Sunday, May 8, 2022

"18 Signs That Food Shortages Will Get A Lot Worse As We Head Into The Second Half Of 2022"

"18 Signs That Food Shortages Will Get A Lot 
Worse As We Head Into The Second Half Of 2022"
by Michael Snyder

"If you think that things are bad now, just wait until we get into the second half of this year. Global food supplies have already gotten very tight, but it is the food that won’t be produced during this current growing season in the northern hemisphere that will be the real problem. Worldwide fertilizer prices have doubled or tripled, the war in Ukraine has greatly reduced exports from one of the key breadbaskets of the world, a nightmarish bird flu pandemic is wiping out millions of chickens and turkeys, and bizarre weather patterns are absolutely hammering agricultural production all over the planet. I have often used the phrase “a perfect storm” to describe what we are facing, but even that phrase really doesn’t seem to do justice to the crisis that we will be dealing with in the months ahead. The following are 18 signs that food shortages will get a lot worse as we head into the second half of 2022…

#1 The largest fertilizer company on the entire planet is publicly warning that severe supply disruptions “could last well beyond 2022”… "The world’s largest fertilizer company warned supply disruptions could extend into 2023. A bulk of the world’s supply has been taken offline due to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. This has sparked soaring prices and shortages of crop nutrients in top growing areas worldwide; an early indication of a global food crisis could be in the beginning innings.

Bloomberg reports Canada-based Nutrien Ltd.’s CEO Ken Seitz told investors on Tuesday during a conference call that he expects to increase potash production following supply disruptions in Russia and Ukraine (both major fertilizer suppliers). Seitz expects disruptions “could last well beyond 2022.”

#2 The world fertilizer price index has skyrocketed to absurd heights that have never been seen before.

#3 It is being reported that global grain reserves have dropped to “extremely low” levels… “Global grains stocks remain extremely low, an issue that has become amplified because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We think it will take at least 2-3 years to replenish global grains stocks,” Illinois-based CF Industries Holdings Inc.’s president and chief executive officer Tony Will said in a statement in Wednesday’s earnings report."

#4 Due to the war, agricultural exports from Ukraine have been completely paralyzed…"Nearly 25 million tons of grains are stuck in Ukraine and unable to leave the country due to infrastructure challenges and blocked Black Sea ports including Mariupol, a U.N. food agency official said on Friday. The blockages are seen as a factor behind high food prices which hit a record high in March in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, before easing slightly in April, the FAO said on Friday.

#5 The out-of-stock rate for baby formula in the United States has now reached 40 percent…"The out-of-stock rate for baby formula hovered between 2% and 8% in the first half of 2021, but began rising sharply last July. Between November 2021 and early April 2022, the out-of-stock rate jumped to 31%, data from Datasembly showed.

That rate increased another 9 percentage points in just three weeks in April, and now stands at 40%, the statistics show. In six states - Iowa, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Texas and Tennessee - more than half of baby formula was completely sold out during the week starting April 24, Datasembly said.

#6 In six U.S. states, the out-of-stock rate for baby formula has actually risen to 50 percent or greater.

#7 Searches for the phrase “how to make homemade formula for babies” on Google have spiked 120 percent.

#8 We are being told that this is a “perfect storm” as shelves become increasingly bare at food banks all around the nation.

#9 In Canada, more than 1.7 million chickens and turkeys have already been lost in recent months due to the global bird flu pandemic.

#10 In the United States, more than 37 million chickens and turkeys have already been wiped out due to the global bird flu pandemic.

#11 The two largest reservoirs in California, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, have both fallen to “critically low levels”.

#12 Some communities in southern California won’t be able to make it through the coming summer months without “significantly cutting back” on their water usage.

#13 Many of the largest lakes around the world are currently in the process of disappearing because they are rapidly drying up.

#14 Wildfires continue to absolutely devastate agricultural land all across the western half of the United States. This weekend, it was New Mexico’s turn to be hit the hardest…"After a few days of calm that allowed some families who had fled wildfires raging in northeast New Mexico to return to their homes, dangerous winds picked up again Sunday, threatening to spread spot fires and complicate work for firefighters. More than 1,500 firefighters were on the fire lines at the biggest blaze east and northeast of Santa Fe, which grew another 8 square miles (20 square kilometers) overnight to an area more than twice as large as the city of Philadelphia."

#15 We are being told that steak prices in the United States will “keep rising” in the days ahead.

#16 Due to hail and frost, the Spanish apricot crop is going to be way below expectations…"In Spain, the latest forecasts suggest production will not reach 60,000 tons, compared with 110,000 tons in 2019 and 100,000 tons in 2020 and 90,000 tons in 2021. In Murcia, where around two-thirds of Spain’s apricot production is located, farmers in the Mula River and northwest regions have been forced to write off the entire season following a severe hailstorm on Monday which not only resulted in the loss of the fruit, but also caused widespread damage to trees.

#17 Overall, Spanish fruit production is expected to drop to the lowest level in 40 years.

#18 Kansas Senator Roger Marshall is openly warning that a horrifying worldwide famine is coming…"The war in Ukraine will lead to a worldwide famine in the next two years, warned Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Ky.), who serves on the Senate Agriculture Committee, warned on Tuesday. “You know I’m a big agriculture guy. Twelve, 15 percent of the agriculture products – corn and wheat, sunflower oil - come through that Black Sea, so - and fertilizers come from that area as well, so there actually is going to be a famine one to two years from now. I think two years from now will be even worse,” he told Fox Business’s “Mornings with Maria Bartiromo” on Tuesday."

The alarm bells are ringing. Are you listening? In all of the years that I have been writing, I have never seen anything even close to this, and this crisis is only going to intensify as the months roll along."

Must Watch! "Summer from Hell is Coming... Get Ready!"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/28/22:
"Summer from Hell is Coming... Get Ready!"
"They just gave an ominous warning to the West...
Load up on food and supplies while the gettings good."

"The Stock Market Is Crashing: 1,000 Point Wipeout Marks The Beginning Of A Major Financial Nightmare"

Full screen recommended.
"The Stock Market Is Crashing: 1,000 Point Wipeout 
Marks The Beginning Of A Major Financial Nightmare"
by Epic Economist

"The U.S. Stock Market Crash is accelerating at a breathtaking speed – and a 1,000-point flash wipeout indicates that the beginning of a historic financial nightmare is already here. Is this “the Big One”? Wall Street is asking. Last week, the stock market has faced extensive losses, and investors are worried about what will happen when markets open this week, as fears of a massive drag down in the S&P 500 continue to rise.

On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve might have started to realize that it made a colossal policy mistake over the past decade. As its benchmark interest rate rose by 50 basis points to help fight soaring inflation, Wall Street investors went into full panic mode. The largest single-day stock market crash ever recorded occurred on Thursday, at a time when stock prices had already fallen quite dramatically. On Thursday, all the major indexes faced a brutal shock.

Days before the flash crash, stocks were melting up – an expression used to describe the moment when indexes are trending lower but some bubble stocks are still being propped higher as speculators anticipate further losses. On Wednesday, all the indexes recorded strong gains - only to lose all of them and some more over the next trading session. “If you go up 3% and then you give up half a percent the next day, that’s pretty normal stuff. But having the kind of day we had [on Wednesday], and then seeing it 100% reversed within half a day is just truly extraordinary,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of trading and derivatives at the Schwab Center for Financial Research.

The trigger that prompted investors to rush for the exits was the simple realization that the Fed will not back down from its tightening plan. Worse, they're noticing that corporate CEOs don’t know what to do to hide the slower pace of growth and flatlining earnings. Given the extraordinary amount of leverage in the market right now, rapid declines can set off wave after wave of forced selling. In fact, if we take a look at the latest trends, this appears to be already taking place to a certain degree. And when stocks reach this point, there’s no turning back. It will certainly not take a lot of effort for this “market slide” to evolve into a “market avalanche”.

According to Bank of America’s chief investment strategist, Michael Hartnett, we’re at the beginning of a bear market that will extend well into October, with the S&P at 3,000. The expert compiled some useful information. Over the past 140 years, we witnessed 9 bear markets, with average price declines of 37.3%. The average duration of those declines was of 289 days. Even though past performance is not always a guide to future performance, “if it were, today's bear market would extend until October 19th, with the S&P 500 at 3,000, Nasdaq at 10,000,” he wrote.

His gloomy predictions don’t stop right there. The strategist argues that the carnage is going to pick up speed as inflation hits 10% and growth nears zero. For a long time, stock prices were able to defy economic reality. Many of these bubbles certainly defied gravity. But now they’re deflating, and as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate all around us, the party seems to be almost over. Trillions of dollars are gone, but Wall Street is still failing to realize that what we have been through so far is just a warm-up act. The clock is ticking, and what happened on Thursday should be a major wake-up call for all of us to prepare for what’s coming next."

"My Escape From California; Recession Unstoppable; Economic Apocalypse; Financial Nightmare Begins"

Jeremiah Babe, 5/8/22:
Full screen recommended.
"My Escape From California; Recession Unstoppable;
 Economic Apocalypse; Financial Nightmare Begins"

"No Matter What Weird Language Biden Prefers, Today Is Still Mothers' Day"

"No Matter What Weird Language Biden Prefers, 
Today Is Still Mothers' Day"
by Laramie Seven

"The word "mother" is being erased by the federal government, in accordance with the executive order that President Biden signed on his first day in office on January 20, 2021. Along with other sexed words (father, brother, husband, wife, daughter, son), the edict "Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation" is leading to the elimination of traditional terminology.

The proliferating bastardization of the language would be laughable if it weren't so insulting:

• Birthing parents
• Childbearing people
• Gestational carriers
• Bodies with vaginas
• Menstruators
• Postnatal people
• People with a uterus

The Ministry of Truth (AKA the new Disinformation Governance Board that has been created under the Department of Homeland Security) no doubt will be helping us all get used to the new usage. As George Orwell observed, "if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."

At Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, the Wokerati have started instructing students on the care and treatment of pregnant males, and future midwives are being trained to be able to catheterize a penis during "labor."

I'm not a biologist, but I did pay sufficient attention in high school to know that a uterus and cervix are required equipment for giving birth. I also understand biology sufficiently to know that it is not possible for any mammal to change sex. Sex is not just the obvious features such as genitalia; sex is embodied in every cell of the body and plays a part in every aspect of health and wellness. Sex is determined at conception and remains static until death.

The advocates of so-called "inclusive" language claim that their goal is to be kind to everyone. The object of avoiding the word "mother" is to be sensitive to those who are biologically female but do not wish to be referred to with sex-specific terminology. One on one, this can be accommodated. But when messages intended for everyone are modified to avoid basic words like mother, what happens to everyone else?

The goal of communication cannot be to eliminate all possibility of offense. Trying to include everyone with overly broad terms can lead to ambiguity and even alienation. Phraseology such as "bodies with vaginas" and "people with a uterus" offensively reduce mothers to a series of body parts. Consider the woman who adopts a baby and struggles heroically to breastfeed; she is not a "birthing parent," yet she deserves to be respected as a "mother" in all other ways.

If the goal is to be kind to everyone, then it is essential to use language that anyone can readily understand."
Laramie Seven is a mother, grandmother, 
mother-in-law, wife, sister, and daughter.

Musical Interlude: Michael Jackson, "Earth Song"

Full screen recommended.
Michael Jackson, "Earth Song" 
An absolutely extraordinary, live performance...
Full screen recommended.

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These are galaxies of the Hercules Cluster, an archipelago of island universes a mere 500 million light-years away. Also known as Abell 2151, this cluster is loaded with gas and dust rich, star-forming spiral galaxies but has relatively few elliptical galaxies, which lack gas and dust and the associated newborn stars. The colors in this remarkably deep composite image clearly show the star forming galaxies with a blue tint and galaxies with older stellar populations with a yellowish cast.
The sharp picture spans about 3/4 degree across the cluster center, corresponding to over 6 million light-years at the cluster's estimated distance. Diffraction spikes around brighter foreground stars in our own Milky Way galaxy are produced by the imaging telescope's mirror support vanes. In the cosmic vista many galaxies seem to be colliding or merging while others seem distorted - clear evidence that cluster galaxies commonly interact. In fact, the Hercules Cluster itself may be seen as the result of ongoing mergers of smaller galaxy clusters and is thought to be similar to young galaxy clusters in the much more distant, early Universe.”

Chet Raymo, “A Sense Of Place”

“A Sense Of Place”
by Chet Raymo

“It would be hard to find two writers more different than Eudora Welty and Edward Abbey. Welty was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of stories and novels who lived all her life in Jackson, Mississippi, in the house in which she was born, the beloved spinster aunt of American letters. Abbey was a hard-drinking, butt-kicking nature writer and conservationist best known for his books on the American Southwest. Both writers are favorites of mine. Both were great champions of place. I always wondered what it would have been like if they got together. As far as I know, that never happened. But let’s imagine a conversation. I have taken extracts from Welty’s essay “Some Notes on River Country” (1944) and from Abbey’s essay “The Great American Desert (1977) and interleaved them.

“This little chain of lost towns between Vicksburg and Natchez.”

“This desert, all deserts, any deserts.”

“On the shady stream banks hang lady’s eardrops, fruits and flowers dangling pale jade. The passionflower puts its tendrils where it can, its strange flowers of lilac rays with their little white towers shining out, or its fruit, the maypop, hanging.”

“Oily growths like the poison ivy – oh yes, indeed – that flourish in sinister profusion on the dank walls above the quicksand down those corridors of gloom and labyrinthine monotony that men call canyons.”

“All creepers with trumpets and panicles of scarlet and yellow cling to the treetops. There is a vine that grows to great heights, with heart-shaped leaves as big and soft as summer hats.”

“Everything in the desert either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. You will find the flora here as venomous, hooked, barbed, thorny, prickly, needled, saw-toothed, hairy, stickered, mean, bitter, sharp, wiry and fierce as the animals.”

“Too pretty for any harsh fate, with its great mossy trees and old camellias.”

“Something about the desert inclines all living things to harshness and acerbity.”

“The clatter of hoofs and the bellow of boats have gone. The Old Natchez Trace has sunk out of use. The river has gone away and left the landings. But life does not forsake any place.”

“In the Sonoran Desert, Phoenix will get you if the sun, snakes, bugs, and arthropods don’t. In the Mojave Desert, it’s Las Vegas. Up north in the Great Basin Desert, your heart will break, seeing the strip mines open up and the power plants rise…”
 
“The Negro Baptist church, weathered black with a snow-white door, has red hens in the yard. The old galleried stores are boarded up. The missing houses were burned – they were empty, and the little row of Negro inhabitants have carried them off for firewood.”

“…the highway builders, land developers, weapons testers, power producers, clear cutters, oil drillers, dam beavers, subdividers.”

“Eventually you see people, of course. Women have little errands, and the old men play checkers at a table in the front of the one open store. And the people’s faces are good.”

“Californicating.”

“To go there, you start west from Port Gibson. Postmen would arrive here blowing their horns like Gabriel, after riding three hundred wilderness miles from Tennessee.”

“Why go into the desert? Really, why do it? That sun, roaring at you all day long. The fetid, tepid, vapid little water holes full of cannibal beetles, spotted toads, horsehair worms, liver flukes. Why go there?”

“I have felt many times there is a sense of place as powerful as if it were visible and walking and could touch me. A place that ever was lived in is like a fire that never goes out. Sometimes it gives out glory, sometimes its little light must be sought out to be seen.”

“Why the desert, when you could be camping by a stream of pure Rocky Mountain spring water. We have centipedes, millipedes, tarantulas, black widows, brown recluses, Gila monsters, the deadly poisonous coral snakes, and the giant hairy desert scorpions. Plus an immense variety of near-infinite number of ants, midges, gnats, bloodsucking flies, and blood-guzzling mosquitoes.”

“Much beauty has gone, many little things of life. To light up the night there are no mansions, no celebrations. Wild birds fly now at the level where people on boat deck once were strolling and talking.”

“In the American Southwest, only the wilderness is worth saving.”

“There is a sense of place there, to keep life from being extinguished, like a cup of the hands to hold a flame.”

“A friend and I took a walk up beyond Coconino County, Arizona. I found an arrow sign, pointed to the north. Nothing of any unusual interest that I could see – only the familiar sun-blasted sandstone, a few scrubby clumps of blackbush and prickly pear, a few acres of nothing where only a lizard could graze. I studied the scene with care. But there was nothing out there. Nothing at all. Nothing but the desert. Nothing but the silent world.”

“Perhaps it is the sense of place that gives us the belief that passionate things, in some essence, endure.”

“In my case, it was love at first sight. The kind of love that makes a man selfish, possessive, irritable…”

“New life will be built upon these things.”

“…an unrequited and excessive love.”

“It is this.”

“That’s why.”

The Poet: Mary Oliver, "Coming Home"

"Coming Home"

"When we are driving in the dark,
on the long road to Provincetown,
when we are weary,
when the buildings and the scrub pines lose their familiar look,
I imagine us rising from the speeding car.
I imagine us seeing everything from another place-
the top of one of the pale dunes, or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea.
And what we see is a world that cannot cherish us,
but which we cherish.
And what we see is our life moving like that
along the dark edges of everything,
headlights sweeping the blackness,
believing in a thousand fragile and unprovable things.
Looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow streets, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me."

- Mary Oliver

"If You Look..."

"We have got some very big problems confronting us and let us not make any mistake about it, human history in the future is fraught with tragedy. It's only through people making a stand against that tragedy and being doggedly optimistic that we are going to win through. If you look at the plight of the human race it could well tip you into despair, so you have to be very strong."
- Robert James Brown

"That '70s Show (Rerun)"


"That '70s Show (Rerun)"
Soaring inflation, plummeting markets, oil shortages 
and tone-deaf politicos...all over again!
by Joel Bowman

Buenos Aires, Argentina - "Oh Lordy! What a week!  Captain Powell’s big crash landing... hemorrhaging stock markets... plummeting worker productivity... falling real wages... soaring inflation... and the highest court in the land, leaking like a barbed-wire canoe...Never mind all that, dear reader...

Remember, that time when a distant war, between two foreign adversaries, led to a major oil embargo... when the US economy was “shocked” by a series of bone-headed governmental policies... when America bucked the international monetary system... when inflation was biting hard at home... and when abortion was the kitchen table discussion dividing families across the land?

Younger readers, for whom “way back when” refers to the rollicking, pre-pandemic glory days of the 2010s, may be surprised to learn that there was in fact a precursor to our present day dilemmas. Older Wiser readers will recall, perhaps with a wince, a remarkable decade known as “The Seventies,” in which all of the above events unfolded, almost as a blueprint/harbinger for today.

Half a century has swept under the bridge since Richard Milhous Nixon severed the dollar’s last connective tissue with gold. Said the president to a nation in strife during a special televised address, “We must protect the position of the American dollar as a pillar of monetary stability around the world.” And that, with a straight face! Misty-eyed nostalgics can relive the historical moment through the magic of the Interwebs, right here...
Ostensibly scrapped so as to liberate the greenback from the greedy claws of “international currency speculators,” the end of the Bretton Woods system, in effect, untethered the US dollar from “hard asset” reality, turning it instead into a kind of floating abstraction, a plaything for politicians. Over the course of the ensuing decade, the once-mighty greenback declined by a third. Depending on which figures you use (official, unofficial, anecdotal) the dollar has lost something in the order of 90% of its purchasing power since that fateful T.V. address. (The Visual Capitalist has some nifty charts depicting the ravages of inflation over the past half-century.)

Measured against gold, the dollar has likewise wilted like a windsock on a breathless night. The Midas Metal notched an average close of $40.80 for the year of Our Lord 1971. Even after this past month’s healthy decline (roughly -3%), gold has multiplied 47 times in dollar terms since Nixon slammed the exchange window shut. “Pillar of monetary stability” indeed!

But the decade that American novelist Tom Wolfe referred to as the “Me Decade” (what would he say about today’s iGeneration?!) was only just getting going. So, too, were the prefigurations to our present day maladies...

The Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights saw most of the action in what became known as the Yom Kippur War (also the Ramadan War, the October War, the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, etcetera). What was at once a local, territorial conflict in a place most Americans could not locate on a map soon ballooned (one is thankful not to use the word “mushroomed”) into a kind of post-Vietnam proxy war for the world’s two nuclear-armed superpowers.

Unfriendly Blowback: One consequence of the war, which brought the conflict home to roost for an otherwise distracted public, was the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Domestic (American) production had been in steady decline since 1969, with supply unable to keep pace with growing demand from new vehicles. The U.S was already importing almost a million barrels per day when the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), led by Saudi Arabia, announced it would no longer supply “unfriendly nations.”

Prices rose 300% (from US$3 per barrel to $US12 per barrel) between October 1973 and March 1974, when the embargo ended. The subsequent recession, which lasted 16 months, ushered in an era of double-digit inflation such as America had not seen in a generation (going all the way back to WWII). High prices stuck to the economy like beetroot on a bedsheet and would smother any hope of a recovery for the rest of the dismal decade.

Perhaps all this is beginning to sound eerily familiar? A foreign war drawing in nuclear powers... retaliation in the form of energy embargos for “unfriendly nations”... a bifurcation of the global monetary system (see A Golden Ruble) persistently high inflation (CPI currently boiling over at 8.5%)... a contracting economy (GDP was MINUS 1.4% for Q1, 2022) politicians speaking out the side of their mouths... if they can string a coherent sentence together at all...and now this week’s revelation that confidence in America’s bedrock institutions is eroding faster than you can say “Watergate” three times fast...

Long has the executive branch of the US government been populated by clowns and knaves. One might argue over the name of the last true statesman to occupy the Oval Office, but he is almost certainly not to be found among the quick. (Which only barely discounts the current resident.)

Similarly has the legislative branch been recognized as the rat’s nest of duplicity, corruption, empty posturing and, failing all else, incompetence that it is. A far cry from what Madison, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson et al. envisioned, Congress has degenerated into the kind of institution that gives the term “ineptocracy” its very meaning.

Blind Justice: But now, further testing Shakespeare’s famous words, that “past is prologue,” we witness a crack in the edifice of what may well be the final vestige of American institutional exceptionalism: A leak from the Supreme Court. (There have been whispers before, yes... but as Politico, the outlet that broke the story, observed: “No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.”)

Whatever one’s political persuasion, however grave the matter under consideration, time-honored understanding was that one did not talk out of school when it came to the proceedings of the duly venerated SCOTUS. As Lady Justitia be blind, so shall her clerks be mute while she deliberates on the laws of the land. Characterized by a collegiate respect for differing opinions, and robust debate between them, the judicial branch was always the place where respect for the institution itself was held above partisan differences, lest trust in the foundation upon which the republic itself rests be shaken.

So as that most weighty of subjects, the balance between life and liberty, once again descends upon the nation’s shoulders, as it did a half a century ago, one is left to wonder: Without trust in its great institutions to guide it through tumultuous times, on what will the Founder’s bold experiment rely to carry the day?

Ah, but all is not lost, dear reader. After enduring all manner of nonsensical, nutcase nomenclature over the past few years – see “birthing people,” “chestfeeders,” “gestational parents” and even “cervix owners” – at least the subject of pregnancy has finally been returned to the highly-cancelable, long-forgotten, near-anachronistic domain of (millennial trigger warning here)...women!

Whatever you do, just don’t tell this poor bloke...
And that’ll do for this week’s Sunday Sesh, dear reader. As always, drop any comments in the section below and please feel free to share this post with your mates. Other than that, keep an eye out for your Fatal Conceits podcast, which we’ll be mailing (with a full transcript) separately.

Bill will be back with his regular missives from tomorrow. In the meantime, we’re off to treat wifey to a Mother’s Day lunch at La Ferneteria with dear daughter and afterwards to the Museo Nacional Belles Artes for a spot of culture. Until next time...Cheers."

Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/8/22: "Markets, A Look Ahead"

Your guide...
Gregory Mannarino, PM 5/8/22:
"Markets, A Look Ahead"

The Daily "Near You?"

 
Jefferson City, Missouri, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What A Struggle Life Is..."

Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.
- Woody Allen

"The Russian Timeline Critique In The Ukraine"

"The Russian Timeline Critique In The Ukraine"
by Larry Johnson

"A common theme marshaled to “prove” that Russia is failing in its war with Ukraine is that Russia failed to quickly take Kiev and, in fact, was forced to retreat from Kiev. In addition, the military analysts that populate the cable news channels in the United States insist that the Russians are bogged down and not making the rapid progress they (the Russians) expected.

This is nonsense. I defy anyone to show me one statement by Putin or the Russian General Staff where a specific timeline was established or identified. This is a construct of western military analysts who do not have access to Russia’s military plan and are projecting their own wishful thinking as “evidence” of a flailing Russian military. But it is not only western military analysts sounding the Debbie downer dirge. A blogger popular with many Russia watchers, Strelkov, also is pushing the narrative that Russia is bogged down in the Donbas. More about Stelkov in a moment.

I find it amusing that retired American Generals and Colonels who populate Fox, CNN, MSNBC and Newsmax are busy critiquing tactics they themselves have never carried out. The last time the United States was on a battlefield fighting an organized military with potent air power, artillery and tanks was in Korea. Most of these guys (e.g., General Keane) were in diapers or in elementary school. None of them were on that battlefield.

The United States’ war experience since 1960 has been against third world armies that did not have a modern air force and significant armor capabilities. The closest we have come to fighting a real army was the North Vietnamese. But the North Vietnamese relied more on human waves in combating the U.S. military and the United States had withdrawn its combat units from Vietnam with the North Vietnamese swept south and defeated the South Vietnamese. (I want to add that American troops in Vietnam, for the most part, fought bravely despite a military and political leadership that betrayed their sacrifice. It is not un-American to ask the question – what did they die for?)

Russia is not playing the United States’ game. When George W. Bush launched “shock and awe” in Iraq in March of 2003, the media briefings and images from the frontlines played an important role in convincing the American public that our multi-billion dollar military was moving like a devil’s scythe through the Iraqi forces. It was only after Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech that Americans had to come to grips with the fact that we did not control Iraq and that a viable insurgency existed.

So what is my point? The Russian military leadership and Vladimir Putin are not spending time feeding reporters with daily briefs of body counts of Ukrainian fighters or showing drone footage of Russians wiping out Ukrainian entrenched positions.

Americans indulge the delusion that we have a free, vibrant press. Yet, military analysts like Scott Ritter and Doug MacGregor are rarely invited to appear on any cable broadcast to offer a dissenting view on the narrative being force fed to the gullible, ignorant public. I will repeat a point I made early on in the Russian campaign regarding the 40 mile Russian column that lurked for more than a week north of Kiev. U.S. analysts insisted this was evidence of Russian incompetence in keeping these tanks and trucks supplied with fuel. Yet, during the entire time this big fat Russia target sat exposed, the mighty Ukrainian military failed to launch any significant attack designed to destroy that column.

This is not a minor point. No Ukrainian air assets (fixed or rotary wing) attacked the column. No Ukrainian artillery units shelled the exposed Russian tanks and trucks. And no Ukrainian tank units attacked the supposedly stalled Russians. Why? Because Ukraine had no capability to carry out such strikes.

What was Russia doing? Ritter, MacGregor and Martyanov, among others (including yours truly) saw this as a feint designed to pin down Ukrainian forces around Kiev that were dug in while Russia prepped to focus on the Donbas and the southern littoral of Ukraine.

Which brings me back to Mr. Strelkov, who writes: "It has been a week of only the tiniest gains. Furthermore, the gains have come in the wrong area. Mostly the gains have been to the north of Seversky Donets river. Meanwhile, the Izyum bridgehead to the south of the river from which the thrust is supposed to develop has been static (contained)..."

These are facts apparent to anyone so the new copium is that Russia is supposedly killing 500 Ukrainians every day. Except there is no way that Russians would have access to this information, and if you believe that Rybar Telegram actually has access to Ukrainian documents you belong in a mental institution.

It’s the good ole Vietnam strategy I guess. When you can’t show any actual real progress on the ground resort to made-up body counts. Body counts don’t win wars, and besides Ukraine can replace its losses. Russia can not. Any men Ukraine losses will be replaced. Those lost by Russia will mostly not be.

Mr. Strelkov is assuming that Russia’s goal is to quickly conquer the Donbas without regard to casualties of Russian troops. Putin is not Stalin. Stalin did not hesitate to send literally millions of his troops to slaughter in order to stop the Germans. Putin and his Generals are moving much more methodically and cautiously. The Russians are relying on artillery and air strikes to soften up Ukrainian defensive positions. And this is paying dividends. Ukrainian troops are surrendering in significant numbers, especially those who were recently put into service and are not affiliated with the neo-Nazi mercenary forces.

I am particularly puzzled by Strelkov’s claim that, “Ukraine can replace its losses.” Mr. Strelkov cannot be this stupid. Pressing 60 year old Ukrainian men into service is not evidence of a robust military response. It smacks, instead, of Hitlerian desperation. In the final days of the Third Reich Hitler scoured Berlin for old men and young boys to man positions no longer defended by the German regular forces. Ukraine’s Zelensky has embarked on a similar strategy even before the “special operation” began: "Ukraine’s Land Forces announced on Wednesday that it was calling up members of its operational reserves, effective immediately. Reservists between 18 and 60 years of age are being mobilized for a year..."

Russia is not sitting on its haunches licking its wounds. Rather than send troops against fortified positions, Russia continues to hit targets throughout Ukraine with precision missiles. Here is the activity reported on May 4:

• Russia attacked railway substation in Pyatihatki with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked railway substation in Tymkove with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked railway substation in Volovets with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked railway substation in Lviv with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked railway substation in Pidbirtsi with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked military assets of the AFU near Protopopovka with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked military assets of the AFU near Novaya Dmitrovka with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked military assets of the AFU near Sandjeika with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked military assets of the AFU near Krysino with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked military assets of the AFU near Volnyansk with a high-precision missile;
• Russia attacked military assets of the AFU near Novoalexandrovka with a high-precision missile.

I know for a fact that U.S. military commanders were hoping two weeks ago that Russia had exhausted its stock of precision missiles. Hope is not a good strategy. The Russians apparently did not get that memo (and Ukrainian sources have confirmed these strikes). Further evidence that Russia is opting for the “reach out and touch someone” strategy comes from a video shot tonight (May 4) of a bombardment of Mykolaev aka Nikolaev:
Full screen recommended.
If you think that enduring this kind of shelling is inconsequential then you have no appreciation of the limits of human endurance to such a sustained barrage.

I am not suggesting that the Russians are not encountering fierce resistance by some Ukrainian units. But I am offering an alternative explanation for Russia’s ground strategy. They are under no deadline. They are not going to send their military units into head on assaults and risk unnecessary casualties. And they are going to bomb Ukrainian units relentlessly until they surrender or are destroyed. Time is on Putin’s side.

The biggest failure of western military analysts is to take into account the fact that Ukraine’s economy has been gutted. Ukraine is shut off from imports/exports in the south and dependent on what Europe and the U.S. can send them overland. Fuel supplies in Ukraine are becoming more scarce, not more abundant. Given these realities, can Ukraine feed its people? That will be a critical factor in the coming days."

"Megalopolis x Russia: Total War"

"Megalopolis x Russia: Total War"
by Pepe Escobar

Excerpt: "After careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”.

"But it’s our fate / To have no place to rest, / As suffering mortals / Blindly fall and vanish / From one hour / To the next, / Like water falling / From cliff to cliff, downward / For years to uncertainty." - Holderlin, "Hyperion’s Fate Song"

Operation Z is the first salvo of a titanic struggle: three decades after the fall of the USSR, and 77 years after the end of WWII, after careful evaluation, the Kremlin is rearranging the geopolitical chessboard to end the unipolar hegemony of the “indispensable nation”. No wonder the Empire of Lies has gone completely berserk, obsessed in completely expelling Russia from the West-centric system.

The U.S. and its NATO puppies cannot possibly come to grips with their perplexity when faced with a staggering loss: no more entitlement allowing exclusive geopolitical use of force to perpetuate “our values”. No more Full Spectrum Dominance.

The micro-picture is also clear. The U.S. Deep State is milking to Kingdom Come its planned Ukraine gambit to cloak a strategic attack on Russia. The “secret” was to force Moscow into an intra-Slav war in Ukraine to break Nord Stream 2 – and thus German reliance on Russian natural resources. That ends – at least for the foreseeable future – the prospect of a Bismarckian Russo-German connection that would ultimately cause the U.S. to lose control of the Eurasian landmass from the English Channel to the Pacific to an emerging China-Russia-Germany pact.

The American strategic gambit, so far, has worked wonders. But the battle is far from over. Psycho neo-con/neoliberalcon silos inside the Deep State consider Russia such a serious threat to the “rules-based international order” that they are ready to risk if not incur a “limited” nuclear war out of their gambit. What’s at stake is nothing less than the loss of Ruling the World by the Anglo-Saxons."
Please  view this complete, highly recommended article here:

"The West – A Vicious Cycle Of Self-Destruction"

"The West – A Vicious Cycle Of Self-Destruction"
by Egon von Greyerz

“The first panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permeant ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.” - Ernest Hemingway

"As the West is standing on the edge of the precipice, there are only unpalatable outcomes. At best the world is facing a hyperinflationary depression later followed by deflationary depression. But sadly there is today much more at stake as the West is frenetically escalating the sound of war drums against Russia’s invasion in Ukraine.

The West Has No Desire For Peace: As the global economy reaches the point of collapse, countries get the leaders they deserve. There is today no leader or statesman in the West who can stand up to Putin in order to negotiate peace. Biden sadly neither has the vigor, nor the ability to play any significant role in solving the conflict. Also, he has the neocons pressurizing him to attack and defeat Russia. And Biden’s rhetoric against Putin is certainly not conducive to peace, with words like war criminal and genocide. Biden mustn’t forget that just in the Vietnam war, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong are estimated to have lost one million soldiers and two million civilians. Unprovoked wars are of course always senseless whoever starts them.

Technically the US did not start a war against Russia. But Russia will of course argue that the US backed 2014 Maidan revolution, ousting the elected President Yanukovych, was a direct threat against Russia. The 1988 NATO map below and the likely one today, if Finland and Sweden join, is clearly a very uncomfortable situation for Russia.
President Zelensky is doing all he can to involve the rest of the world militarily by demanding more money and more weapons from the West, rather than putting his efforts into peace negotiations. Ukraine can of course never win the war against Russia alone. And dragging in the US and NATO can only lead to a war of incalculable consequences and potentially a WWIII which could be nuclear.

And in the West, not a single leader is making a serious peace attempt. From Biden to Johnson, Macron and Scholz, we only hear talk of more weapons and more money for Ukraine. This is terribly tragic and a sign of totally incompetent leadership in the West. Trump had many weaknesses, but he would not have hesitated to initiate peace talks with Putin.

Weak European Leaders: So the US and the West has no ability or desire to achieve peace. And Boris Johnson has welcomed the war as a diversion from his domestic “Partygate” political pressures and therefore has taken an aggressive position against Russia rather than finding a peaceful solution.

Macron is an opportunist who stands with one foot in each camp by being chummy with Putin and at the same time condemning him.

And Scholz, the German chancellor is in an impossible position caused by Merkel’s poor management of Germany’s energy position. The three remaining German nuclear power stations will be closed down and fossil fuels are politically unacceptable. Nearly 60% of German gas imports come from Russia. German industry would not survive without Russian gas. So Scholz wants to have his cake and eat it, sanctioning Russia on the one hand and simultaneously spending billions of Euros buying their energy and other natural resources including food.

Quite a precarious position for Germany to be totally dependent economically on its war enemy. At the same time, this is good for the world as Germany has a vested interest to achieve peace.

But we must remember that only a minority of countries are backing the actions of the US and Europe. Africa, South America, most of Asia are not taking sides and continuing to trade with Russia and these regions represent around 85% of world population. So the vast majority of the world has no desire for war with Russia but their voice is seldom heard in the Western dominated media.

As Western leaders continue their war mongering, we must remind ourselves of Winston Churchill’s words: “Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”
- Winston Churchill

So Messrs Biden, Johnson, Scholz and Macron should take note that they could soon, in the words of Churchill, be “the slaves of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events”.

Russia is clearly determined to take back what they consider historically belongs to them, which is the Donbas region in the east and southern Ukraine, including Odessa, which gives them full access to the Black Sea. Being totally surrounded by NATO countries, especially if Finland and Sweden join, is clearly another “irritation” for Russia but since these countries have never been part of the Russian empire, it has less significance.

End Of A Monetary Era & A New One Emerging: Politics and money cannot be separated and the geopolitical situation that has now arisen will act as a perfect catalyst to the end of the monetary era since the creation of the Fed in 1913. But what we must remember is that it is primarily the Western controlled monetary system (including Japan) which will come to an end.

America’s and the EU’s final desperate attempt to save their broken system by sanctions on world trade will eventually fail as the Western economies gradually decay in an economic and social breakdown brought about by a quagmire of currency collapse, deficits, debts and history’s most epic of asset bubbles.

The Phoenix emerging will clearly be the East, led by China with Russia as an important partner. China is, population wise, the biggest country in the world and will soon be the biggest country in GDP terms. With total US assistance in the form of know-how and technology China has built up a strategic and advanced manufacturing base with dominance in many sectors. For example, 18% of all US imports come from China including 35% of all computers and electronics. Chinese sellers represent 40% of all top brands on Amazon and 75% of all new sellers.

The US and the rest of the world criticize Germany for being dependent on Russian energy, but the US folly of shifting much of its manufacturing to China certainly qualifies for joint first prize in commercial and strategic idiocy. Since gold is the ultimate money and the only money that has survived in history, it will have a very important role in coming years as the fiat currency system collapses.

The West’s Vicious Cycle Of Self-Destruction: Empires normally suffer a drawn-out and painful death. The fall of the US and the West has certainly been long, starting over half a century ago. But the fake prosperity has benefitted a small elite and lumbered the masses with colossal debts.

In 1971, US debt was $1.7 trillion and 50 years later it is $90 trillion, a mere 53x increase. As the finale of the debt and currency collapse approaches, the desperation rises exponentially. Consequently, increasing amounts of money need to be created and wars initiated to justify the debt explosion, all in a vicious cycle of self-destruction. For over half a century, the US has destroyed its currency and initiated unprovoked military actions in numerous countries – virtually all of them unsuccessful.

Yes, the US has certainly experienced a temporary false prosperity. But that could only be achieved with deficits, debt and printing fake money. The massive cost of the failed Vietnam war led to Nixon closing the gold window in 1971. As Nixon said at the time, “the strength of the currency is based on the strength of the economy”!

Hmmm, half a century later that currency has lost 98% in real terms (GOLD) and the Federal Debt has grown 75 fold from $400 billion to $30 trillion. It took 22 years , from 1971 to 1993 for the debt to expand by $15 trillion. Just in the last 2 years the debt is up by the same amount of $15 trillion.
It is amazing, as Hemingway said, how quickly “political and economic opportunists” can destroy both the economy and the currency.

So there we have it. The US dollar is a totally failed currency reflecting the bankrupt state of the US economy. As I have pointed out numerous times, the US has increased the federal debt every year since 1930, with the exception of four single years. As most currencies have been linked to the dollar since WWII, either through Bretton Woods or through the petrodollar, they have all been dragged down into the swamp with the dollar.

Having started my working life a couple of years before the ominous date of 15 August 1971 (closing of the gold window) I have had the best seat to observe the collapse of a currency system and the sad but inevitable occurrence of war. Intellectually it is a fascinating experience to watch incompetent and desperate leaders who have totally failed to manage both their economy and currency. But even without a world war, the effects of the collapse of the West will have devastating effects on humanity for a very long time.

The current fake monetary system based on $300 trillion of global debt, plus worthless paper assets in the form of derivatives to the extent of around $2 quadrillion, will over coming years collapse under its own worthless weight. Future observers and historians will write many books on a system of smoke and mirrors with fake money, fake paper and grossly overvalued assets, all creating the most colossal asset bubble in history.

Obviously China and Russia will be the kernel of the future world economy with the combination of the globally dominant manufacturing base of China and the world’s greatest natural resource reserves of Russia amounting to a massive $75 trillion."

"Mother's Day, 2022"

"How It Really Is"

 

As the song says, "You ain't seen nothin' yet"...
Oh, we will...

“Zelensky Is Trapped”

“Zelensky Is Trapped”
"Gonzalo Lira on the three forces in control of Ukraine’s “acting president”: the oligarchs who own him, the Nazis who will kill him if he doesn’t toe their line, and the State Department/CIA."

Saturday, May 7, 2022

"WW3 Update: The Next 48 Hours are Crucial"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 5/7/22:
"WW3 Update: The Next 48 Hours are Crucial"
“Bloodlust – the disease that makes us the monsters we are 
known to be; it is what wipes away the last of our humanity.” 
- Daniele Lanzarotta