back Better agenda. A post-pandemic western government deliberate decision to radically change global energy development. In succinct terms, the climate change agenda.
However, regardless of how you feel about the validity of “climate change,” the cause of diminished food supplies is purposeful. It is not climate change causing food shortages. It is the purposeful action taken under the guise of mitigating climate change that is causing the shortage of food.
The collective Build Back Better energy policy of western governments’ is the reason for massive increases in energy costs, massive oil price jumps, gasoline price increases, significant increases in chemical costs, increases in diesel fuel costs, shortages of fertilizer created using natural gas, and the end result is lower crop yields, higher farming costs and eventually, food shortages. They know this.
All of the organizations and government who have been decrying the future shortage of food, know it is the radical shift in energy resource development that is creating the crisis. This acceptance of reality begins the framework to understand just how entrenched and committed these western leaders are toward their beloved climate change agenda.
We do not yet know the scale of food shortage, but we do know -and everyone admits- there will be severe shortages on a global basis.
Western leaders will not and cannot accept the blame for what they are doing. So, they will blame-cast, excuse and justify what is likely to surface. Food shortages blamed on the Ukraine conflict, Russian aggression, climate change and any various iteration of justification that does not identify the true cause, their energy ideology.
I’m not so sure that people fully understand what the entire system of western government would be willing to do to avoid being blamed for avoidable death on a potential scale that is quite alarming. All of the western leaders, institutions and governments are on the same boat. They are all in this together.
Germany and Finnish parent company Fortum signed a $15.24 billion deal to save energy company Uniper. In return, Germany will take a 30% stake in the company. Uniper reported only receiving a fraction on contracted gas from Russia’s Gazprom since mid-June, and it seems shipments may continue to slow or cease entirely. Uniper has been purchasing gas elsewhere at a premium, dampening their profits.
“We are living through an unprecedented energy crisis that requires robust measures. After intensive but constructive negotiations, we found a solution that in an acceptable way met the interest of all parties involved,” said Fortum’s President and CEO Markus Rauramo.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz said saving Uniper is of “paramount importance” for the German economy. Sholz said the “government plans to introduce mechanism to pass through 90% of replacement costs for missing Russian gas to consumers as of October 1.” The costs will be passed on to the consumers, of course.
While you are eating your bugs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner with hot sauce from the black market, stop showing they waste water and take electricity/gas to heat the water. Only wash four places with a hand-towel using cold water only!
QUESTION: Hi Martin, thank you as always for your incisive explanations of what’s going on in the ever-roving mind’s eye of SOCRATES. In your July 24 interview with Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog, you started to explain that a form of “Great Reset” is necessary–because taxpayers’ $ has been spent hog-wild and wilder for 90 years, with no intention or capacity forever repaying. Question 1: What is the “simple Reset” financial solution you started to explain on Greg’s show? One that presumably does not involve badgering Russia into more than a conventional proxyish war. Question 2: Would you please explain how exacerbating warfare in Ukraine economically / politically benefits NATO, EU & WEF Schwab, etc in regards to their Great Defect, excuse me, Reset? What does military escalation do for a broke Europe? They aren’t the USA arms dealers’ beneficiaries. Question 3: In their feverish dreams, how would the UN exert any sensible control over the world or the Western world’s, economy that helps the Reset shamble forwards? Would the UN remain ruled by the Security Council, and would “they” try to reset the Security Council to be ruled by domino economic vassal nations numerically? In other words, will the idiots that are “they”, try to eliminate Russia and then China from the Security Council as surely as “they” bumped Russia from the SWIFT banking system with its boomerang backlash across the globe? Suppose only a few UN bureaucratic flacks can even speak Mandarin or Cantonese or Russian. How can they expect that an outer, world organization tool can exert control over the ever-changing turbulence that is these two countries? How does US benefit by denuding itself of weaponry in Europe to the degree that Taiwan is near impossible for us to defend? How does the USA benefit by easing China’s possible overthrow of the only democratic Chinese nation? Has anybody bothered to calculate & report on how much the vast digging up, refining, manufacturing then wanton exploding of natural resources as weapons & objects of weapons, across Ukraine, Europe, Syria, etc., has “contributed” to the so-called carbon pollution, climate change, Global Warming or Storming? How many cow farts must be forever silenced in the Netherlands and beyond, to make up for this pollution? Fun Bonus Question: Has SOCRATES ever been assigned the task of determining the possibilities that we all are spiraling in a global “1984” software program? And if so, what adjustments at these points in the cycles, might nudge the program dominoes away from cycling into catastrophes & endless French, Russian & Chinese style revolutionary slaughters, pogroms, exterminations, starvations, chaos, etc before emergence into. I feel that something swift & unpredictable will be upon us with an astonishing speed that shatters “boxes” of expectations. To add spice to the world’s pizza, in my meditations last week I heard the words “free energy” out of the blue. Any SOCRATES insights on this? Would the deliverer of free energy use this to control populations ever more tightly, or to free us from such centralized mischief? Thanks again Martin for hearing me muse out loud.. SU
ANSWER: Back in 2015, I held the Solution Conference. I was frightening again Klaus Schwab and I saw what was coming. So I did a Solution Conference to lay out what is now facing us today. Schwab’s “Great Reset” is authoritarian. He is like Marx and believes that we are like ants on a farm who need to be controlled. We are to become “hackable” biological entities. I really think these people got too excited watching the Matrix and thought what a great idea. Create a fake world and control everything.
Now even Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Canada is following the same directives from his fearless leader, Schwab is a good graduate of the WEF. Trudeau and his political counterpart in the Netherlands, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, are both trying to shut down agriculture. Schwab wants us to eat bugs. Saskatchewan and Alberta Ministers of Agriculture are expressing profound disappointment in the federal government’s fertilizer emissions reduction target. You can bet they will not be eating bugs. Trudeau has now moved on from his attack on the oil and gas industry. Now he is attacking farmers.
The “simple Reset” is to do a debt-to-equity swap. That is the financial solution one must adopt to save a debt-ridden corporation. The same must be done with world governments and Scwab’s way is to default, seize authoritarian power, and institute guaranteed basic income to replace failed pensions. They believe this, with police and military, will prevent a civil uprising where people storm the parliaments or congresses.
The endless warfare in Ukraine was deliberately created. The Western press will not report the truth and they will always point the finger at Putin. NATO only exists as long as Russia remains an enemy. The EU benefits from this since it provides the excuse to default and blames Putin. WEF benefits for Schwab gets to impose his dream of Marxism by sheet force. Then these people are using the Climate Change claims to then justify the United Nations will step up and claim it is the peacemaker and thereby rule the world. Their theories are just nuts. I have a bust of Socrates on my shelf. Schwab has Lenin.
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 24, 2022 | Sundance
Donald Trump and Elon Musk have something in common….
“It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”
For Elon Musk it is the organization of Twitter with 7,500 employees dedicated to ensuring he would never succeed in his takeover effort. From the board of directors to the data engineers who build the controlling algorithms, to the third-party service providers who manage the data demand, there are likely only a handful of people within the entire corporation who would welcome the type of change Elon Musk represents.
As a result of the scale of opposition, any organizational takeover would ultimately deliver a company filled with sleeper cells and activist agents who consider it their personal and ideological mission to destroy the social media platform rather than accept change. The purchase effort was doomed from the outset, considering Musk represented something akin to Rand Paul being nominated to lead the World Bank or Federal Reserve. Some stuff just isn’t possible.
We The People attempted the Musk route when we sent President Donald Trump into Washington DC. However, instead of one institution with 7,500 people, it was dozens of institutions housing hundreds of thousands of entrenched ideologues. Most MAGA voters did not realize it at the time because grade school civics was never updated with our post-9/11 political outcome.
Imagine what the 7,500 Twitter folks would do as employees within an institution they abhorred overnight. What scale of effort would be exhausted to kill baby Elon Hitler for the greater social good? You don’t have to go too far in your imagination, because that’s exactly how Washington DC reacted to Trump’s arrival.
From day one to day one-thousand-four-hundred-sixty-one, no opposition was too much opposition by anyone, in every institution and every branch – including both wings of the UniParty congress, upper and lower chambers.
The threat that Trump represented needed to be managed, attacked and ultimately removed. There were/are trillions at stake, and keep in mind, DC is the epicenter of the global financial universe. As a result, the financial foot-soldiers of almost every western nation were aligned to assist the DC system in removing the threat.
Sometimes I laugh at the hindsight of people who say Donald Trump had terrible judgement in his appointments. I snicker because these are the same people who said General James “Mad Dog” Mattis was the greatest military leader since George Washington. How did that role as defense secretary work out?
No wait, Trump could have done a better job against the 147,000 people in the United States Dept of State, extending like metastatic cancer around the globe from their primary origination point in foggy bottom DC.
Oh, I’m sure the Ron DeSantis advocates have a plan for that, just as assuredly as they can jump to the typeset to instruct Musk how to modify the personnel outlooks of the social media network. Something that involves the multi-billion global media corporations folding up shop to shift their ideological compass headings, right?
Maybe free cookies will help the kids who work 3 hours a week, smile as they adjust to a 40-hour expectation.
I’m told that Donald Trump also planned badly to take over the 90,000 employees and $8.7 billion payroll at the U.S. Dept of Justice. Trump should have listened to the advice of the esteemed and well-regarded senior Senator from deep red Alabama, Mr. Jeff Sessions, who was also praised effusively by the same conservative crowd who praised the Mad Dog. If only Trump had installed a great stalwart for conservative principles like Sessions. Alas, we lost the opp… wait, huh, no.. wait,.. I mean, what?
Former UN official Ric Grenell was awesome as the “acting” Director of National Intelligence. If only President Trump had nominated Grenell from the outset, instead of that insufferable DC insider from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Dan Coats, things would have been so much better.
With an ODNI confirmation from the same senate intelligence group that was trying to block Trump from ever reaching Washington DC, things would have been awesome. Hey, why is that “Acting” word always in front of Grenell anyway? Oh, wait, the “Republican” committee members wouldn’t what?
Alas, if Trump had only done a better job of hiring the 2,400 people who work for the White House, he would have avoided all of those horrible stealth terror cells who were in place to facilitate his removal. Surely it wouldn’t have taken him that long to go through the candidate pool and interview everyone willing to live within a 100-mile radius of the epicenter of morality and truthfulness known as Washington DC.
And boy did President Trump ever screw up with his 400+ staff National Security Council, who report to the National Security Advisor and come from every executive agency, including intelligence, to deliver wholesome and practical advice to the oval office holder they hated.
I’m sure Musk has a better plan to manage the Silicon Valley coders who design the algorithms at the Twitter. I mean, Musk and Ron DeSantis being all smarter than Trump would have a plan for stuff, right?
Speaking of “intelligence”, what was candidate Donald Trump thinking when he selected former Indiana Governor Mike Pence as his vice-presidential running mate? I mean everyone in the republican sphere of conservative politics hated Mike Pence in 2015 and 2016, knowing his conservative bona fides were a mask just waiting to drop and create havoc for the America-First agenda. I mean it’s not like everyone didn’t know Mr. Pence surrounded himself with liars, fabricators and political club staff who hated the Tea Party base. We all knew that in 2015 and 2016, right?
If only Donald Trump had hired the right kind of people within his administration, then the multinational global corporate media would not have needed to treat him like he was the walking personification of the antichrist. A few people here, and a few different people there, and everything would have gone swimmingly.
Many people know -to a demonstrable certainty- that Ron DeSantis has, right now, a list of about 200,000 people ready to move themselves directly into Washington DC and finally change the system for the better. I am certain this list exists because all the right crowd in conservative media tell me they are sure of it.
These betters are the people who would know such things because they knew Senator Ted Cruz was the reformist lightbringer in 2015. The word is that DeSantis uniquely carries the power to replace every corrupt republican member of the House and Senate simply by raising his chin a certain way when the sunlight glistens upon him.
It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..
….despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, saying Trump tariffs on China would create massive inflation…. It wasn’t happening!
Overall year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; that was our inflation rate. The rate in late 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate remained consistent. [See Below]
A couple of important points. First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America-First MAGAnomic initiative. Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.
Which brings us to the second important point. Notice how food price had very low year-over-year inflation, 0.5 percent. That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:
(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)
For the previous twenty years food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand. The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.
President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process. As farm products were less exported the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle. Food prices dropped and our pantry costs were lowered.
The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year. These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.
The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July, 2019, when Amazon held its two-day, blowout Prime Day sale. (link)
Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle-class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits. Likely that’s because blue-collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong. Yes, MAGAnomics was working.
Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?
Well, exactly the opposite happened [BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:
This was a really interesting dynamic that no-one in the professional punditry would dare explain.
Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products. [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.] However, when the EU and China respond by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.
Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper. Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere. All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.
This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.
This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.
Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:
[…] Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.
[…] Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
This is a library of News Events not reported by the Main Stream Media documenting & connecting the dots on How the Obama Marxist Liberal agenda is destroying America
Centinel2012 