Tag Archives: U. S. Regionalism

Jul 17 2022

Neil Oliver Outlines the Foolish Pantomime of U.K. Politics as the Candidates for Prime Minister Keep Pretending


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 16, 2022 | Sundance 

While Neil Oliver is describing the insufferable lack of political leadership amid the conservative party in the U.K, almost every point of his weekly monologue could just as easily apply to the United States or any other “western democracy.”   The current candidates to replace Boris Johnson are just an extension of the high-minded political class who are pretending to be different, yet they are identical in their globalist outlooks.

….”always the same lines from one leader after another – great reset, build back better, rules based liberal order. The theatrical parallels just keep coming – soap opera, pantomime, now a chorus line of high kicking dancers in perfect time.”…

Oliver asks simple, albeit frustratingly and brutally obvious, questions about what is missing in the candidates who are asking to become the next British Prime Minister.  Where is the candidate who represents the issues that matter, the one who isn’t playing a role in a never-ending soap opera that generates nothing except more drama to keep everyone distracted.

Neil Oliver’s points could just as easily be talking about the United States republican party, where almost every elected official is quite happily playing their acting role in the political soap opera, yet no one is doing anything to stop the insane policies that are destroying the foundation of life, liberty and the free pursuit of happiness. WATCH:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=hUFh7l1Y9TU%3Ffeature%3Doembed

[Transcript] – The race for the leadership of the Conservative Party is a farce. Like a soap opera, it is no more than another distraction, something to take our minds off what’s really important in the world. It’s not just a Conservative Party problem, of course.

Across the political spectrum it is the same – a wholesale absence of truth – not their truth, the good old fashioned truth. They might be describing themselves as rival camps – Tory, Labour, Liberal – but where it matters, they’re all on the same page of the same script, written by someone else and delivered to them one page at a time.

Whoever ends up with the leading role, in Number 10 Downing Street this time, they intend for the show to go on, week after week and year after year. Old characters will be written out and new characters will fill in the gaps.

It seemed like madness to me – encouraging belief in a fiction. Anyway, for that reason among others, but mostly because I had more to do, I stopped watching. That was the soaps, of course. More recently I’ve realized the drama of Westminster is even less believable. Westminster is a pantomime. I turned off the soaps and more recently I have turned off Westminster.

Now we’ve reached that recurrent moment of whipped up and confected high drama in any soap, that the writers, journalists among them, evidently really enjoy – like a fire, or a plane crash, or a murder. It’s the leadership race.

I watched as much as I could bear of the televised debate the other night, which was about five minutes. God help us all, they’re not even good actors. I’m prepared to accept that one or two might have their hearts in the right place, or near enough – might honestly still genuinely be labouring under the misapprehension that parliament is a place where important decisions are made. There are therefore moments of apparent sincerity now and again. For the most part, the rest of them just phoned in their performances.

In the manner of a soap opera, or a panto, the plot moves on so fast you could break your neck keeping up with it. Most alarming and dispiriting for those of us with any kind of memory of plot lines just past, is the way the disaster of the last two years has been dismissed as though it never happened. Already we’re being offered a re-run, a repeat of an old series, all about five pence cuts on fuel duty and no mention at all of self-inflicted financial Armageddon.

Where, I want to know, is the candidate who will stand up and take some responsibility for the collective decision and disaster that was lockdown? Where is the candidate who will stand up and admit what we all know – what has been acknowledged across the board by economists, medics and a slew of other professionals – that lockdown was the most disastrous public policy decision of modern times? Most importantly of all, where is the candidate who will stand up and promise that while he or she is in Number 10, on no account will lockdown or anything remotely like lockdown be inflicted upon the people of these islands?

Where is the candidate who will speak out about what matters to the lives of people who live not on a stage or on a set, but in the real world? Where is the candidate who will declare that while she or he is in Downing Street, there will be no compulsory Digital IDs or vaccine passports or anything of the sort? Where is the candidate who will vow to protect the existence of real cash as the vital off ramp and alternative to any Digital Currency, programmable or otherwise?

Where is the candidate who will admit that the injections foisted upon billions of people around the world did not and do not work as advertised – cannot reasonably be described as vaccines because they do not prevent getting or transmitting the illness in question, getting sick with or dying from the illness in question? Where is the candidate who will declare that honest truth?

Where is the candidate who will say that while he or she is in office, there will be no mandated medical procedures for any man, woman or child?

Where is the candidate who will say that a woman is an adult human female, born that way? Where is the candidate who said that all along?

Where is the candidate who will say what we all know to be true – that the Green Agenda, Agenda 2030, Net Zero and the rest are the products of crippling stupidity that are already causing misery, and that can only cause much, much more misery in the months and years ahead if someone doesn’t find the brakes on this runaway train?

Where is the candidate who will stand up say it’s summer – and that for as long as there have been summers on this planet Earth, there have been some days, even here in these islands, that are uncomfortably hot? Where is the candidate who remembers when the TV weather maps used to have little celebratory suns dotted around them, instead of the islands coloured dark red as though on the point of bursting into flames at the same temperatures holiday makers jump on jet planes and head south in hope of finding and enjoying?

People’s lives and livelihoods are being destroyed – or shortly will be destroyed – unless someone is brave enough to admit that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. For as long as all the candidates just clap along with the rest of the wilfully blind – those that see the obvious and yet refuse to say so – then the cost of lockdown crisis will only deepen until none but the self-defined elite are clear of the rising floodwater.

I say that’s the least we might hope for, because it is my heartfelt belief that calling out the fiction of our present parliament is as much as any candidate might do for now. The meaningful decisions are taken elsewhere – by The City of London, by bankers, by the CEOs of planet-spanning corporate entities like Vanguard and Black Rock, by the place men fronting transnational NGOs – Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, the WHO, the UN.

You don’t even have to subscribe to the idea of a one world government to acknowledge that our elected representatives are trumped by the agendas of big business and bigger banks in control of the world’s money supply. That our small fry are swimming in water dominated by whales and sharks who tell them what’s what is made plain by their use of language – always the same lines from one leader after another – great reset, build back better, rules based liberal order. The theatrical parallels just keep coming – soap opera, pantomime, now a chorus line of high kicking dancers in perfect time.

In the real world – the world we are discouraged from watching – farmers are rising in rebellion all across Europe – in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Italy, in Poland and many other places besides. Others are rising in support – the people of those countries, the truckers, the firemen.

These are real lives, real fightbacks against real imminent disasters, but we are supposed to look away and to be satisfied instead by watching to see who next warms her or his behind on the seat at the desk in Number 10 – anxiously opening the email every day that delivers the latest script – will he or she be written out next?

On the other side of the Atlantic is a soap opera that couldn’t be broadcast over here until after the watershed. President Joe Biden has to carry a cheat sheet to remind him of the script he can’t even remember from moment to moment. He has Ron Burgundy moments – Ron Burgundy, the legendary fictional news reader from the movie Anchor Man – who will read whatever is on the autocue, including his minders’ instructions about which lines to repeat for emphasis.

And then there’s the utterly compelling car crash role in the soap opera currently being performed by Biden’ own son, Hunter, not that we’re meant to tune in to that particular drama. Every day social media carries clips – apparently culled from that laptop of his, the one we’re still not supposed to know about, far less talk about – of a naked Hunter Biden, handgun in hand, or with prostitutes, or counting and weighing rocks of crack cocaine. Every time a clip is circulated, the social media platforms take them down. And then another crops up. And all the while Hunter is still at large, at events in plain view, at which the US media sees him and simply leaves him be, no questions asked either about his dodgy deals in China, Russia and Ukraine.

If we’ve got Downing Street, or The Only Way is Westminster, our cousins stateside seem to have Breaking Baddest.

I ask again – where is the candidate who will say that the sickness we need to talk about is the ideology that has infected all of our institutions, our politics, our schools, our universities, our civil service, our judiciary – the whole damned lot? Where is the candidate who will concede that we need to start again with fresh alternatives to those institutions that are beyond fixing, terminal cases?

Here is what’s needed. Here is the truth as I see it: the truckers who rose in Canada … the farmers rising in the Netherlands and across Europe … the people of Sri Lanka casting out their president … all of those are simply real people, flesh and blood with real lives, livelihoods, families, hopes and dreams, a sense of their own dignity and sovereignty.

Power belongs with the people, with us. What is wrong – and what more and more people are understanding is wrong – is control imposed upon people by corrupt institutions that long ago seized control of the creation of money.

The beginning and end of all that’s wrong now depends upon the people, the real people, regaining that control. This means remembering that governments exist to do what we tell them, not the other way around. We need a government that understands as much and that furthermore takes back control of money. Not the fantasy money banks create from nowhere and that doesn’t exist, anyway, until we pay it back with interest. I am talking about money that represents and is made real by its connection to the real wealth of the nation – its natural assets and, most of all, the creative potential of the people. Here in sovereign Britain that might be hundreds of trillions of pounds of debt-free money, unsullied by bankers’ hands.

What we’re being told and shown now … we’ve seen and heard it all before – delivered by better actors and dancers. Surely it’s time for the unalloyed truth – no fiction and no pretense. The honest truth delivered from the heart by someone real who properly cares about the people. Surely there are better songs to sing. (link)

Jul 16 2022

WWIII is not Worth Supporting Ukraine in a Land Grab


Armstrong Economics Blog/War Re-Posted Jul 16, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The West is determined to invade Russia and they believe that they can destroy it despite the fact that they are no longer a communist nation or a threat. That does not seem to matter for they want war because Russia and China will not surrender their sovereignty to the United Nations under this Great Reset all for Climate Change & the WEF.

Indeed, many practical Western military strategists are starting to agree that Henry Kissinger’s advice must be taken and that peace negotiations should begin – NOW. There is a growing number of military strategists that realize that Russia and Belarus along with China and North Korea will all join to defeat the West and NATO which they see as the greatest threat now to humanity.

The West needs war because it can no longer maintain this Marxist socialism system borrowing endlessly with no intention to repay anything  back. This is coming to an end. Our computer has warned 40 years ago that the target for the collapse of socialism was due in 2023. Communism fell in 1989 and now it is our turn in 2023. Marx’s theories will be remembered throughout history. I find it interesting that it is forbidden even in the Ten Commandments warning that this idea of rob from one class to hand to another has never worked. We must now pay the price for this theory. When it was first imposed, over 200 million people died resisting communism in Russia and China. It is ironic that now we are the Marxism trying to impose our will upon Russia and China. What goes around, comes around.

Russia has been unable to use its air power because NATO is providing Ukraine with all the tactical information needed so they only need to turn on their radar minutes before launching and as such Russia cannot destroy those systems which have been supplanted by NATO. Either Russia takes out the AWACs providing that information which then is an act against NATO. The West thinks it is very clever in this arrangement but they really have entered the war and it is just a matter of time that this escalates out of control.

The danger here is that the West is pushing Russia into a very dangerous position. Russia can terminate the entire supply of arms to Ukraine by destroying dams that also form key bridges over the Dnepr. However, they can score a complete defeat of Ukraine by launching several dozen tactical nuclear weapons. What will NATO do then? These clever tactics of NATO being in the war but pretending they are not is a very risky game.

It is not likely that the West will ever take the advice of Kissinger and apply pressure to Kyiv to come to the table and face this unpleasant reality that they must relinquish their claim to territory occupied by Russians who they absolutely hate.

Jul 16 2022

THE COLLAPSE IS HERE & THE FARMERS ARE FIGHTING BACK


The Dive With Jackson Hinkle  Published originally on Rumble on July 15, 2022

Jul 16 2022

From Saudi Arabia Joe Biden Pledges to Keep Pushing Green New Deal, “I am Going to Use Every Power I Have”


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 15, 2022 | Sundance

During his press conference from Saudi Arabia, the installed occupant of the White House was asked about the possibility that congress will not pass the $500 billion spending proposal to continue the radical transformation of the American energy sector. [Transcript]

Q On the issue of climate, Joe Manchin obviously made significant news right now, which appears to be torpedoing what was one of your biggest priorities as it relates to energy and to climate back at home. Your message to those Americans right now who are looking for that relief that would have a wide impact as it affects the climate and energy specifically?

Joe Biden: “I am not going away. I’m going to use every power I have as President to continue to fulfill my pledge to move toward dealing with global warming.”  Thank you very much.” [link]

Put another way, “you will eventually eat the bugs.”

As previously noted, regardless of how much chaos, crisis and hardship they create, the collective western government leaders are not going to stop pushing their Build Back Better climate change agenda.  These are committed ideologues.  They are united in their objective and not a single politician is willing to see the catastrophic damage they are creating.

We the citizens of the ‘western democracies’ are in an abusive relationship with our own governments’.  The yellow vests in France, the MAGA movement in the U.S., the Australian labor unions, the Canadian Truckers and now the Dutch farmers are the unstable tremors for global political shifts.

They all followed the same pandemic spending instructions from the World Economic Forum, and western leaders have shown absolutely no desire to pull back and listen to the people as they move forward with their Build Back Better energy programs. Quite the opposite is happening.

Collectively those same leaders are charging head strong into their Build Back Better agenda, regardless of what that does to the global economy.

The collective sanctions placed against Russia are being used as a shield for the inflation created by their energy policy.   Everyone is feeling the supply-side inflation from Europe to the United States.  Additionally, their “climate change’ agenda and energy policies are creating economic turmoil, and now food insecurity

Their energy programs are creating massive global inflation.  That inflation is building up frustration like a pressure cooker.   People are growing increasingly desperate, and now the absence of food stability, a direct result of their collective attack on oil, coal and natural gas, could seriously change things.  They are standing atop a powder keg they call “the great reset.”

The looming shortage of food could be the pressure point that fractures the tectonic political plates.

Jul 15 2022

Draghi Out – The Dominos Fall


Armstrong Economics Blog/Italy Re-Posted Jul 15, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi announced his resignation on Thursday after he fell out of favor with the Five Star Movement. Similar to Boris Johnson, once your own people turn their backs on you, it is time to bow out. “I want to announce that this evening I will present my resignation to the President of the Republic,” Draghi said to the pleasure of many. “Today’s votes in Parliament are very significant from a political point of view. The majority of national unity that has supported this government since its creation is no longer there.”

The people are tired of surging prices, a lowered cost of living, and a tyrant policy toward COVID. Five Star’s leader Giuseppe Conte said, “I have a strong fear that September will be a time when families will face the choice of paying their electricity bill or buying food.” Draghi has been destroying Europe for nearly a decade in various roles. He went from failed European Central Bank Commissioner to the prime minister of Italy in 2021. He was quick to state early in his term that the unvaccinated were not part of Italian society and blamed all of the nation’s woes on the unvaccinated.

I know people who worked on trading desks years ago with Mario Draghi before he was head of the ECB, and even then he was incompetent. His policy of perpetual low to negative interest rates was a barbaric ancient theory based on the assumption that if you make it insanely cheap to borrow, people will run out and buy everything. Despite his policy failing, he kept it going and accumulated the bulk of European sovereign debt. The ECB made its first rate hike in December 2015, as our models predicted.

I summed it up in 2017: “To make this as plain as possible, the ECB is the largest individual creditor of the euro countries, and is thus a bank that is undermined completely by the poor creditworthiness of the debtors. If the ECB were to apply its own rules to the banks in Europe that say bail-in, not bail-out, then by its own supervision rules, the ECB is insolvent and should be shut down.”

Draghi is responsible for putting Europe on a path from which there is no escape. I noted that Draghi had no way out, and now he has personally upset his own people. He steps down the same week that the euro broke parity. The people are finally seeing that this man is a danger to all of Europe, but unfortunately, the damage has already been done.

Jul 15 2022

Freedom Convoy Organizer Tamara Lich’s Bail Revoked 


Armstrong Economics Blog/Canada Re-Posted Jul 14, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Tamara Lich was one of the Canadian Freedom Convoy organizers. She made a cryptic video in February stating that the Canadian government hunting her down. Lich asked protestors to remain peaceful and said that she knew “this too shall pass.” It has not.

Lich remains jailed in Ottawa since defying the government by demanding an end to vaccine mandates. Justice of the peace Paul Harris recently revoked Lich’s bail by stating she violated the conditions of release by attending a gala in Toronto where she was presented with an award for her liberation efforts. “Ms. Lich is not prepared to follow court orders and is prepared to do whatever she feels like doing,” the judge stated. Her lawyer was present at the gala, but since she was photographed with another organizer, the Canadian government has deemed her a threat.

Tamara’s charges: mischief, counseling mischief, obstructing police, counseling to obstruct police, counseling intimidation, and intimidation by blocking and obstructing one or more highways. She has no prior record and did not commit any violent acts.

Tamara Lich is being held as a political prisoner for defying vaccine mandates and garnering more support from Canadians than Trudeau could ever hope to receive. Trudeau wants her to be an example for any dissenters, similar to how Biden is treating the January 6 suspects. Western nations are overtly arresting anyone who does not comply with their agenda and this type of situation has been normalized.

Jul 15 2022

Two More Gone, The Prime Minister of Estonia and the Prime Minister of Italy Tender Their Resignations


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 14, 2022 | sundance 

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigned.  Days later, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated. A few days passed and both the President and Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, resigned and fled the country.  Today, with their ruling governments in a state of turmoil, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi have both tendered their resignations.

The collapse of each of these national leaders is not necessarily connected; however, the global political system is reverberating with tremors directly connected to the post-pandemic economic turmoil.  It would be naïve not to see these governing issues as consequences.  The legitimacy of the governing class is slipping; perhaps it would be fair to say, some have ‘lost’ their legitimacy altogether.

Estonia is part of the EU and a member of NATO:

HELSINKI — Estonia’s president on Thursday asked Prime Minister Kaja Kallas to form a new government after she tendered the resignation of her one-party minority Cabinet, ending a more than month-long political stalemate in the Baltic nation.

President Alar Karis said in a tweet after meeting with Kallas that “I signed the resignation request of Prime Minister @kajakallas but also asked her to form a new government which could start working quickly and deal with all important issues of Estonian life.”

Estonia’s government crisis culminated in early June as Kallas, leader of the ruling center-right Reform Party, kicked out the left-leaning Center Party from the two-party coalition. The parties had substantial differences over spending and welfare policies amid increasing Estonian household costs because of high inflation. (more)

Italy is a member of the G7, a part of the EU and a member of NATO:

ROME — Italian Premier Mario Draghi offered to step down Thursday after a populist coalition partner refused to vote for a key bill in Parliament, but the nation’s president quickly rebuffed him, leaving one of Western Europe’s main leaders at the helm for now.

The rejection of the tendered resignation left in limbo the future of Draghi’s 17-month-old government, officially known as a national unity coalition, but with its survival sorely tested by increasingly sharp divergences within the coalition.

Draghi’s broad coalition government — which includes parties from the right, the left, the center and the populist 5-Star Movement — was designed to help Italy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. (read more)

The parliamentary coalitions are fracturing.  New alliances are being formed.  One recent example that stunned everyone in the EU was the far-right and far-left in the French parliament joining forces to defeat the coalition government of Emmanuel Macron as he tried, and failed, to extend emergency COVID rules.

FRANCE – It was the first bill in the new legislature, and the Assemblée Nationale has already embarrassed the government. On Tuesday night, the Assemblée rejected one of the key articles in the bill on Covid-19 aimed at extending certain measures for the fight against the pandemic.

During the debate, the coalition backing President Emmanuel Macron was outvoted several times by parts of the left-wing Nouvelle Union Populaire, Ecologique et Sociale (NUPES), the right-wing Les Républicains (LR) and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN). But the government, represented by Health Minister François Braun, adopted what was left of the bill at 1:45 am, which the help LR votes and Socialist abstentions. (more)

The COVID rules in France are set to expire on July 31st. The first parliamentary goal for President Macron was to extend the COVID emergency and keep his powers.  However, the legislative effort was rejected by 219 votes to 195, destroying the goals of Macron.  Both populist groups joined forces to defeat the Macron coalition.

Yes, amid all of the economic damage created by western leaders and their Build Back Better efforts, the geopolitical world is having spasms as the rulers are being rejected by the ruled.

In the parliamentary systems, the voices of the angry people are rising up. Those shouts are entering the halls of government through the direct representatives closest to the people.  The ruling coalitions are no longer able to hold together as the people demand change.   That is the connective tissue behind these resignations and departures.

Western government leaders like Joe Biden, Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron, Boris Johnson and Jacinda Ardern have the audacity to stand atop a two-year mountain of unilateral fiats, rules, regulations and mandates and then decry “autocracy” and threats to the “global order.”    All of them have destroyed their own legitimacy by pretending to represent western democracy while carrying out two years of totalitarian power.

As the AP tried to spin it:

[…] “A poll conducted last year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that just 16% of Americans say democracy is working well or extremely well. Another 38% said it’s working only somewhat well.

Other surveys reveal how many people in the United States now doubt the media, politicians, science and even each other.

The distrust has gone so deep that even groups that seem ideologically aligned are questioning each others’ motives and intentions. (more)

We the citizens of the ‘western democracies’ are in an abusive relationship with our own governments’.  The yellow vests in France, the MAGA movement in the U.S., the Australian labor unions, the Canadian Truckers and now the Dutch farmers are the precursor tremors for seismic political shifts.

They all followed the same instructions from the World Economic Forum, and western leaders have shown absolutely no desire to pull back and listen to the people.  Quite the opposite is happening.

Collectively those same leaders are charging head strong into their Build Back Better agenda, regardless of what that does to the global economy.  The collective sanctions placed against Russia are being felt as increased inflation by the citizens of Europe and the United States.  Their “climate change’ agenda and energy policies are creating economic turmoil and now food insecurity

Inflation pressure has built up like a pressure cooker.   People are growing increasingly desperate, and now the absence of food stability will change things.

The looming shortage of food could be the pressure point that fractures the tectonic political plates.

Jul 15 2022

Producer Price Index Hits Peak 11.3 Percent Inflation Driven by Biden Energy Policy – Service Prices Now Indicate Recession


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on July 14, 2022 | sundance

The “Producer Price Index” (PPI) is essentially the tracking of wholesale prices at three stages: Origination (commodity), Intermediate (processing), and then Final (to wholesale). Today, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released June price data [Available Here] showing another 11.3% increase year-over-year in Final Demand products at the wholesale level.

Overall, the wholesale inflation rate is being driven by energy prices.  The June calculation shows exactly that problem with energy prices embedded in goods driving 10% of the price increase.  However, there is some good news in the short-term for July and August, as the intermediate and raw material costs are leveling off temporarily.  Unfortunately, that raw material price plateau is almost certainly the result of a drop in demand.

CTH has modified Table-A and Table-B to take out the noise.

The June inflation rate for final demand goods (2.4%) is driven mostly by higher energy prices (10%).  Energy costs are passed along through every stage of the supply chain contributing to an overall wholesale price increase of 2.4% in June, 11.3% year-over-year.

Notice the slight drop in final demand services; that is important.  What we are seeing is a contraction in the service economy overall, as the service sector -which includes restaurants- cannot pass along the scale of energy price increase to customers. People are changing their spending habits – service demand overall is dropping.

Additionally, the producer price index gathers data from inside the supply chain, backwards from the final stage (wholesale) into the intermediate stage (various processing) and also raw material prices.   Here is where things are getting interesting, and now I can make some direct forward predictions.

I modified Table-B so you can see how the supply chain for goods is responding to both: (A) energy prices, and (B) consumer spending.  You can click on the graphic to expand the image and spend some time on it if needed.

You can see from the left side of modified Table-B that both levels of intermediate goods were heavily impacted by energy prices.  “Intermediate” processed goods rising 2.3% in June, 22.2% year-over-year.  Intermediate unprocessed goods (raw materials) rose 9.5% in June, 58.0% year-over-year.

However, if you subtract the massive June energy costs, you will note the intermediate price of nonfood processed goods significantly dropped to 0.2% in June.  And if you subtract the energy costs, you will notice the raw material prices for nonfood durable goods actually declined 2.2% in June.

Here’s what is going on…

The inflationary impact of Joe Biden’s Green New Deal energy program is running into the inability of consumers to pay for the price increases it creates.  That is what is causing the demand side drops in retail economic activity on Main Street.  We all know this.

As a result of these high prices, there is less internal demand within the supply chain for both goods and services.  Inventories are climbing and the demand for raw materials to produce durable goods is now declining.  Subtract the energy costs and nonfood prices are dropping. The decline is a raw material demand outcome.

June energy prices were extremely high.  That’s driving the current PPI price outcome at all stages; but behind that issue is low manufacturing activity.

Remember, two months ago we said food prices would plateau in July and August.  This PPI report shows the entry into that plateau.  However, there is a problem on the horizon that is not measured in this data.

The high energy costs to farmers (fertilizer, diesel, oil, energy, etc.), a cost already seeded (forgive the pun) is right now in the fields…. waiting…. sitting somewhat dormant and ignored by the statisticians… but that higher origination price is growing and lurking….

When the farming harvests take place, those higher field costs will enter the supply chain again and end up finding their way, via wholesalers and supermarkets, to your fork.  Big Ag is going to maximize this opportunity.

Farmers will not be the ones benefitting.

♦ For the next two months the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index will show inflation stability and possibly even price declines.

Those reports will come out in August (for July) and September (for August) and will give the impression that inflation has moderated, and the Fed has been successful.  However, in/around Sept and October the harvest cost will hit the stores.  At that point, energy prices -already high- will take a backseat to the rate of inflation driven by massive increases in food prices.

Oct, Nov and December, all the way through the winter, will be painful at the grocery stores and supermarkets.   Also, restaurants this fall and winter, are going to get hit hard as their suppliers start to deliver food at much higher prices.  Those people in the food service industry need to prepare now for what is looming.

Everything I just described above is happening at the same time as consumer demand for durable goods and non-essential services is dropping.  The current economic activity on Main Street is tepid at best.  Housing values have peaked along with rents.

Every element of the U.S. economy is now entering a phase where success or failure in a Main Street business is directly connected to the customer being able to afford the product or service.

Two-thirds of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is driven by consumer spending.  Our borders are open, our wages are flat, our prices are high, our discretionary spending is contracting.  Our manufacturing and service driven economy will contract, and we are two months away from food stability, prices, affordability and potentially scarcity, being the primary focus of everyone.

FUBAR

Prepare your affairs accordingly.

Jul 14 2022

70% of 10-Year-Olds Cannot Read After Lockdowns


Armstrong Economics Blog/Corruption Re-Posted Jul 14, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

Children suffered the worst long-term consequences of the lockdowns. “The State of Global Learning Poverty: 2022 Update,” found that an alarming 70% of middle and lower-class 10-year-olds across the globe cannot read. There is no greater freedom than knowledge, and reading comprehension is essential to our modern-day existence. “Only the richer segments of the population—those with broadband connectivity, access to devices for the use of each family member, a place to study, availability of books and learning material, and a conducive home environment, among other conditions—were able to maintain a reasonable level of education engagement,” the study cited. We are now in the midst of an education crisis where children have fallen perhaps too far behind to catch up with their peers.

Latin America, the Caribbean, and South Asia saw the most notable declines in learning as schools there completely closed and many did not have access to online education. Sadly, many of the organizations that pushed for the lockdowns and school closures, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, would like to step in to help re-educate these children. They will try to reshape an entire generation of vulnerable children as they see fit. “Fighting this learning crisis is the challenge of our times if we do not want to lose this generation of children and youth,” the report said.

“COVID-19 has devastated learning around the world, dramatically increasing the number of children living in Learning Poverty,” said Jaime Saavedra, Global Director for Education at the World Bank. “With 7 in 10 of today’s 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries now unable to read a simple text, political leaders and society must swiftly move to recover this generation’s future by ensuring learning recovery strategies and investments.” They are calling this phenomenon “learning poverty,” but the issue was not based on class. This drastic decline in reading comprehension is a direct result of lockdowns and school closures.

The report tries to claim that “learning poverty” was prevalent before the lockdown, but there is no denying that allowing children to miss 273 days of school in certain areas of the world caused this problem. The report says learning poverty violates children’s right to education, but the lockdowns and tyrannical crackdown on a largely unlethal virus harmed ALL children across the globe.

So now, children risk losing $21 trillion in lifetime earnings, equivalent to 17% of global GDP. Our model has been targeting 2030 for many years as a major turning point. Unsurprisingly, this report claims that if we follow the guidance of the same agencies who forced school closures, we can attain a newly indoctrinated, I mean educated, population by 2030.

Jul 13 2022

World Bank: The Poor Will Suffer From Carbon Taxes


Armstrong Economics Blog/Energy Re-Posted Jul 13, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

The World Economic Forum is praising Denmark for implementing the world’s strictest carbon tax laws. Companies will soon be forced to pay $159 for every tonne of CO2 emitted, marking an additional $53 per tonne. The government claims this will cut CO2 levels by 3.7 million tonnes in just one year.

“This incentivizes companies to clean up for themselves,” the WEF reported. In the midst of an extreme energy crisis, punishing energy suppliers will undoubtedly backfire. These costs will be passed along to the already struggling consumer. Even the World Bank admitted that the poor will suffer from the carbon tax.

The World Bank stated on its blog:

“There are good reasons why governments may not want to use carbon taxes, and one of them relates to their welfare impacts. For example, a carbon tax on fossil fuels is often regressive in its impact- hurting poorer people relatively more than richer ones. Even when it might be progressive, poorer people still suffer a welfare loss when prices rise, making their consumption basket more expensive.”

Furthermore, they admitted that the carbon tax “aims to restructure economies by raising the cost of a critical resource – the juice that makes it run.” Precisely. We NEED fossil fuels right now, there is no other viable alternative available to provide energy to the world. Since nations have succumbed to the climate change agenda, they have lost their energy-independent status. Europe shot itself in the foot by eliminating any diplomatic relations with their number one supplier of gas for a country that they did not acknowledge prior to February 2022.

Other nations with the ability will drill and sell oil to those under WEF leadership at a premium. India is already buying Russian oil at a discount, refining it, and selling it to the US for a premium. This is more than just bad business as it is a clear attempt to cut off a “critical resource” to “restructure economies” as seen fit by the WEF.