"Hoarding Sweeps Across America, Sparks Food Shortages & Sharp Price Hikes As Supply Chains Collapse"

Full screen recommended.

"Hoarding Sweeps Across America, Sparks Food 

Shortages & Sharp Price Hikes As Supply Chains Collapse"

by Epic Economist

"The United States is facing a series of social problems that are commonly seen in developing countries. Shortages of food, empty shelves in grocery stores, and painful inflation are some of these issues. Over the past months, consumers have started to document through photos and videos the shortages they've been witnessing. On social media, it's possible to find hundreds of clips showing empty shelves all across the nation, as shortages of food and daily necessities, such as toilet papers, intensify. On Twitter, one shopper revealed: "I've never seen empty shelves like this in my lifetime," he posted with a picture of rows of cleared-out shelves.

Recently, the hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe shot to the top of the trending topics on Twitter as consumers complained about the President's inability to tackle the supply chain crisis and meteoric price hikes. The media has been shifting the blame to a myriad of disruptions related to the health crisis. And although supply chain bottlenecks can be partially attributed to those disruptions, there is rarely any mention that behind this devastating crisis is the inability of the US to deal with it. Actually, it is the very inability to solve these snags that makes America look like a developing country.

The situation is getting so much attention lately that many people from all over the world are wondering why the world's sole superpower can't even keep its stores stocked. And shoppers are afraid that conditions may worsen in the coming weeks, that's why millions of them have started panic-buying again. Worried Americans are now emptying supermarket shelves at record speed as the supply chain crisis threatens to ruin the all-important holiday shopping season. People have been hoarding everything you can imagine, from canned goods to boxed items, fresh produce, and even making a run on milk when it’s available in grocery stores, according to Bloomberg.

However, this fast surge in demand fueled by fear is occurring amid the worst moment of the California port crisis, and it's only aggravating the problem. Two of the biggest container ports in the country are facing a gigantic cargo backlog. Right now, the logjam in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach is leading ships to wait as long as 17 days - a new scary record as we move closer to Black Friday. The almost 17-day wait is double the wait time from just two months ago. In fact, since the new administration vowed to fix the problem, the supply chain crisis has only gotten worse, according to experts from the industry. And consumers are realizing the same, that's precisely the reason why they've started to hoard supplies one more time, the experts say.

One of them, who preferred to remain in anonymity, has said that in his store, he is seeing people 'massively hoarding' over the past few weeks, consumers are particularly going for frozen food and other shelf-stable items. He also exposed that because the panic buying has been depleting his store's inventory, he's been forced to push prices up. The store owner added that he's also panic buying and hoarding supplies whenever he can. His goal is to keep about four to six months of inventory on hand to fight higher prices and meet the growing demand.

According to Dill Pickle Food general manager I’Talia McCarthy, "panic buying is the cause of many of the out-of-stock situations that grocers are experiencing,” she wrote in an email to store owners earlier this month. Other industry challenges include a persistent poultry shortage that’s hitting both supermarkets and fast-food chains. That shortage has been exacerbated by labor shortages at processing plants and a recent crop of underperforming roosters. Just this month, prices at the grocery went up by 4.5 percent compared to the same period a year ago, according to the most recent Consumer Price Index, released last week, and there’s no sign of slowing for this upward trend.

The relentless rise in food prices is already impacting millions of families across the country. Grocery bills have been rising much faster than people's wages, and millions of families are experiencing severe food insecurity. It seems that this is going to be an exceedingly painful Christmas for millions upon millions of US families. Even though our nation is abundant in wealth and resources, those in positions of power don't seem to know what they're doing. And we're the ones paying the price for the mess they've caused. Unfortunately, things aren't going to get any easier in the months ahead. That's why we always stress that you should get ready while you can. The truth is that this is just the beginning of a much deeper crisis that will persist for decades."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​

Gregory Mannarino, "Situation Hyper-Critical: A Shocking Admission And A Warning From The Federal Reserve"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 11/15/21:

"Situation Hyper-Critical: A Shocking Admission 

And A Warning From The Federal Reserve"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

"The Old Tablecloth Trick"

by Jeff Thomas

"Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest. Therefore, if a tablecloth is spread out on a table and an object, such as the fishbowl above, is placed on that tablecloth, the fishbowl will tend to "want" to remain right where it is. If the tablecloth were to be yanked away quickly, the fishbowl would move very little. Inertia, having been overcome by the tablecloth, would then be overcome, but the fishbowl, already at rest, would tend to remain right where it had been before – on the table.

And the same is true of human nature. If a government or an economic system collapses, the populace will experience an immediate shock of change, but their tendency will be to adapt as quickly as possible to maintain their previous situation as much as can be accomplished.

Has the government collapsed? Create a new one, possibly on similar principles as the previous one (hopefully with revisions made, to prevent the next government from making the same self-destructive mistakes a second time.)

Has the economy collapsed? Throw together whatever new form of economy works best until a more solid one can be created. This could mean relying temporarily on barter, but might mean the establishment of a safer form of currency, such as precious metals. And, again, when a new currency is introduced, revisions might be made as to who controls it, in order to assure that the same mistake is not repeated.

But, these are natural calamities that happen from time to time in civilization and, as long as the people dealing with the re-establishment of the government or economy are motivated in the direction of the benefit of the populace, there’s every chance that a solution will be created that would be implemented quickly, might minimize damage and, hopefully, be better than the last version. After all, if left to their own devices, people will come up with whatever system serves them well.

But, of course, we rarely witness the above scenario with regard to governments and economies. What we do see playing out, time after time, in one era or another, in one geographical location or another, is something quite different. Historically, what we’ve seen is that government performs the political and/or economic equivalent of pulling the tablecloth away slowly. And, of course, anyone who’s familiar with the old tablecloth trick understands what will happen. The fishbowl ends up smashed on the floor and the fish are left gasping for their last breaths.

This latter fact illustrates vividly why no one should ever pull away the tablecloth slowly. And yet, in generation after generation, humankind is repeatedly suckered into a situation in which their government does exactly that.

The way it works is that the government first says, "It’s too troublesome for you to run your own lives; leave it to us and we’ll look after you. We’ll take care of all those pesky details of life that are nuisances for you now."

First, they take control of "protection" in the form of a military, to protect the populace from threats from without and, later, create a police force to protect the populace from threats from within. Then, clearly, the people need a central fire service. They also need roads and community buildings. And, of course, these all cost money, so taxes are implemented. Then they are raised, as the costs of such services inevitably increase over time.

Then, an increasingly expansive list of other services is put forward – assistance for the poor, retirement funds, universal health benefits, etc. Soon, it becomes "necessary" to increase taxes to pay for the ever-expanding list of services the government controls. Throughout this process, the populace nods as each new "benefit" is introduced. And, since the process is gradual, they almost invariably fail to worry that the tablecloth is in motion and that their fishbowl is closer to the edge of the table than it was before.

But, in the meantime, the political leaders are continuing to pull the tablecloth and are aware that the fishbowl is nearing the edge. At this point, if they were responsible people, they’d say, "Oh-oh, we’ve been a bit too greedy and we’ve put you folks in danger. But, at this point, it won’t do any good for us to tax you less and cut out the services that have been promised to you. At this point, we need to stop pulling entirely."

And, of course, were they to do that, two things would occur. First, the populace would be up in arms at their entitlements being cut off. Second, the political leaders would be out of a job. With no more services to provide, taxation would cease to have validation. The political leaders would be in far greater danger from a cessation of movement than the people themselves.

What to do? Well, most of us, as we become adults, recognize that, in order to live, we must become productive. That’s what turns us into responsible people. But, remember, political leaders never learn this lesson. They go straight from being parasitical as children to being parasitical as adults. When the jig is up and the fishbowl is nearing the edge, they act the way they’ve always acted – as parasites. Only now, they realise that it’s all about to end very soon. Therefore, it’s time to get a last squeeze of the lemon before it goes dry.

At that point, they ramp up the economy through the creation of debt. They also increase taxation dramatically, with the claim that benefits must be increased. They then do their best to get themselves out of the way as the last pull of the tablecloth sends the fishbowl over the edge.

This, of course, is why it’s so overwhelmingly common for political leaders to take a hike just as their economies and/or governments are collapsing. Regardless of the era, regardless of the geographical locale, whether the leader be Kaiser Wilhelm II, the Shah of Iran, Fulgencio Batista or Idi Amin, those who caused the problem tend to have a well-funded exit plan in place and are rarely themselves trapped in the fishbowl.

Since this has been the nature of governments throughout history, we’d be wise to observe the situation objectively when assessing the country in which we live, and, we’d be wise to concurrently assess how things are going in other countries. If our home country is literally getting close to the edge, we might wish to make a move before the inevitable occurs.

 

Historically, in any era, there are always some countries that are getting near the edge and others that are not. Unfortunately, there's little any individual can practically do to change the course of these trends in motion. The best you can and should do is to stay informed so that you can protect yourself in the best way possible. The choice for anyone whose situation is reaching its expiry date might wish to vote with his feet, rather than to await the final pull of the tablecloth."

- internationalman.com

Musical Interlude: Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

Two Steps From Hell, "Downstream"

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The Struggle of Life...

“So, how do you beat the odds when it’s one against a billion? You’re just outnumbered. You stand strong, keep pushing yourself against all rational limits, and never give up. But the truth of the matter is, despite how hard you try and fight to stay in control, when it’s all said and done, sometimes you’re just outnumbered.”

- “Meredith”, “Gray’s Anatomy”

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“In the movie “The Lion in Winter”, when the sons, in the dungeon, think they hear Henry coming down the stairs to kill them:

Richard: ”He’s here! He’ll get no satisfaction out of us! Don’t let him see you beg! Take it like a man!”

Geoffrey: “You fool! As if the way one falls down matters!”

Richard: ”Well, when the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal.”

"A Look to the Heavens"

“What strange world is this? Earth. In the foreground of the featured image are the Pinnacles, unusual rock spires in Nambung National Park in Western Australia. Made of ancient sea shells (limestone), how these human-sized picturesque spires formed remains unknown. In the background, just past the end of the central Pinnacle, is a bright crescent Moon. The eerie glow around the Moon is mostly zodiacal light, sunlight reflected by dust grains orbiting between the planets in the Solar System. 

Click image for larger size.

Arching across the top is the central band of our Milky Way Galaxy. Many famous stars and nebulas are also visible in the background night sky. The featured 29-panel panorama was taken and composed in 2015 September after detailed planning that involved the Moon, the rock spires, and their corresponding shadows. Even so, the strong zodiacal light was a pleasant surprise.”

- https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap201011.html

Chet Raymo, “As Time Goes By”

“As Time Goes By”

by Chet Raymo

“Is time something that is defined by the ticking of a cosmic clock, God’s wristwatch say? Time doesn’t exist except for the current tick. The past is irretrievably gone. The future does not yet exist. Consciousness is awareness of a moment. Or is time a dimension like space? We move through time as we move through space. The past is still there; we’re just not there anymore. The future exists; we’ll get there. We experience time as we experience space, say, by looking out the window of a moving train. Or is time…

Physicists and philosophers have been debating these questions since the pre-Socratics. Plato. Newton. Einstein. Most recently, Lee Smolin. Without resolution. What makes the question so difficult, it seems to me, is that time is inextricably tied up with consciousness. We won’t understand time until we understand consciousness, and vice versa. So far, consciousness is a mystery, in spite of books with titles like “Consciousness Explained”. Will consciousness be explained? Can consciousness be explained? If so, will it require a conceptual breakthrough of revolutionary proportions? Or is the Darwinian/material paradigm enough? Are we in for an insight, or for a surprise?

As I sit here at my desk under the hill, looking out at a vast panorama of earth, sea and sky, filled, it would seem, infinitely full of detail, so full that my awareness can only skim the surface, I have that uneasy sense that it’s going to be damnably difficult to extract consciousness, as a thing, from the universe in its totality. I think of that word “entanglement,” from quantum theory, and I wonder to what extent consciousness is entangled, perhaps even with past and future.

Who knows? Perhaps consciousness, or what I think of as my consciousness, is just a slice of cosmic consciousness, in the same way that the present is a slice of cosmic time. As a good Ockhamist, I am loathe to needlessly multiply hypotheses. But time will tell. Or consciousness will tell. Or something.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

The Poet: Mary Oliver, “Can You Imagine?”

“Can You Imagine?”

“For example, what the trees do

not only in lightning storms

or the watery dark of a summer’s night

or under the white nets of winter

but now, and now, and now – whenever

we’re not looking. Surely you can’t imagine

they don’t dance, from the root up, wishing

to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting

a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly

more shade – surely you can’t imagine they just

stand there loving every

minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings

of the years slowly and without a sound

thickening, and nothing different unless the wind,

and then only in its own mood, comes

to visit, surely you can’t imagine

patience, and happiness, like that.”

- Mary Oliver, “Long Life”

"Who Will Answer?"

"Who Will Answer?"

by Jim Kunstler

"Why on earth would any American with a functioning brain believe what he /she /they is being told by the public health officialdom, the politicians, or the news media? For two years, they have lied to you about everything relating to the Covid-19 virus, including where it came from, how it was developed, who sponsored its development, how the vaccines happened to come onstage thirty seconds after the disease entered the scene, how well the vaccines worked, how safe the vaccines were, and whether there were other cheap and effective treatments for the disease.

So, here we are with nearly 200-million Americans fully vaccinated (and 230-million with at least one dose), plus 47-million overall officially registered cases of Covid illness (conferring immunity among the survivors), plus X-number people infected with no symptoms, or people who didn’t get tested when sick, or didn’t bother going to see a doctor or report to a hospital, plus X-number of people with natural immunity to Covid for one reason or another (maybe a high number, based on the Diamond Princess cruise ship ratio of a Pareto-type 80/20 distribution) - and now, in the fall of 2021, here comes another surge of Covid-19 among both the vaxxed and un-vaxxed.

Did all that vaxxing help? It apparently did nothing to prevent transmission of the disease. The vaxxed were spreading it as effectively as the unvaxxed, and the vaxxed were catching the disease as easily, too, though supposedly suffering not as badly as the unvaxxed (if you choose to believe the official press releases, and why would you believe them?). Then, along came the reports of “adverse reactions” to the vaccines, many of them quite grave - clots, strokes, infarctions, neurological havoc, organ failure. In mid-October this year, the VAERS registry had it at 17,000 deaths and 26,000 permanent disabilities, and the rule-of-thumb was that these represented only 10 percent of the actual number of adverse events because the VAERS website was so badly designed that it crashed half the time any doctor tried to use it… plus the doctors were being silenced and punished for voicing any distrust of the vaccines.

Then why the mad rush to vaccinate all the children in America? There have been next-to-zero covid deaths among children besides a few hundred with grave co-morbidities like cancer or cystic fibrosis - and the hospitals had a cash subsidy incentive from the federal government to list them as dying “with Covid.” Children are far more likely to suffer harm from the vaccines than from the Covid-19 disease. The child vax experiment is only just underway, and there are already enough cases of myocarditis and other disorders to be very concerned. The medical establishment has no idea what the long-term effects on children might be, in particular on their reproductive systems, since the chief active ingredient in the vaccines, the spike protein, has a proclivity for the sexual organs. It happens, too, by the way, that mothers who got vaxxed in early 2021 are just now giving birth to babies with myocarditis and other signature disorders of adverse mRNA vaccine reactions. Keep your eye on that sub-plot of the story.

One wonders: is this child vax campaign an attempt to eliminate the last major control group in the population? (Or just to eliminate a big demographic chunk altogether?) Is it tied in some way to beating the release date for Pfizer’s “Comirnaty” vaccine - which would vacate the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) that protects the pharma companies from liability? Despite delirious propaganda from the likes of National Public Radio, the bad news is out, and the bad news is that the Covid vaccines for children are bad news. Parents ought to object to any official attempts to coerce them into vaxxing their kids, but will they? I’d guess that the reaction will be ferocious. Stand by on that.

Meanwhile, what would be an intelligent response to Covid-19 at this point? Well, how about letting it burn through the population as expeditiously as possible, along with an aggressive nationwide early treatment program using existing effective drugs such as ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, fluvoxamine, budesonide, monoclonal antibodies, for starters, along with vitamin D3, quercetin, zinc, selenium, N-acetyl L-cysteine (NAC)? That would minimize fatalities and confer superior natural immunity throughout the whole population.

Of course, one of the whopper lies you’re being told is that this early treatment protocol doesn’t work. Dozens of clinical studies in other countries and direct clinical experience in this country tell the opposite story: the early treatment protocols work remarkably well. The big question, eventually, will be: who might be held responsible in the public health and medical bureaucracies for militating against early treatment? Was it sheer epic incompetence, or something more malevolent?"

- https://kunstler.com/

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Related:

"VAERS: At Least 160,000 Americans Have 

Likely Died From Covid Vaccines"

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The title of this article reminded me of this totally unrelated song from 1968...

Ed Ames, "Who Will Answer?"

"That Was the Week That Was"

"That Was the Week That Was"

by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Our Doom Index gauge is now at 8… which is “Crash Alert” territory. On Friday, we all dutifully assembled for the ceremony…We pulled the old, tattered, black-and-blue crash flag out of storage, ran it up the pole, and saluted solemnly. Now, we’ll see what happens…

Crash Alert (Again): Here are the details on the latest Doom Index reading from our research department: We created the Doom Index to sound the alarm ahead of the next crisis. It tracks 12 key indicators to detect when there’s stress in the economy and markets are overheating. [For more information on how we calculate the Doom Index reading each quarter, have a look at our "Introducing the Doom Index" report.] The chart below shows our Doom Index levels by quarter. The red bars indicate a reading of 8 or higher. That’s when we raise our “crash alert” flag and tell investors it’s time to prepare for a market crash.

Crash Alert: We raised our “crash alert” flag at the end of Q2 2019, when the Doom Index hit 8. We stayed in the “Danger Zone” for the next four quarters. Economic conditions improved slightly in the second half of 2020, as evidenced by our Doom Index reading dropping to 7 for Q3 2020 and Q4 2020… before shooting back up to 8 – crash alert territory – in Q1 2021… and then dropping back to 7 in Q2 2021. Our recent Doom Index reading – based on the Q3 2021 data – is 8…So we’re raising our tattered “crash alert” flag once more…You’ve been warned, Dear Reader…

[For a full breakdown of the indicators we track for the Doom Index and their Q3 2021 readings, click here.]

Good News: And before plunging ahead into this week’s kookiness, let’s look back at what a marvelous time we had last week. When it comes to fraud and fantasy, we can’t remember a stretch of seven days so densely packed.

First, stocks hit another new all-time high… with the Dow trading above 36,400 and the Wilshire 5000 over 48,900… And a new record for the stocks-to-GDP ratio, too – over 200%.

Elon Musk ran a Twitter poll and determined to sell $7 billion of his own stock… which caused the company’s value to go down by as much as $235 billion… It was as if the entire annual GDP of Portugal had been erased.

Meanwhile, a potential Tesla competitor, Rivian (RIVN), went public. The company has hardly any sales. And it has no profits – in the very-competitive market for pickups, it probably never will. Still, that didn’t stop the gamblers. They acted as if the profits were already in the bag… and drove the share price up to about $130… giving the company a projected market value above $110 billion. That’s billion, with a b… which is a lot of money for a company that lost $2 billion from the beginning of 2020 through June 2021… and that produced fewer than 350 vehicles in September-October. (GM’s market cap is $92 billion… with more than 1.7 million vehicles sold so far in 2021.)

Crypto Record: Monday was a very busy day in FantasyLand, with the total value of the crypto market punching through the $3 trillion ceiling. But unlike Rivian, which might someday make a profit and pay a dividend, crypto is a whole new asset class. It is no industry. There is no product. No sales. No profits. No company picnics or swag. Like chips in a casino, cryptos provide a service, however. You can gamble with them… cash them in… spend them… share them with your friends. And who knows… They might become even more valuable.

Bad News: Not all the news was celebratory, however. Last week also brought us two big break-ups – GE and J&J. These are real companies, in the real world, selling real products to real buyers. We don’t know much about Johnson & Johnson… but we recall when GE was riding high. Its CEO then was Jack Welch, feted as perhaps the greatest businessman in America. Welch took the company from $74 billion in sales in 1980 to $224 billion in sales by the end of the century, and was named “Manager of the Century” in 1999.

Even then, we were suspicious. We’ve run a business, too. And in the late 1990s, when we learned that GE was buying new businesses at the rate of, on average, one a week, we knew it would not be long before the company started sliding down the slippery slope. It takes a lifetime to master even a single business. No matter how smart GE’s team was… there was no way it could make that work. And in the event, it didn’t. The many acquisitions increased GE’s debt and distracted its management. Sales fell. By last year, it was back (inflation adjusted) below where it had been 40 years before. And on Tuesday, GE announced that it was de-conglomerating itself into three different businesses. Sic transit gloria edisonia.

Really BIG News: But the week’s really big news was the inflation rate. The Federal Reserve had said inflation was transitory. But now… there it is… getting worse, month after month. And so, the Fed admitted that inflation might be with us for a while, but still insisted that the “factors” behind it are transitory: Inflation is elevated, largely reflecting factors that are expected to be transitory.

As for the rest of the White House, and The Washington Post… they decided to try to divert attention from the real cause (too much government spending… too much money-printing) onto “supply chain disruptions,” “price gouging,” and market “manipulations.” The White House, and several economists, even suggested that more infrastructure spending would boost output and thereby lower inflation rates.

Remarkable Pledge" And finally, there was the United Nations COP26 Climate Change Conference in Scotland… wherein executives, politicians, apparatchiks, busy bodies, and “green” lobbyists and hustlers – 503 of whom were linked to the oil industry – came together.

Yes, Dear Reader, the greenwash flowed like the Niagara. Old, withered businesses sent out glossy new leaves. Politicians turned the color of unripe bananas. And greasy roughnecks looked as though they had just gotten off the ferry after a rough ride! Everyone was the planet’s best friend… and all pledged to do their utmost to save it from the dreaded CO2.

And yes, they made the most remarkable pledge since Adolf Hitler promised to keep the Reich going for 1,000 years. They said they were going to change the world’s weather. Not “a wee bit,” as they might say in Glasgow, where COP26 was held. But precisely… to the fraction of a degree. The U.N. said it was looking for an upper limit on average temperature increase of 2.2 degrees Celsius. The International Energy Agency said it thought warming could be limited to 1.8 degrees. And they agreed to keep the upper limit of 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels “alive.”

New Week: And so now… with our Crash Alert flag proudly flying above the headquarters… and so much folderol behind us…we put our head down… venture into the new week… and prepare to laugh. Stay tuned."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

The Daily "Near You?"

Ellijay, Georgia, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"It’s Time to Make Big Changes - The US Dollar is Plummeting"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly, AM 11/15/21:

"It’s Time to Make Big Changes - The US Dollar is Plummeting"

"Now is the best time in history to make big changes. 

We are seeing the job market in complete chaos. 

The US dollar is plummeting in value before our eyes."

"This Is How They Intend To Get Us To 'You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy'”

"This Is How They Intend To Get Us To

 'You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy'”

by Michael Snyder

"The pieces of the puzzle may fit together in ways that you do not expect. For years, the global elite have been openly telling us that one day we will all own nothing, we will have no privacy, and we will be extremely happy with our new socialist utopia. But exactly how do they intend to transition to such a society? Are they going to come and take all of your stuff? Needless to say, there are millions upon millions of very angry people out there that aren’t just going to hand over their stuff to a bunch of socialists. So how are they going to overcome that obstacle?

Well, the truth is that they don’t need to take your stuff to implement their goals. All they need to do is to destroy the value of your money. If your money becomes worthless, you will start descending into poverty and it won’t be too long before you become totally dependent on the government. And as the stuff that you have right now wears out, you won’t be able to replace it with the worthless money that you are now holding. Eventually, you will own virtually nothing, but you probably won’t be very happy about it.

So high inflation is actually a tool that the global elite can use to further their goals. The good news is that I do not believe that the global elite will ever be able to achieve their utopia. The bad news is that they won’t be able to achieve their utopia because western society is going to completely and utterly collapse during the times that are ahead.

But for now, inflation is going to be one of the hottest political issues as we head into 2022. On Friday, Vice-President Kamala Harris acknowledged that higher prices are having a huge impact on American families… “Prices have gone up and families and individuals are dealing with the realities of the bread costs more, the gas costs more, and have to understand what that means,” she said. “That’s about the cost of living going up. That’s about having to stress and stretch limited resources.” Harris said that is a “source of stress for families” that is “not only economic, but is, on a daily level, something that is a heavy weight to carry.” Of course her “solution” is to get Joe Biden’s agenda through Congress, and she knows that all of that spending will inevitably create even more inflation.

The socialists over at NBC News are trying to help the Biden administration by putting a positive spin on the inflation crisis. In fact, NBC’s Stephanie Ruhle is trying really hard to convince everyone that inflation is not a problem because we all have more money to spend these days. But as I demonstrated last week, the truth is that inflation is rising much faster than our paychecks are, and that means that our standard of living is going down.

And inflation is one of the big reasons why the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index just hit the lowest level since 2011…"At the same time, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index tumbled to 66.8 for November, according to a preliminary reading Friday. That was the lowest since November 2011 and well below the Dow Jones estimate of 72.5. October’s reading was 71.7, meaning that the November level represented a 6.8% drop."

If you are among those that think that things are bad now, just wait, because they will soon get even worse. At this point, even Neel Kashkari is publicly admitting that inflation is going to continue to rise in the months ahead…"Minneapolis Fed Chair Neel Kashkari on Sunday said inflation in the U.S. will likely see “higher readings” before numbers taper off, as Americans grapple with rising prices nationwide. “The math suggests we’re probably going to see somewhat higher readings over the next few months before they likely start to taper off,” Kashkari said during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

The Federal Reserve has lost control, and 2022 is going to be a very “interesting” year from an economic standpoint. On Sunday, we learned that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in California has almost reached five dollars…"California gas prices hit an average of $4.676 Sunday, beating its previous record average price of $4.671 for regular gasoline set in October 2012, according to AAA." Gasoline prices are going to continue to move higher, and that is really bad news. Just about everything that we buy has to be transported, and so higher gasoline prices are going to fuel even more inflation.

Sadly, those that are on the bottom of the economic food chain are the ones that are being hurt the most. At this point, many food banks are really struggling to purchase enough food because price hikes have become so severe…"America’s largest food bank struggles to feed people amid a perfect storm of surging food prices and supply chain woes.

Katie Fitzgerald, COO of Feeding America, a nonprofit organization that operates more than 200 food banks across the country, told AP News that her network of food banks is already stretched thin due to the unprecedented demand spurred by the virus pandemic downturn in the economy last year. She warned that it has become more difficult for her organization to absorb food inflation, resulting in fewer families being fed this holiday season."

Used farm equipment is another area where inflation is hitting really hard. According to one index, the price of used farm equipment was up 22 percent during the first nine months of 2021…"The index is up 22% in the first nine months of the year and poised to make its biggest gains yet in the fourth quarter, a boom that’s turning a normally quiet corner of the farming market into Exhibit A of the inflation surge coursing through the U.S. economy. The market has all the ingredients fueling inflation in industries like cars and TVs - soaring demand from cash-flush buyers, the semiconductor shortage, congested ports and rails - with the added irritant of the labor stoppage at the world’s largest farm-machine maker. The match “is now lit,” Peterson says, “and it’s lit while there’s a John Deere strike.”

So many problems have converged all at once. Some have used the term “a perfect storm” to describe what we are facing, and I think that is definitely quite appropriate.

If you are waiting for life to “get back to normal”, you are going to be waiting for a very long time. As MN Gordon has noted, pre-2020 prices are now gone forever… "Pre-2020 prices, much like pre-1965 prices, are gone forever. Deficits of $5.9 trillion over the 24 months ending September 30, 2021, and a Fed balance sheet expansion of nearly $5 trillion over the same period, have irrevocably damaged the entire pricing structure of the financial system and the economy." Price inflation is on the move. Reality can no longer be covered up with Washington’s lies. We expect this episode of inflation will be one for the history books.

I wish that I had better news for you. I really do. But sooner or later, this is what socialist regimes always do. They tell us to study hard, get a good job and work as hard as we can. And then they give our money to people that haven’t done any of those things. Eventually they run out of other people’s money, and so then they just start wildly creating more. Unfortunately, every time that this has been tried throughout history it has always ended in disaster, and now it is our turn."

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Expect The Unexpected: Morgan Stanley Warns Again! Are Price Controls Coming? Bet On It!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 11/15/21:

"Expect The Unexpected: Morgan Stanley Warns Again! 

Are Price Controls Coming? Bet On It!"

- https://traderschoice.net/

"How It Really Is"

 

"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - Isochronic Tones"

"Clear Focus Ambient Space Music for Concentration - 

Isochronic Tones"

Full screen recommended. 

Headphones are NOT required for this video.

by Jason Lewis, Mind Amend

"Ambient electronic space music with low-intensity beta and alpha wave tones for clear focus. This is a brainwave entrainment music track using isochronic tones combined with music. The music has also been embedded with amplitude entrainment effects, where the music is subtly distorted and vibrates in unison with the same frequency of the isochronic tones. This helps to add further strength to the entrainment effect. If brainwave entrainment is a new concept for you, there is some information about it here: https://www.mindamend.com/

This brainwave entrainment session cycles through a frequency range of between 10Hz in Alpha, (which can help with memorization and learning), and up to 14Hz in the Beta range, (which will help with increasing focus and concentration). You can listen to this track with your eyes open while studying, reading or doing other activities which require a good level of concentration."

- https://www.mindamend.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 11/15/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 11/15/21"

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

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"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

 Nov. 14th to 16th, Updated Daily

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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- https://www.freightwaves.com/

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

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Oh yeah...

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"The Recognition"

"The Recognition"

by Jim Kunstler

"The climate change agitation is based on a central grandiose fallacy of our wobbling technocratic age: the idea that if you can measure enough stuff, you can control it. The master-wish in this case is what, exactly? To control the weather? (Which we might define as the day-to-day expression of the planet’s climate?) That ain’t gonna happen. In case you haven’t noticed, the business model of industrial civilization is already broken, and many of its dazzling tricks with it. And, anyway, the earth’s climate is forever and always changing, as is the adaptive response to it by human populations over the centuries, sometimes slowly and sometimes fast.

So, the net result of this year’s Glasgow Climate Summit is to pledge gobs of money from the “rich” nations to protect the poor nations, while mandating the reduction of oil, natgas, and coal in all nations, i.e., the global economy. Apropos of those “rich” nations, guess what: all of our modern money rests on promises to deliver future volumes of energy (and products of value made from it) and those promises are without basis in reality, so the money itself is increasingly worthless. Thus, the cost of getting that future energy exceeds the promises embedded in the money based on the energy. How’s that for a paradox? We’re the proverbial snake eating its own tail and now we’ve bitten off more than we can swallow.

We’re going to use less energy whether Klaus Schwab (and the Persian cat in his lap) likes it or not because our money is increasingly no good, which translates into a general loss of mojo for this round of civilization. The massive matrix of mutually self-reinforcing activities is seizing up - the mining, making, harvesting, and transport of stuff. That’s exactly what the “supply chain” melodrama is about. Of course, the Glasgow Summit did allow a bunch of people to feel self-important, to bethink themselves morally superior, which is the status currency of our time - the brownie-point having more actual value than the dollar these days. It certifies the “good” people and validates their persecution of the “bad” people, which is the central political drama of our time. The reward is power for its own sake, which is - let’s face it - the essence of evil.

The collapse of the global economy is underway and working itself out as it will, and the fear associated with that epic loss of resources, goods, comforts, and conveniences is driving Western Civ batshit crazy. Hence, the lunacies around the Covid-19 virus, another measure-and-control mania. Except that most of the official measurements about Covid-19 are untrue, gamed, fudged, juggled, misrepresented, and weaponized for political purposes. In fact, despite all the obsessive-compulsive statistical measuring, everything that the public health officialdom and the medical establishment did to control the disease after January 2020, only made the pandemic worse and prolonged it.

And so now all those authorities are bent on “vaccinating” every last human - which is absolutely the last thing you would rationally do in the midst of the pandemic event, since it only provokes new iterations of the virus that are immune to the “vaccines.” What’s more, the “vaccines” are so ineffective in the first place, and so toxic in the second place, that the damage they cause is arguably worse than the disease. But that quandary affords another opportunity for the self-designated “good” people (the vaxxed) to distinguish themselves from the “bad” people (the unvaxxed), and hence another way to persecute them. (Do you suppose it’s a mere coincidence that the people who refuse to get agitated by the climate change panic are often the very same people skeptical of the “vaccines”?)

Another interesting paradox in this panorama of mindf***ery is that the self-designated “good” people have behaved with uniform bad-faith and dishonesty throughout the long crisis - at least from RussiaGate through the current crusade to vax-up all the children - and that is what will change the game, probably soon. It happens that the leadership of the “good” people includes most of the figures in authority over the whole country: those public health officials like Dr. Fauci, the hospital directors who outlawed early treatment protocols, the pharma executives who buried their failed drug trials, the scientific journal publishers who killed reports that don’t support the “vaccine” narrative, the news-media editors and producers who can’t stop spinning lies, the Social Media totalitarian censors and cancellers, the tyrant mayors of New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, the “blue” state governors who destroyed small business with lockdowns and “passports,” the Woked-up state and federal bureaucrats ever preoccupied with covering their asses, the skulking managers behind the ectoplasmic “President Joe Biden” (and their handmaidens in Congress) - that Satanic host of coercion-meisters, inquisitionists, corporate despots, reputational executioners, moneygrubbers, political whores, and credentialed sadists trying to run your life - are headed for a fall.

They will fall because dishonesty undermines the entire scaffold of their “narrative.” All that’s required is for a crucial truth to assert itself unequivocally in the zeitgeist for the whole armature to fold. For instance, the truth that the “vaccines” are killing and maiming a lot of people. Or the truth that firing unvaxxed people from their jobs will drive them to hardship and revolt - even while it destroys the critical services that all people, “good” and “bad,” depend on, from the EMTs to the army. Or the truth that the crashing economy will disorder all the touchstones of daily life and require us to make big changes to remain civilized. That moment of recognition of how things have gone and where things are going is here. We’re in it. Yeats’s gyre has widened. We’re close to escape velocity. And then maybe we will begin again, walking in sunlight rather than darkness."

- https://kunstler.com/

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"The Second Coming"

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

- William Butler Yeats

"There Are Times..."

“If the sun is shining, stand in it – yes, yes, yes. Happy times are great, but happy times pass – they have to – because time passes. The pursuit of happiness is more elusive; it is life-long, and it is not goal-centered. What you are pursuing is meaning – a meaningful life… There are times when it will go so wrong that you will be barely alive, and times when you realize that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else’s terms.”

- Jeanette Winterson

“Hustled Through Life”

“Hustled Through Life”

by Paul Rosenberg

“Most people, sad to say, are too rushed, frightened, and confused to think about what they really want out of life. They are hustled through school, forced into long-term decisions before they’re ready to face them, then held to those decisions by fear and shame. They choose from a limited set of options, and they know that change will be punished. Eventually they get old and find time to think, but by then they can’t bear to question too deeply; that would jeopardize their self-worth, and they haven’t time to rebuild it.

For an intelligent, creative, and expansive species like ours, this rush to nowhere is among the greatest of evils. And yet it continues, mostly unquestioned. At no point in the usual Western life do we stop, take some serious time for ourselves, and think about the overall:

• What’s life about anyway? What’s the point of what we do?

• What’s the purpose of a career? Why should I care about it above everything else?

• Why should I glorify the existing system? Why should I agree to support it?

• Who paid for everything I learned in school?

• Should I have a family? If so, why? If not, why not?

• What do I think is fun? Does it really coincide with the beer ads on TV?

• What’s the purpose of being like everyone else? Why am I so afraid to be different?

We don’t address such questions. Rather, we’re pushed past them. Even in a church or synagogue – places where larger questions are supposed to be addressed – the person in the pulpit wants us to become and/or remain a member of the congregation; their job depends upon it. There are true ministers and rabbis, but for most it’s all too easy to push their audience into what’s convenient. As a result, we see little motivation in the modern West, save for the basest of motivators: things that match a line from the Bible that says, “Whose god is their belly.”

Mind you, I’m not against wealth, good food, or sex. I think those are fine things. They are not, however, the whole of life. We are much bigger than that. We ought not be limited to belly-level aspirations. But when we’re rushed, that’s all we’re able to see.

Status and Fear: The two big motivators we face in this rush through life – fear and status – are both negative.

Fear is a manipulation technology; people who make you afraid are hacking your mind. They want you to ignore reason and obey them fast. (I wish I could cover this in depth here, but we haven’t space. Please see issue #54 of my subscription newsletter.) When we’re afraid, we make our worst choices. Put plainly, fear makes us stupid. But we encounter it on a daily basis… and it destroys us by inches.

Status is the compulsion to compare ourselves with others, and whether we’re looking for the ways we’re better than others or looking for our shortcomings, it is deeply destructive. It’s also irrational, but the advertising business would crash without it and advertisers currently own the collective eyeballs of humanity.

Fear and status are, in a broad sense, drugs, and if you had a choice between smoking pot every day or being on fear and status every day, I’d definitely recommend the pot.

Confusion: Let’s be clear on something: Nearly every adult in the West will agree that politicians are liars and thieves… and yet they obey them without question. Is there any possibility we’d do such things if we weren’t harried and confused? When we are confused, we pass over our own minds and their deliberations. There’s an old joke: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your lyin’ eyes?” But that’s precisely what confusion does to us, and under the pressures of confusion and authority, most people will ignore their own eyes.

Such things do not happen to people who are calm and confident. But the existing hierarchies of the West couldn’t function with a calm and confident populace; their operations require people to be frightened, confused, and blindly chasing status.

As a Result… As a result, most of us hurry through life, never knowing why. We live as others do, simply because that path is streamlined for us, exposing us to a minimal level of fear and shame. But that path does something else: It keeps us from experiencing ourselves. Seldom has this problem been put more succinctly than in this quote from Albert Einstein: “Small is the number of them who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.”

Stop following the crowd. Turn your back on the popular script. Stop feeding at the same trough as everyone else. Break away and learn to see with your own eyes, to feel with your own heart. Don’t conform. Let people criticize you. Decide for yourself what your life will be about. Make it matter.”

- https://www.freemansperspective.com/