Category Green Energy Not Reliable

Jul 20 2022

Friend-Shoring: How to Lose Trading Partners and Isolate Nations


Armstrong Economics Blog/World Trade Re-Posted Jul 20, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The supply chain crisis is an ongoing disaster that has greatly contributed to inflation. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been touting the idea of “friend-shoring” for over a year. Not to be confused with onshoring or nearshoring, friend-shoring will somewhat limit the supply chain to allied nations. Why on Earth would we want to limit the supply chain to any extent at this time?

Yellen stated that Russia and COVID, the main political scapegoats for anything that goes wrong, are to blame for redrawing “the contours of global supply chains and trade.” Let us be reminded that China is America’s top trading partner, albeit deemed “unfriendly.” Russia, the motherland of energy, also falls on this unfriendly list that is likely to align with what will later become the modern-day axis powers.

BRASILIA, BRAZIL – NOVEMBER 13: (RUSSIA OUT) Russian President Vladimir Putin (L) greets Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) during their bilateral meeting on November 13, 2019 in Brasilia, Brazil. The leaders of Russia, China, Brazil, India and South Africa have gathered in Brasilia for the BRICS leaders summit. (Photo by Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)

“We do not want a retreat from the world, causing us to forgo the benefits it brings to the American people and the markets for businesses and exports,” Yellen said while speaking in South Korea. “In doing so we can help to insulate both American and Korean households from the price increases and disruptions caused by geopolitical and economic risks … in that sense, we can continue to strengthen the international system we’ve all benefited from, while also protecting ourselves from the fragilities in global trade networks.”

Her comments come within the same week that President Biden appealed to Saudi Arabia for help — a country that obviously aligns with US morals. In April, Yellen stated that friend-shoring could strengthen sanctions as the “friendly nations” would act as a united front in ostracizing one economy. Her comments about Russia quickly turned to anti-China sentiments. Yellen stated:

“China has recently affirmed a special relationship with Russia. I fervently hope that China will make something positive of this relationship and help to end this war. Going forward, it will be increasingly difficult to separate economic issues from broader considerations of national interest, including national security. The world’s attitude towards China and its willingness to embrace further economic integration may well be affected by China’s reaction to our call for resolute action on Russia.”

Similar to how those responsible for the failed euro believed it would prevent all European wars, the idea of friend-shoring relies on the belief that trade will become seamless among aligned nations. “Favoring the friend-shoring of supply chains to a large number of trusted countries, so we can continue to securely extend market access, will lower the risks to our economy as well as to our trusted trade partners,” Yellen stated in April before calling on those same nations to implement a global tax.

Yes, this will cause foreign investment to look outside of the US and this Western bloc of trade. What happens when the crucial supplies needed are outside of these territories? Everyone is currently begging “unfriendly nations” for oil and buying it at a premium from neutral nations who sell it to the West at a higher price. Bad business all around. The West is basically telling Russia and China that they are being cast aside from trade with the misconception of having the upper hand.

Jul 20 2022

U.S. Public Broadcasting Promotes American Diet of Insects to Support Biden Administration Climate Change Initiatives


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 19, 2022 | sundance 

The goal of gaining public acceptance for eating insects instead of meat is now part of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) effort.  The larger climate change objective is to “transition” the global food supply away from cows, pigs and chickens, and toward a more sustainable lifestyle of eating insects and bugs.   Farmers in North American and Europe are facing massive regulatory changes as part of the Build Back Better or Green New Deal initiatives.

In the U.S. Joe Biden has pledged his entire administration effort toward the goal of reducing U.S. carbon emissions and protecting the planet.  Part of that initiative includes the need to change the diet of Americans away from traditional farm proteins, and toward sustainable alternatives via bugs and/or insects like cockroaches, crickets and grasshoppers.

A comprehensive marketing, branding and image campaign is underway to change the public perception toward an acceptance of sustainable algae and bugs as food sources.  Public Broadcasting (PBS) is part of that imitative:

(SOURCE)

Several U.S. food manufacturers now include insects and bugs as part of their ingredient list.  It would be worthwhile checking the labels on the latest snack foods to identify the percentages of worms and bugs that may be included in your favorite salted snack.

Additionally, a significant investment has taken place in Canada where they are now generating 9,000 metric tons of crickets to replace traditional protein sources (link).  The public/private partnership in London, Ontario, is now shipping crickets for use by North American food manufacturers.  There has been minimal public pushback against the effort and the government appears to be fast-tracking insects as food alternatives for global shortages of grain and meats.

In the United Kingdom, the government is now taking public feedback on the use of insects in the food supply.  According to a recent public notification from the U.K. Food Standards Agency, they are working toward an acceptable standard across the industry for insects and worms in the food supply.

From the notification: “A consultation on a proposed legislated transitional period under the novel food regulations for edible insects in England, Scotland and Wales. The proposal has been developed with input from Food Standards Scotland (FSS).” (more)

(Source)

As farmland across Europe and North America increasingly comes under enhanced “climate change” regulation from government, we can expect the speed of food supply transitioning to insects to increase exponentially.

There are a lot of government resources [EXAMPLE HERE] now dedicated to changing public perception.  The western government alliance wants people to start eating bugs, and, more importantly, want people comfortable doing so as the energy and climate regulations increasingly limit food options.

(Source Pdf)

With PBS now joining the chorus of insect food promotion; and with the increasingly discussed pending global food shortage now looming; it would appear that western leaders are following the advice from the World Economic Forum and preparing their citizens in Europe and North America to accept insects as food.

As noted earlier, you may already be eating the insects and just not be aware of it.  Apparently, people who are allergic to shellfish should be more concerned and diligent about the ingredients of the food they consume, as insects may generate the same allergic reaction.

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Jul 20 2022

Biden Energy Security Official Says Administration Cannot and Will Not Accept or Approve Long-Term Oil and Gas Development


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 19, 2022 

This guy popped up after the trip to Saudi Arabia and has been spouting hypocrisies ever since.  In this first segment, White House senior energy adviser Amos Hochstein, in charge of U.S. energy security, says the administration cannot accept or approve any long-term oil and gas development that undermines the urgency of the crisis they are exploiting.

Instead, Hochstein says U.S. energy producers should invest in oil and gas development that turns an immediate profit. [Pro-tip, that doesn’t exist.]  Keeping the oil and gas industry in a perpetual state of shortage, overcapacity and expense, allows the “transition” to windmills and solar to remain urgent.  Put another way, the energy crisis is part of the plan. WATCH:

Mr. Hochstein also appeared on Fox News this afternoon to claim that coal is the worst of the worst and must never be used again.  When asked about Germany going back to coal to replace Russian gas, Hochstein says that’s a terrible plan.  However, Hochstein was never confronted over the stupid part of his anxiety.

Germany is being forced to use coal because Biden/Hochstein have triggered energy sanctions against Russia that stopped the flow of natural gas.  Germany is being forced to use the horrible coal because Biden/Hochstein is forcing them to.

In order for ideologues to retain their insane ideological positions, they must pretend not to know things.  Unfortunately, we do not have a media that is capable of calling them out on the hypocrisy and challenging the weakness of their positions.  Thus, the great pretending continues….

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Jul 20 2022

Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) Questions Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg About Electric Vehicle Goals without Energy Grid to Support Them


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 19, 2022 | sundance 

Kentucky republican House member Thomas Massie had some interesting statistics in hand when questioning Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the administration goal to make electric vehicles 50% of all cars, vans and trucks sold by 2030.

Essentially, it is a cart and horse scenario.  An electric vehicle requires five times as much energy production as the standard home air conditioning cost.  The U.S. electricity grid cannot support an increase in household energy use that is equivalent of adding five times as many houses using air conditioning.  Math is math.  WATCH:

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Comrades, the likely federal government solution is simple.  Comrade citizens can have one electric car (mandated by regulatory compliance), or they can have their home air conditioned, but they cannot have both.  [Assuming social credit scores are high enough]

See how easy that is?

...”the significant problems we face are only as challenging as the significance of the problem.”

Jul 19 2022

Biden Begs Saudi Arabia for Oil


Armstrong Economics Blog/Energy Re-Posted Jul 19, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia did not go as planned. Saudi Arabia will temporarily increase oil production in July and August in exchange for a slew of removed restrictions. Civilian aircrafts from Israel will be permitted to fly over Saudi Arabia. Peacekeepers will be removed from Tiran Island, where US soldiers have been stationed since the late 1970s. Five Americans were killed in a helicopter crash over this region in 2020, but intel swears it had nothing to do with terrorism. Tiran Island will now be redeveloped into a tourist destination, although I am unsure how eager the general public will be to visit.

Per usual, Biden pledged to give a foreign nation tons of money to develop their infrastructure while leaving America in the dust. This will be done through support for the US Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), which was announced at the last G7 summit. The US will also help Saudi Arabia deploy 5G technology and expand internet access.

Humorously, Biden welcomed the Partnership Framework for Advancing Clean Energy to help Saudi Arabia “transition and combat the effects of climate change.” Oil is the Saudi’s bread and butter, and building green energy infrastructure is likely not a promise that will be kept.

Both the left and right are angry with the president for grappling at the feet of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Bernie Sanders slammed Biden for visiting Saudi Arabia. “If this country believes in anything, we believe in human rights, we believe in democracy, and I just don’t believe that we should be maintaining a warm relationship with a dictatorship like that,” Sanders said. Biden maintained that he spoke to the crown prince about the death of Khashoggi at the top of the meeting, but the crown prince maintained innocence and said to tread lightly when interfering in alleged human rights abuses.

Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia, explained it well. “The Crown Prince pointed out to President Biden that we the kingdom, the respect for human rights is a core value for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia based on our Islamic beliefs and our Arab heritage. And that it’s absolutely important that values be spread through dialogue. Trying to impose your values on others is not going to be effective. It will get you a negative reaction. … The right way to try and put your values forward is to show the world that you adhere first of all to those values, that you are respecting your own values.”

Basically, Saudi Arabia is going to continue operating as it sees fit and has the leverage to negotiate lucrative deals since the US is unwilling to drill. “In the end you cannot impose your values by force. … The Crown Prince was quite clear with President Biden, and we have our own values and those are not going to align 100% with US values ever because we are very, very proud of our own traditions, our own values, our own faith,” bin Farhan said.

Jul 18 2022

Inflation – Real Estate – Chaos


Armstrong Economics Blog/Gold RePosted Jul 17, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: I thought you were just a Trumper warning what would happen if Biden won. I have come back to your site because I can see inflation approaching 10% as you said and the dollar is rising which made no sense as gold stalled. I think you also said that real estate will decline perhaps into 2023. Has there ever been such a wild combination of events?

Thanks

Pete

ANSWER: It gives me no pleasure to deliver such forecasts. They are NEVER my personal opinion. In all honesty, it truly takes a computer to sort out all the global trends. Personal opinions will not cut it when you enter a period that has not unfolded in a very long time.

I have told the story before that back in 1985 when we were going to open our first office in Europe, I went to lunch with one of the heads of a Swiss bank when I was there. I had a list of names we came up with like European Advisers or something like that because I knew there was a lot of anti-Americanism in Europe. He asked me to name one European analyst. I could not. I was embarrassed but he said there were none.

He then explained that everyone was using our firm on currency because “You do not give a shit if the dollar goes up or down.” He elaborated that in Europe if any analyst ever said their currency would decline it would have been seen as treason since the politicians had used currency to prove they did a good job rebuilding Europe after the war.

I learned many years ago, that the only way to operate was to call the shots as they unfold. My personal opinion means nothing. I cannot make a market rise when its trend is down. I am here to simply deliver what the computer projects. No matter how loud I could scream, it does not matter. What will be – will be.

Real Estate is undergoing three separate trends. First, there has been mass evacuation from cities and high-taxed states thanks also to draconian COVID laws. Secondly, we have the flight of capital to flee banks, etc which is part of just getting capital off the grid. Then thirdly, there has been a flight of international capital fleeing to the United States because of geopolitical instability in Europe.

The standard claim is that real estate will drop by 50% all because of interest rates pointing to some cities declining by 4% in June alone. This is merely confusing the people for they are looking at only the big cities that are already in decline for a separate reason from interest rates.

The claim that interest rate hikes imply that real estate will decline is very old school and once more it presumes everyone is buying on leverage. In 2021, cash sales represented 25% of existing home sales in the key markets that were a level unmatched since 2016. Nationally, buyers paid cash for almost 15% of the homes in 2021 in markets that were booming from migration from other states.

Florida, the Tampa market was even hotter. Single-family homes saw 45.5% more buyers paid cash than in 2020. The number of condo buyers paying cash went up 33.2%. While more people paid cash, the inventory dropped, with 29.2% fewer active listings of single-family homes in the 2021 third quarter than in 2020. Condo listings dropped even more, at 52.2% fewer available. Speaking to a local realtor, houses in excess of $1 million in the Tampa area were 95% cash deals.

This market has been LESS impacted by interest rate hikes than any previous booming market all because of the migration from interstate within the US and the flood of European buyers looking for assets outside of Europe as war keeps getting closer and closer. I have warned that real estate will decline in those states where people are fleeing. It has boomed in places they have been migrating to such as Texas and Florida. Obviously, you can no longer make a blanket forecast in real estate. Then there has been Blackrock which has bought over 20,000 homes in Florida in the lower-end of the market for cash.

I have warned many times that the standard nonsense that gold rises with inflation has been a sales pitch as trustworthy as a used car salesman. Gold rises during the collapse in the confidence of the government. Everyone will respond based on their own currency.  As the dollar rises, gold has declined in US$, but the pattern will be different for every other currency.

Jul 18 2022

Former Obama Economic Advisor Says Best Way to Deal with Inflation is to Raise Taxes and Plunge Main Street into a Recession


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 17, 2022 | Sundance 

Jason Furman is the former Chairman of the National Economic Council under Barack Obama; he is currently a professor at Harvard teaching economics.   If you ever wondered why the economy under Obama included the weakest economic recovery in history, the advice of Furman might explain it.

In an interview with CBS this morning, Jason Furman says the best way to get inflation under control is to raise taxes and stop people from spending money.  This approach will impact the demand side of the economy and as a result, with no one purchasing stuff, it will lower prices.   Seriously, no joke, he said this. WATCH:

Jason Furm: …”Congress should be trying to do their part and helping out if they can cut the deficit, including raising taxes on high income households, that would reduce a bit of spending in the economy, it would cool the economy down a little bit, and actually take some pressure off the Fed.”…

Create a deeper recession to control inflation, brilliant!

Like I have been pointing out for months, these ideologues believe inflation is being driven by the demand side, by consumers purchasing too much.  They pretend not to know it is the supply-side issue of energy policy that is driving the CORE inflation they seek to reduce.

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Harvard Economics Professor Jason Furman reminds me of this:

Jul 14 2022

Texas Utility Officials Taking Additional Emergency Measures to Avoid Blackouts, Texas Windmills Not Providing Enough Energy


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 13, 2022 | Sundance

Officials in the state of Texas are worried the emergency measures taken Wednesday to avoid blackouts may not be enough.  The utility operators urgently need the wind to start operating the windmills or things might get worse.  Reuters News has more:

(Reuters) – Texas’s power grid operator on Wednesday took emergency measures to avoid rolling blackouts as soaring electricity demand threatened to outpace available supplies amid a stifling heatwave.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the grid that serves more than 26 million customers, initiated a rarely used emergency program that is triggered when supplies fall below a critical safety margin.

Earlier, ERCOT had urged residents to cut power use during the hottest hours of the day and warned of a risk for rolling blackouts. Residents were asked to turn up thermostats, defer the use of high-power appliances and turn off swimming pool pumps.

The emergency notice came after ERCOT began paying suppliers an average of $5,000 per magawatt hour to keep generators running. That price is the highest the grid operator pays.  “They were pulling a lot of levers to avoid going into emergency operations and rolling blackouts,” said Doug Lewin, president of consultants Stoic Energy LLC. (read more)

Call me Captain Obvious, but in addition to the population migration, it looks like Texas imported California’s energy policies.  The sustainable energy isn’t sustainable.  However, on a positive note, their state ESG score is improving.

Jun 26 2022

Obama Called the Gas Tax Holiday a Gimmick


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Jun 26, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

President Joe Biden is calling for a three-month gas tax holiday to lower the price at the pump. Interestingly, former President Obama opposed a gas tax holiday when energy prices were much lower. In fact, he called temporarily suspending the tax a “gimmick.” The US government currently charges 18 centers per gallon of gasoline and 24 cents per gallon of diesel.

In his 2020 memoir “A Promised Land,” Obama stated that opposing the temporary suspension was one of the reasons he beat Hillary Clinton in the 2008 US Presidential Election. “I was sure that consumers wouldn’t see much benefit. In fact, gas station owners were just as likely to keep gas prices high and boost their own profits as they were to pass the three-cents-a-gallon savings on to motorists,” Obama stated in his memoir after noting that Clinton and GOP candidate McCain both endorsed the idea.

Numerous politicians from both sides of the spectrum have stated that they cannot guarantee a tax holiday would ease consumer costs. In the face of the current energy crisis, a measly tax break will not help those struggling to afford gasoline in a significant way. Instead, America needs to boost production, reimplement pipeline deals, and begin fracking until a viable alternative option is available.

May 25 2022

Biden Spreads Inflation Lies on Twitter. Jeff Bezos’ Response Is Priceless | DM CLIPS | Rubin Report


Posted originally on the The Rubin Report  on Rumble on May 23, 2022

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks about Jeff Bezos calling out Joe Biden’s inflation lies. Jeff Bezos attacked Joe Biden’s statement which connected inflation with corporate tax rates. Even Democrats like Bezos are turning on Biden as the US economy continues to tank amid inflation, supply chain problems, and market crashes.