Armstrong Economics Blog/Armstrong in the Media Re-Posted May 28, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
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Category WEF Planned Famine
Nuclear Deterrence
Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted May 11, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: Hi Martin,
I work on defense issues for my job, but I am no Neocon. Second Strike works just fine too or more likely “Launch Under Attack” (LUA), and even with older weapons. Everybody goes down together and most likely via miscalculation especially given possible Nuclear Winter which given Volcano data actually looks plausible. No prior intention is required to commit National suicide. Read Admiral Richards (STRATCOM) latest Congressional testimony yesterday. A “Crisis In Nuclear Deterrence” and it could be the Brits who initiate any escalation and not the U.S.by the way. Same Trident-D-5 SLBM’s and Russia could not tell them apart.
There are some Neocons who are aware of your work like Bill Kristol, and others. They will never allow the shift from West to East to occur. I have actually heard some of them say that. It is their hold card. By the way, could you clarify when you believe the full-scale war will break out? You have suggested Q-1 2023, 2024 (especially May 7/8 ECM turn), after 2024, 2027, and 2028. I understand it may escalate in stages, but how long does Socrates believe we have before it goes full scale? My guess is June 2024 as Economic factors are ignored by “The Post Cold Warriors”.
Best,
Ken.
COMMENT: Marty, you are right again. Admiral Richard agreed with you that nuclear arms are no longer a deterrent to war. The Ukraine conflict shows Russia was not afraid of nuclear weapons from NATO or the US. It is all economics.
Thanks for what you do.
KM
ANSWER: I know virtually every intelligence agency looks at Socrates. They all want to know the forecasts of Socrates, for it’s not my personal opinion. All I can hope to do is scream loud enough that perhaps I can reduce the amplitude of events. But Socrates has NEVER been wrong on any geopolitical forecast in my lifetime. Personally, we all have opinions. But that will also change week to week based on events. That’s why personal opinion will not cut it, for this is far more complex than we can even speculate.
I really do not care what the Neocons do. They will never prevent the shift of the economic power from the West to the East. China has surpassed Europe, and it is neck and neck with the USA now. This is a cycle that cannot be defeated. All they are doing is fulfilling the cycle with this nonsense. World peace is created by interdependency, as was the case with the Roman Empire and the Pax Romanum, Roman peace.
I am doing a full report on the question. Tensions are rising post-2020 after they got Biden in office. We will see escalation begin in 2023, but the prospect of a world war is more likely post-2024. I question if Putin will be there during that time more than Biden. Putin will be followed by even hardline advocates, for they are well aware that this Proxy War is really a war between the USA and Russia.
Yes, the head of U.S. Strategic Command Adm. Charles Richard, who does oversee the nuclear arsenal, warned Congress that the USA faces a heightened nuclear deterrence risk when it comes to Russia and China. The cutting of the defense budget and even Biden’s threat to dishonorably discharge any member of the military who was not vaccinated has shown that the US thinks it can control the world with the threat of nuclear weapons while reducing the conventional capability.
Adm. Richard warned: “We are facing a crisis deterrence dynamic right now that we have only seen a few times in our nation’s history.” He continued stating bluntly: “The war in Ukraine and China’s nuclear trajectory — their strategic breakout — demonstrates that we have a deterrence and assurance gap based on the threat of limited nuclear employment.” He further warned that China is “watching the war in Ukraine closely and will likely use nuclear coercion to their advantage in the future. Their intent is to achieve the military capability to reunify Taiwan by 2027 if not sooner.”
Nuclear weapons are no longer a deterrent. They did not stop the US from going into Iraq, the Vietnamese War, or this one in Ukraine. The idea that building nuclear capability will somehow compel world peace is a delusion. This is essentially what Admiral Richard has scolded Congress about. The US conventionally is not a match for Russia and China. North Korea alone has an army of 1.5 million. That is double the size of both sides in Ukraine right now.
Joe Biden Rails Against Inflation He Created
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 10, 2022 | Sundance
Even with dementia I doubt seriously Joe Biden believes the nonsense he read from his prepared script today. Every economy policy the Biden administration has triggered, specifically including the Green New Deal energy policy, has caused massive inflation.
The national average price per gallon of gasoline was $2.33 in January 2021, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). It has increased nearly 84% when compared to the current national average price of $4.28 per gallon {link}. Petroleum and refined gasoline costs are embedded in every aspect of the production economy. Additionally, Biden’s restrictions, and later policies, on natural gas and coal have caused overall energy costs to skyrocket. Again, these are cornerstones of economic inflation.
During a ridiculously obtuse speech today [Full Speech Here], part of which is in the excerpt below, Biden claims there are only two sources of inflation: (1) the pandemic (covid-19); and (2) Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I often accuse democrats of pretending not to know things, however these false attributions are far beyond pretense, they are purposeful lies. WATCH:
Beyond the claims about inflation, a visible pile of bovine excrement is noted in the sentences around Ukraine grain supplies. Notice there is no supply chain issue pushing thousands of tons of military hardware into Ukraine; however, Biden claims they cannot get grain supplies out of Ukraine. He cannot even see the hypocrisy in his own script.
Sending more than $50 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to Ukraine while those same U.S. taxpayers are crushed under the weight of the inflation that type of spending creates, is beyond blood-boiling. We are currently in an abusive relationship with our own government and Joe Biden is the cognitively challenged, disposable front man sent to the cameras to gaslight the American people.
Sunday Talks, Samantha Power Notes Scarce Food Presents Opportunity to Enhance Larger Goals of Climate Change and Other Weird Stuff
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on May 1, 2022 | sundance
If you are not familiar with Cass Sunstein’s wife, Samantha Power, I would suggest spending some time on any search feature of the internet. Power is the archetype ideological traveler within the academic peer group of the Obama team. Former U.N. Ambassador Power is the person who takes the ideological theory [example Responsibility to Protect (R2P)], and then constructs the mechanisms and network to turn theory into applicable policy.
Samantha put down the filtered Brazilian rainwater coffee this morning and gave a few interviews, that are rather telling of what is going on in the background of the Biden administration. Discussing Ukraine {Direct Rumble Link} Power let it slip that the absence of industrial fertilizer is a good thing because in the spirit of “never letting a crisis go to waste,” the transition of food growing to more “sustainable farming” through organic fertilizer is a key transition for the bigger picture issue of Climate Change. WATCH:
Samantha is the prototype backpack, academic, Birkenstock traveler who all model U.N. types view as the person to emulate. She’s a sustainable algae cake eater, who bridges the space between the Kennedy Center ballroom crowd and the cross-legged, sitting on the grass, NYU commons activists.
A very dangerous mind, with no practical skills beyond very dangerous ideological theory.
The 2011/2012 crisis in Libya represents an outcome of Power’s R2P theory applied. Create equitable freedom for the animals by killing the Zookeeper and removing the cages. The tree dwelling primates are fine, at first, until the big cats run out of deer to eat. The only way to prevent primate slaughter is to supplement and satiate the cats with alternative meat. The primates are now forever dependent on foreign intervention for survival…. and yet the free range believing ideologues take no responsibility for the natural mess and absence of ruminants.
Samantha Power, now in charge of USAID (U.S. Aid and International Development) and a host of Non-Governmental Agencies (NGO’s) who rely on USAID, turns her meddling focus from the middle-east toward the crisis in Ukraine.
Notice how she says weird shit like, [02:53] “what we do Margaret, is to work though our implementing partners. So, er, we have, um, folks who are indirectly on the ground, but who are receiving U.S. taxpayer resources in order to provide everything from flak jackets and helmets, again to those safehouses etc.”
How does a person become “indirectly on the ground” in Ukraine, in order to receive funds?
Oh wait, that’s what we need the U.S. government information, disinformation and language approval bureau to figure out before we can start to talk about it…. or something. Seriously, watch this interview carefully and spot the bureaucratic globbledyspeech. WATCH:
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Trudeau Admits He Does Not Understand Basic Math
Armstrong Economics Blog/Canada Re-Posted Apr 27, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
In an old video that has resurfaced from Justin Trudeau’s days as a West Point Great Academy teacher, the now prime minister admitted that he struggles with basic math. “I have a slight learning disability…that was never addressed,” the 29-year-old teacher stated. “I am dysnumeric,” Trudeau said after self-diagnosing why he cannot understand small math problems. Trudeau said that his learning disability did not prevent him from later teaching children mathematics. “Dysnumeric” is not a medical term, although there are learning disorders involving numbers.
Trudeau admitted he could not remember phone numbers. He said that he was still unsure of his multiplication tables.
Ironically, Trudeau says, “Questioning as a skill is not taught anymore.” Perhaps it is so that tyrants like Trudeau can invoke martial law over a peaceful protest and shriek at people to stay inside and trust the ever-changing “science.” Feasibly his revelation explains why he thought only a “fringe minority” of Canadians wanted to escape his COVID restrictions. He goes on to say that he also does not understand computers, but that his skill is teaching the youth how to think. “It’s not about teaching facts anymore,” he admitted years ago. It is about manipulating the people to trust what government claims is factual and implementing penalties for anyone who questions the status quo. It is no wonder that Schwab scooped Trudeau up to be one of his Young Leaders.
Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 17, 2022 | sundance
The metaphorical Jack had a great idea, open a coffee shop where the beverages were free and use internal advertising as the income subsidy to operate the business. Crowds came for the free coffee, comfy couches, fellowship, conversation and enjoyment.
It didn’t matter where Jack got the coffee, how he paid for it, or didn’t, or what product advertising the customers would be exposed to while there. Few people thought about such things. Curiously, it didn’t matter what size the crowd was; in the backroom of Jack’s Coffee Shop they were able to generate massive amounts of never-ending free coffee at extreme scales.
Over time, using the justification of parking lot capacity and township regulations, not everyone would be able to park and enter. Guards were placed at the entrance to pre-screen customers. A debate began.
Alternative coffee shops opened around town. It was entirely possible to duplicate Jacks Coffee Shop, yet no one could duplicate the business model for the free coffee. Indeed, there was something very unique about Jack’s Coffee Shop. Thus, some underlying suspicions were raised:
The only way Twitter, with 217 million users, could exist as a viable platform is if they had access to tech systems of incredible scale and performance, and those systems were essentially free or very cheap. The only entity that could possibly provide that level of capacity and scale is the United States Government – combined with a bottomless bank account. A public-private partnership.
If my hunch is correct, Elon Musk is poised to expose the well-kept secret that most social media platforms are operating on U.S. government tech infrastructure and indirect subsidy. Let that sink in.
The U.S. technology system, the assembled massive system of connected databases and server networks, is the operating infrastructure that offsets the cost of Twitter to run their own servers and database. The backbone of Twitter is the United States government.
FREE COFFEE:
♦ June 2013: […] “Cloud computing is one of the core components of the strategy to help the IC discover, access and share critical information in an era of seemingly infinite data.” … “A test scenario described by GAO in its June 2013 bid protest opinion suggests the CIA sought to compare how the solutions presented by IBM and Amazon Web Services (AWS) could crunch massive data sets, commonly referred to as big data.” … “Solutions had to provide a “hosting environment for applications which process vast amounts of information in parallel on large clusters (thousands of nodes) of commodity hardware” using a platform called MapReduce. Through MapReduce, clusters were provisioned for computation and segmentation. Test runs assumed clusters were large enough to process 100 terabytes of raw input data. AWS’ solution received superior marks from CIA procurement officials”… (MORE)
♦ November 2013: […] “Twitter closed its first day of trading on Nov. 7, 2013, at $44.90 a share. In the years since then, it briefly traded above $70, but more recently, it has struggled.”
Jack’s free coffee shop has been for sale, but there’s no viable business model in the private sector. No one has wanted to purchase Twitter – it is simply unsustainable; the data processing costs exceed the capacity of the platform to generate revenue – until now….
And suddenly, the people who work in the backroom of Jack’s Magic Coffee Shop don’t want Jack to sell.
Twitter is not making a decision to decline the generous offer by Elon Musk because of stewardship or fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. The financials of Twitter as a non-viable business model highlight the issue of money being irrelevant. Twitter does not and cannot make money. Growing Twitter only means growing an expense. Growing Twitter does not grow revenue enough to offset the increase in expense.
There is only one way for Twitter to exist as a viable entity, people are now starting to realize this.
What matters to the people behind Twitter, the people who are subsidizing the ability of Twitter to exist, is control over the global conversation.
Control of the conversation is priceless to the people who provide the backbone for Twitter.
Once people realize who is subsidizing Twitter, everything changes.
That’s the fight. (more)
♦ 2021, Public-Private Partnership – The modern Fourth Branch of Government is only possible because of a Public-Private partnership with the intelligence apparatus. You do not have to take my word for it, the partnership is so brazen they have made public admissions.
The biggest names in Big Tech announced in June their partnership with the Five Eyes intelligence network, ultimately controlled by the NSA, to: (1) monitor all activity in their platforms; (2) identify extremist content; (3) look for expressions of Domestic Violent Extremism (DVE); and then, (4) put the content details into a database where the Five Eyes intelligence agencies (U.K., U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand) can access it.
Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft are all partnering with the intelligence apparatus. It might be difficult to fathom how openly they admit this, but they do. Look at this sentence in the press release (emphasis mine):
[…] “The Group will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.”
Think about that sentence structure very carefully. They are “adding to” the preexisting list…. admitting the group (aka Big Tech) already have access to the the intelligence-sharing database… and also admitting there is a preexisting list created by the Five Eyes consortium.
Obviously, who and what is defined as “extremist content” will be determined by the Big Tech insiders themselves. This provides a gateway, another plausible deniability aspect, to cover the Intelligence Branch from any oversight.
When the Intelligence Branch within government wants to conduct surveillance and monitor American citizens, they run up against problems due to the Constitution of the United States. They get around those legal limitations by sub-contracting the intelligence gathering, the actual data-mining, and allowing outside parties (contractors) to have access to the central database.
The government cannot conduct electronic searches (4th amendment issue) without a warrant; however, private individuals can search and report back as long as they have access. What is being admitted is exactly that preexisting partnership. The difference is that Big Tech will flag the content from within their platforms, and now a secondary database filled with the extracted information will be provided openly for the Intelligence Branch to exploit.
The volume of metadata captured by the NSA has always been a problem because of the filters needed to make the targeting useful. There is a lot of noise in collecting all data that makes the parts you really want to identify more difficult to capture. This new admission puts a new massive filtration system in the metadata that circumvents any privacy protections for individuals.
Previously, the Intelligence Branch worked around the constitutional and unlawful search issue by using resources that were not in the United States. A domestic U.S. agency, working on behalf of the U.S. government, cannot listen on your calls without a warrant. However, if the U.S. agency sub-contracts to say a Canadian group, or foreign ally, the privacy invasion is no longer legally restricted by U.S. law.
What was announced in June 2021 is an alarming admission of a prior relationship along with open intent to define their domestic political opposition as extremists.
July 26, 2021, (Reuters) – A counterterrorism organization formed by some of the biggest U.S. tech companies including Facebook (FB.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) is significantly expanding the types of extremist content shared between firms in a key database, aiming to crack down on material from white supremacists and far-right militias, the group told Reuters.
Until now, the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s (GIFCT) database has focused on videos and images from terrorist groups on a United Nations list and so has largely consisted of content from Islamist extremist organizations such as Islamic State, al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Over the next few months, the group will add attacker manifestos – often shared by sympathizers after white supremacist violence – and other publications and links flagged by U.N. initiative Tech Against Terrorism. It will use lists from intelligence-sharing group Five Eyes, adding URLs and PDFs from more groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters and neo-Nazis.
The firms, which include Twitter (TWTR.N) and Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) YouTube, share “hashes,” unique numerical representations of original pieces of content that have been removed from their services. Other platforms use these to identify the same content on their own sites in order to review or remove it. (read more)
The influence of the Intelligence Branch now reaches into our lives, our personal lives. In the decades before 9/11/01 the intelligence apparatus intersected with government, influenced government, and undoubtedly controlled many institutions with it. The legislative oversight function was weak and growing weaker, but it still existed and could have been used to keep the IC in check. However, after the events of 9/11/01, the short-sighted legislative reactions opened the door to allow the surveillance state to weaponize.
After the Patriot Act was triggered, not coincidentally only six weeks after 9/11, a slow and dangerous fuse was lit that ends with the intelligence apparatus being granted a massive amount of power. The problem with assembled power is always what happens when a Machiavellian network takes control over that power and begins the process to weaponize the tools for their own malicious benefit. That is exactly what the installation of Barack Obama was all about.
The Obama network took pre-assembled intelligence weapons we should never have allowed to be created, and turned those weapons into tools for his radical and fundamental change. The target was the essential fabric of our nation. Ultimately, this corrupt political process gave power to create the Fourth Branch of Government, the Intelligence Branch. From that perspective the fundamental change was successful.
…It’s all Connected Folks, SEE HERE
[…] “The vision was first outlined in the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise plan championed by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and IC Chief Information Officer Al Tarasiuk almost three years ago.” … “It is difficult to underestimate the cloud contract’s importance. In a recent public appearance, CIA Chief Information Officer Douglas Wolfe called it “one of the most important technology procurements in recent history,” with ramifications far outside the realm of technology.” (READ MORE)
Armstrong on USA Watchdog April 12th, 2022
Ukraine v Russian Empire
Armstrong Economics Blog/Ukraine Re-Posted Apr 13, 2022 by Martin Armstrong
QUESTION: We elected Zelensky who promised to end the civil war. It looks like the West is telling him not to compromise and let the Russian section go.
DH (from Ukraine)
ANSWER: On Sunday, CBS News program “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Zelensky. I believe Zelensky is still claiming evidence of Russian war crimes, saying: “We are defending the ability of a person to live in the modern world.” Despite what the press says, this is a Proxy War against Russia and the US, along with the EU and Britain. They are quite happy to use the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder. There is no possible way all of these countries would allow Zelensky to address their own people UNLESS this was a Proxy War.
The Dnieper River which runs 1,423 miles and today is the border between Belarus and Russia, was also the border of Ukraine with Russia during the Tsarist Empire at the time of Mikhail I (1613-1645) of the Romanov Dynasty. Zelensky’s claims that Putin has invaded a sovereign nation are debatable. Eastern Ukraine today was assigned to it for administrative purposes during the USSR. It was never Ukrainian territory. It is very hard to see why it is worth killing your own people for a territory that has been occupied by Russians for centuries.
This is obviously a Proxy War, and despite whatever the press says, the West is using the Ukrainian people as the Vanguard in this battle against Russia. They cannot declare war on Russia legally, so they have used Ukraine. Zelensky seems happy to accommodate, blaming civilian deaths on Putin when he shared responsibility for this war.
In Crimea, the population is predominantly Russian and Tatars where there is a population of about 250,000, accounting for about 10% of the total.
Multiple Simultaneous Food Production Impacts Create Global Concern
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 12, 2022 | Sundance
I want to be very careful here, because multiple people have sent me a version of this outline asking for opinion. Basically, is David Friedberg correct?
The discussion in this video surrounds farming as a construct of global caloric creation. Meaning, with all that is taking place in the farming system on a global scale, will there be dramatic food shortages? It is a complex issue. In the larger picture what Friedberg, a former scientist within the Monsanto organization, explains is accurate; however, I would inject some nuanced dissension as it relates to U.S. farm production specifically.
The first four and a half minutes of the video are an accurate representation of the global state of farming, albeit with a little too much weight on the Ukraine-Russia aspect. There was a preexisting issue long before Russia entered the picture. The price of fertilizer was already skyrocketing, Russia-Ukraine has made that already looming issue, worse. WATCH First 04:30 minutes:
The problem described, about farmers deciding not to plant, is weighted more heavily in less developed countries where access to the financing for a future crop is not stable {AP Article Here}. For most of the developed world farming will continue; it is the end product where prices will reflect the additional costs of bringing a harvest to market. Bottom line, as the futures market is showing, crops will be more expensive.
There is going to be a problem in the same areas of the world where food stability and dependency is already an issue. Yes, the convergence of current farm challenges will make those areas more vulnerable. We do not know, to what extent.
The notation about a 90-day supply of food on a global basis (Northern Hemisphere) is slightly askew, as countries like the United States have a much deeper reserve and storage capacity. We discussed this last year {Go Deep}.
Essentially, in the U.S. we operate approximately one full harvest cycle ahead of demand. However, our problem is the COVID lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 disrupted the two food delivery systems by shutting down restaurants, cafeterias, hotels, hospitality venues, entertainment, school lunchrooms etc and limiting capacity for six months. The government intervention seriously messed up our food supply chain. {Go Deep}
In North America I do not foresee any major scarcity of total food availability, certainly not in the fresh food supply side. There may be shortages on specific segments within the processed and manufactured food supply chain, but those would be nuanced based on specific ingredient issues.
What we will see is continued increases in price and a demand for U.S. agricultural products to fill the voids in global markets that result from less developed nations needing the products our North American farming experts can deliver. There will be a higher demand for us to export food materials, and when combined with the already increased cost for the harvest, that means much higher prices still coming.
Our North American farmers are awesome in their ability to maximize yield, with the customary and appropriate qualifier that ultimately mother nature will determine success or failure. Our U.S. and Canadian farmers and ranchers are the best of the best. Their ability to feed our nation is a national and strategic advantage, unparalleled in any other region. They know how to do it, if the government will just get out of the way and let them work.
If it was a priority for the U.S. government to ensure U.S. food stability, they could spend a few billion by securing fertilizer and reasonably priced energy (diesel) for our farmers, simply to offset the upfront and increased production costs. Then, just turn North America loose, pray a little bit, and let them create as much product as possible for the overall market. Let the market demand determine the crop, and get government out of their business.
Farmers in the U.S, Mexico and Canada have the capacity to drive higher yields. Unfortunately, the politics of war, Wall Street – and the influence of the international banking system – takes a higher priority for DC than simple farming commonsense. Unfortunately, as we saw today, turning corn into gasoline additive just exemplifies the stupidity of the DC mindset.
On one hand, we have serious people concerned about global famine. On the other hand, we have a narcissistic occupant of the oval office, and a tribe of DC idiots worried about gasoline prices and the mid-term election. These issues do not have to be mutually exclusive, and there is a reasonable solution for both of them. However, all that reasonableness evaporates once the people behind a fraudulently elected DC politician walk in the room.
Will there be a dangerous level of food shortage globally? Yes
Will there be a dangerous level of food shortage in North America? No, but there may be some scarcity.
Will there be higher prices? Absolutely.
Unleash the farmers and unleash the energy experts and all of this maddening anxiety ends. Unfortunately, those actions are adverse to the Build Back Better agenda.
We are in an abusive relationship with our government.
Worsening Food Price Increases Gain Global Attention – UN Food and Agriculture Organization Tracks Highest Prices Ever Recorded
Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 8, 2022 | Sundance
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported on Friday they are recording the highest Food Price Index since they started recording thirty years ago. With record highs in prices for cereals, vegetable oils, dairy and meats
This issue has been a slow burning fuse toward the biggest powder keg in modern history, and it is about to get very serious. We have been warning about it since last fall {Go Deep}. In the most deliberate and painstaking ways possible, we have been urging everyone to take this issue seriously.
The background cause is complex and started with the 2020 government response to the pandemic. U.S. and international government intervention in the food supply process has been FUBAR from the beginning. Every action taken since early 2020 has been one bad policy after another; building failure upon failure, crisis upon crisis, bad decision upon bad decision, bringing us to a precipice summed up by saying “the absence of food will change things.”
Some will say the food prices we are about to experience –and the crisis it will create– was deliberate. Others will say this was the cumulative outcome of major failures on the part of the government. At this point the former makes more sense, and the latter looks like a justification and excuse, because if government entities were really serious about food prices and shortages, they would be taking pragmatic steps to mitigate the problem; they are not.
There are simple things government could do, such as helping farmers offset targeted fertilizer costs, providing relief for diesel fuel and energy costs, and taking other simple steps that would help the agricultural industry.
Instead of responding with the urgency this would demand, the collective government action has been to ignore the problem (talk soundbites), and give speeches about using subsidies to offset the end result (consumers) – without ever addressing the root cause. All this while fueling conflict in Ukraine and chasing radical energy policies under the guise of global climate change.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) keeps track of food prices and projections using a global index [SEE HERE]. What they are calculating, and what they are projecting based on the current calculations, is a major increase in food prices combined with a major increase in food scarcity due to the unaffordability of food products.
The baseline of 100 is the monthly rate of change for a basket of food products using the period from 2014 to 2016.
The current rate of change is indexing at 159.3, meaning the monthly increases in price are almost 60% higher than the base period. Trying to chart this rate of index is almost impossible, as it seems literally exponential. (red line in graphic)
In 2020, the monthly rate of change increased to an index of around 110. In 2021, the monthly rate of increase went from 110 to around 135. In the first three months of 2022, the index has jumped from 135 to almost 160 (in three months), and there is no end in sight.
The FAO Food Price Index* (FFPI) averaged 159.3 points in March 2022, up 17.9 points (12.6 percent) from February, making a giant leap to a new highest level since its inception in 1990. The latest increase reflects new all-time highs for vegetable oils, cereals and meat sub-indices, while those of sugar and dairy products also rose significantly.
The FAO Cereal Price Index averaged 170.1 points in March, up 24.9 points (17.1 percent) from February, marking its highest level on record since 1990. This month’s increase reflected a surge in world prices of wheat and coarse grains, largely driven by conflict-related export disruptions from Ukraine and, to a lesser extent, the Russian Federation. The expected loss of exports from the Black Sea region exacerbated the already tight global availability of wheat. With concerns over crop conditions in the United States of America (USA) also adding support, world wheat prices rose sharply in March, soaring by 19.7 percent.
The FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index averaged 248.6 points in March, up 46.9 points (23.2 percent) from February and hitting a new record high. The sharp rise of the index was driven by higher sunflower, palm, soy and rapeseed oil prices.
The FAO Dairy Price Index averaged 145.2 points in March, up 3.7 points (2.6 percent) from February, marking the seventh consecutive monthly increase and lifting the index 27.7 points (23.6 percent) above its value a year ago. The upward trend of dairy product prices persisted, mainly supported by the tightening of global markets due to inadequate milk output in Western Europe and Oceania to meet global demand. Quotations for butter and milk powders rose steeply.
The FAO Meat Price Index* averaged 120.0 points in March, up 5.5 points (4.8 percent) from February, also reaching an all-time high. In March, pig meat prices registered the steepest monthly increase on record since 1995.
The FAO Sugar Price Index averaged 117.9 points in March, up 7.4 points (6.7 percent) from February, reversing most of the previous three months’ decline and reaching levels more than 20 percent above those registered in the corresponding month last year. [DETAILS]
In the United States and North America as a whole we are blessed and fortunate. We have abundant, healthy and fertile land that allows us to grow more food than we consume. We are a net exporter of food products. However, while we do not have to worry about shortages at the scale of other nations, there will be scarcity.
Additionally, the price increases will hit the U.S. consumer at a lesser, yet still big time significant, scale. The issue in the U.S. will be food insecurity due to massive increases in price. The middle class will spend more of their earnings and wages on food, and people will literally make changes to their food purchases based on these massive increases in price.
In food dependent nations, the scale of the issue will be far greater. In part, this is the reason the southern border crisis will be much more severe this year. We will see an influx of migration due to food availability and unaffordability issues, that is certain; however, that issue is also incidental to the massive influx that is going to happen as a result of the Biden open-border policy.
In the strongly food dependent nations, the food price and scarcity issue has already triggered panic.
We are several generations separated from any time in history where people have worried about the United States having abundant affordable food. Arguably, those under 40 to 45-years of age do not have any reference to the type of food scarcity and food inflation that is coming.
As we have mentioned for quite some time, “the absence of food will change things.”
We are in an abusive relationship with government leaders.
Centinel2012 