Eurozone Inflation Reaches New High – Recession Incoming


Armstrong Economics Blog/European Union Re-Posted Nov 2, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Inflation in the Eurozone hit a new record in October, according to Eurostat who reported a 10.7% rise. That marks an increase from September’s 9.9% posting and an all-time high since Eurostat began compiling Eurozone data in 1997. The European Central Bank (ECB) attempted to curb inflations with another 75 bps hike last week. The ECB knows that inflation is here to stay. They recently changed their annual inflation target for next year to 5.8% compared to the 3.6% they were predicting three months ago. They can’t release the actual figures without causing a panic.

Economic growth “slowed significantly in the third quarter of the year and we expect a further weakening in the remainder of this year and beginning of next year,” ECB head Christine Lagarde warned. Inflation is hitting some countries harder than others. Estonia (22.4%), Latvia (21.8%), and Lithuania (22%) all experienced nearly double the average inflation rate this October.

The downturn will not be equal across the Eurozone. The managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kristalina Georgieva, is warning that half of the 19 countries in the bloc will fall into a recession. “Europe is affected more severely by the increase of energy prices. The heat on European economies is such that we actually expect half of the countries in the eurozone to experience at least two quarters of negative growth. In other words, a recession,” she said, without naming the countries,” Georgieva warned. She further stated that the IMF’s pre-pandemic projections compared to current projections differ by a loss of half a trillion euros.

“I am not going to sugar-coat it: 2023 will be tougher than 2022. Next winter for Europe may be even harsher than this winter,” she declared. “Why? Because European policymakers acted very swiftly to fill gas storage. If conditions remain as they are with Russia not providing gas to Europe, how is this gas storage going to be filled next year?”

Another question comes to light – can Europe remain untied amid a serious recession? The ECB will use the same strategy in an attempt to fix the broken system for the entirety of the Eurozone instead of looking at each individual economy. Let’s not forget that deeply indebted countries will only face higher costs that they likely will not be able to repay. The ECB dug its grave in 2014, and they do not have the tools to handle the current crisis. It is easy for Europe to appear as a united front when there is peace and prosperity. The real test will come when everything crashes down, and fairness goes out the window.

Why Climate Change is a Fraud


Armstrong Economics Blog/Climate Re-Posted Nov 1, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

This is one of the oldest methods to brainwash a population known to ancient history. The high priests had discovered the cycle of the heavens. They would pretend to turn the sun dark, for they managed to calculate the cycles when an eclipse would take place. They would call the people together and tell them what they will do, and they watched the moon block out the sun and believed that the high priest could control the heavens. Today, astrology really comes from the Babylonians who conducted a massive correlation study to predict the future.

woolyrhino

There is a cycle to everything. The climate ALWAYS changes, and there are warming periods and cooling periods. These charlatans are no different than the Babylonian high priests pretending to block the sun with the moon on their command. Science was turned on its head after a discovery in 1772 near Vilui, Siberia, of an intact frozen woolly rhinoceros, which was followed by the more famous discovery of a frozen mammoth in 1787. You may be shocked, but these discoveries of frozen animals with grass still in their stomachs set in motion these two schools of thought since the evidence implied you could be eating lunch and suddenly find yourself frozen, only to be discovered by posterity.

baby-mammoth

The discovery of the woolly rhinoceros in 1772, and then frozen mammoths, sparked the imagination that things were not linear after all. These major discoveries truly contributed to the Age of Enlightenment, where there was a burst of knowledge erupting in every field of inquisition. Such finds of frozen mammoths in Siberia continue to this day. This has challenged theories on both sides of this debate to explain such catastrophic events. These frozen animals in Siberia suggest strange events are possible even in climates that are not that dissimilar from the casts of dead victims who were buried alive after the volcanic eruption of 79 AD at Pompeii in ancient Roman Italy. Animals can be grazing and then freeze abruptly. Climate change has been around for billions of years — long before man invented the combustion engine.

Even the field of geology began to create great debates that perhaps the earth simply burst into a catastrophic convulsion and, indeed, the planet was cyclical — not linear. This view of sequential destructive upheavals at irregular intervals or cycles emerged during the 1700s. This school of thought was perhaps best expressed by a forgotten contributor to the knowledge of mankind, George Hoggart Toulmin, in his rare 1785 book, “The Eternity of the World”:

” ••• convulsions and revolutions violent beyond our experience or conception, yet unequal to the destruction of the globe, or the whole of the human species, have both existed and will again exist ••• [terminating] ••• an astonishing succession of ages.”

Id./p3, 110

bernhardi-erratics

In 1832, Professor A. Bernhardi argued that the North Polar ice cap had extended into the plains of Germany. To support this theory, he pointed to the existence of huge boulders that have become known as “erratics,” which he suggested were pushed by the advancing ice. This was a shocking theory, for it was certainly a nonlinear view of natural history. Bernhardi was thinking out of the box. However, in natural science, people listen and review theories, unlike in social science, where theories are ignored if they challenge what people want to believe. In 1834, Johann von Charpentier (1786-1855) argued that there were deep grooves cut into the Alpine rock concluding, as did Karl Schimper, that they were caused by an advancing Ice Age.

This body of knowledge has been completely ignored by the global warming/climate change religious cult. They know nothing about nature or cycles, and they are completely ignorant of history or even that it was the discovery of these ancient creatures who froze with food in their mouths. They cannot explain these events nor the vast amount of knowledge written by people who actually did research instead of trying to cloak an agenda in pretend science.

Our model has projected we are entering another “grand minimum,” which will overtake the sun beginning in 2020 and will last through the 2050s, resulting in diminished magnetism, infrequent sunspot production, and less ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth. This all means we are facing a global cooling period on the planet that may span 31 to 43 years. The last grand-minimum event produced the mini-Ice Age in the mid-17th century. Known as the Maunder Minimum, it occurred between 1645 and 1715, during a longer span of time when parts of the world became so cold that the period was called the Little Ice Age, which lasted from about 1300 to 1850.

Most people have NEVER heard of the Beaufort Gyre, a massive wind-driven current in the Arctic Ocean that actually has far more influence over sea ice than anything we can throw into the atmosphere. The Beaufort Gyre has been regulating climate and sea ice formation for millennia. Recently, however, something has changed; it is not something that would create global warming but threatens a new Ice Age.

There is a normal cycle that appears to be about 5.4 years, where it reverses direction and spins counter-clockwise, expelling ice and freshwater into the eastern Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic. The 5.4-year cycle is interesting for it is two pi cycle intervals of 8.6. The immediate cycle has suddenly expanded to two 8.6-year intervals, bringing it to 17.2 years as we head into 2022.

What you must understand is that this Beaufort Gyre now holds as much freshwater as all of the Great Lakes combined. Why is that important? Saltwater freezes at a lower temperature than the 32 degrees F at which freshwater freezes. The difference between the air temperature and the freezing point of saltwater is bigger than the difference between the air temperature and the freezing point of fresh water. This makes the ice with salt on it melt faster, which is why we salt the roads in an ice storm.

Now, think of the Beaufort Gyre as a carousel of ice and freshwater. Because it is now spinning both faster and in its usual clockwise direction, it has been collecting more and more freshwater from the three main sources:

  1. Melting sea ice
  2. Runoff from the Arctic Ocean from Russian and North American rivers
  3. Lower saltwater coming in from the Bering Sea

Indeed, Yale has warned that this current could “Cool the Climate in Europe,” which is precisely what we are witnessing. Cyclically, the Beaufort Gyre will reverse direction, and when it does, the clear and present danger will be the natural expulsion of a massive amount of icy fresh water into the North Atlantic. Remember now, freshwater freezes faster than saltwater.

This is not a theory. We have previous records of reversals in this cycle of the Beaufort Gyre from the 1960s and 1970s, where there was a surge of fresh Arctic water released into the North Atlantic that resulted in the water freezing. There has been a lot of work done on this subject, which, of course, is ignored by the climate change agenda that only seeks to blame human activity. Nevertheless, AAAS, of which I am a member, states plainly:

“Arctic sea ice affects climate on seasonal to decadal time scales, and models suggest that sea ice is essential for longer anomalies such as the Little Ice Age.” 

Socrates has been given just about every possible database I could find over the past 50 years. Because of the extended 17.2-year cycle in the Beaufort Gyre, the risk that a larger-than-normal expulsion of freshwater into the Atlantic can disrupt the Gulf Stream, which is the sole reason why Europe has been moderate in climate. But that has NOT always been the case. We know that the Barbarian invasions into Rome during the 3rd century were primarily driven by a colder climate in the north. The invasion of the Sea Peoples ended the Bronze Age, and those from the north migrated into the South, storming Mesopotamia and Northern Africa.

CLIMATE CHANGE IS REAL…

It is just not created by humans.

Perhaps we are now at the tipping point, and they cannot keep saying that the extremely cold winter is also caused by CO2 and global warming. The collapse of the gulf stream has nothing to do with CO2. This may result in a major confrontation that these people have been seriously wrong and what they are doing to the economy in trying to shut down fossil fuels at this point in time could result in tens of millions of deaths if the gulf stream collapses.

The Polls Are Crazy


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Nov 1, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: Marty: I received an email from Barack Obama today (subject line: “My promise to you”) letting me know that I have an opportunity to support the Democrats in the upcoming election. It also said, “You are receiving this email because you supported the DNC in the past.” I’m Canadian. I’ve always lived in Canada. And I have certainly never supported the DNC. Curious marketing strategy.

JH

REPLY: I get them too. I was wondering if they hacked the Republicans, T-Party, or whoever got my email. This is not going to be an election that will ever be accepted regardless of who wins. With the polls showing still that over 70% of Americans think the country is headed in the wrong direction under the Biden Administration, it is hard to see how the Democrats could win anything. So, with the computer should massive civil unrest into 2023, I do not think we are headed into peace and tranquility.

Young Americans Cannot Afford to be Healthy


Armstrong Economics Blog/Inflation Re-Posted Oct 31, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The Nationwide Retirement Institute conducted a study to determine how Americans are handling rising prices. Nearly one in five respondents (18%) said they had to forego a meal or grocery shopping due to inflation. Gen Z (28%) and Millennials (23%) reported higher rates of skipping meals. Over the past year, two in five households (40%) relied on food banks.

This is having an impact on health. Around 17% said that they no longer can afford healthier food options, which are notoriously more expensive than cheap, calorie-rich junk food. Fourteen percent admitted that they canceled or postponed plans to see a doctor, and 11% skipped out on their annual physical altogether due to the costs involved. An alarming 10% said that they are unable to afford their prescription medication. The younger generations like Gen Z (17%) and Millennials (19%) said that they cannot afford mental health care.

Staying healthy has become a luxury, as 14% of respondents had to downgrade their health insurance plans. Again, Gen Z (23%) and Millennials (20%) have been forced to sacrifice more than other generations. These two generations are also priced out of the housing market and strapped with debt. They are less likely to start families and are worse off than their parent’s generation. This will create a ripple effect as people who are unable to meet their basic needs will struggle to be productive members of society.