"The Global Economy is in a Perfect Storm - Business News You Can Use"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, iAllegedly,

"The Global Economy is in a Perfect Storm -

Business News You Can Use"

"We are getting hit from all sides. It makes no difference where you live because the world is starting to feel the storm that’s coming. Inflation, joblessness, higher interest rates and foreclosures are on the rise."

The Daily "Near You?"

Hartstown, Pennsylvania, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gerald Celente, "America In Decline, Get Ready For A Technological Revolution"

"America In Decline, Get Ready For A Technological Revolution"

Gerald Celente and Mark Ross

Strong language alert!

"Gerald Celente, Publisher of the Trends Journal, is joined by investor and entrepreneur, Mark Moss, from The Mark Moss Show, for an in-depth analysis of current events forming future trends. Here are a few of the topics we cover:

● Breakdown and Collapse of America
● Crypto Technological Revolution
● Inflation, Supply Chain Disruptions, Food Shortages
● War with China
● Forecasts for #BTC & CBDCs
● Big Announcement About The Universal Church of Freedom, Peace, and Justice
● Much more!"

"Neil Howe On The Fourth Turning: How Bad Will It Get, How Long Will It Last & What Comes Next?

"Neil Howe On The Fourth Turning: How Bad Will It Get,

 How Long Will It Last & What Comes Next?" Part 1

by Adam Taggart, Wealthion

"They say that history rhymes. That civilizations and societies tend to follow cycles - boom/bust, feast/famine, war/peace, cultural experimentation/a retrenchment to the “old ways”. Famed demographer Neil Howe, the author of the best-selling book "The Fourth Turning," lays out his prediction that today’s society has entered the "bust" part of our current cycle - where the status quo falls apart, often chaotically - to be replaced by a new, hopefully better, order.

What should we expect from this period of disruption? How bad will things get? How long will it last? And are there steps we can take now to improve our odds of persevering? In this new interview, Neil provides a highly-detailed picture of what to expect from the coming decade-plus of disruption. This kind of expert insight is like an instruction manual for successfully making it through the challenges we face ahead."

Part 2: 

"When Freedom Is Outlawed; COVIDLAND: The Lockdown..."

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A Must Watch!

- https://globalintelhub.com/covidland-the-lockdown/

"Failure of the 'American Model'”

"Failure of the 'American Model'”

by Bill Bonner

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – "Yes, today we bite into the mushroom. So, make sure you are in a “safe space.” And keep a stomach pump handy. Let’s begin with another Argentine-style headline, this time from the U.S. Here’s MarketWatch: "The largest COLA hike in 40 years is coming to Social Security in 2022 – what that means for your retirement. The cost-of-living adjustment in 2022 will be 5.9%, according to the Department of Labor. It will be the largest increase to COLA in 40 years, and a boost to Social Security beneficiaries’ checks."

In the U.S., as in Argentina, politicians have promised to “transfer” money from the rich to the poor. The mathematics of it is simple: there are a lot more poor voters than rich ones. And each vote is equal. But the rich are also powerful. They have lobbyists. And most of the people who control the government – the elite – are rich themselves. So the politicians tend to go easy on the taxes… leaving loopholes for themselves and their rich friends.

Politically Irresistible: The long-term political logic is irresistible, too. In both countries, a majority of voters now depend on the feds for (at least some of) their daily bread; naturally, they lick the hand that feeds them. In both countries, transfer payments are adjusted to the inflation rate. But the feds create the inflation… and compute the inflation rate themselves. And when inflation is running hot, the adjustments never quite keep up.

So governments can still “adjust” their obligations and promises (Social Security, Medicare, even U.S. bonds)…and still use inflation to rob the public.

But let us pause… let us back up… more… more… This is a big scene… We need to step way back to take it all in… so we can appreciate the cesspool grandeur of it. Why would governments need to rip off their own citizens? Isn’t this the Age of Abundance… where there’s plenty for everyone… and (at least in developed countries) over-eating is more of a health problem than hunger? And don’t we have thousands of Ph.D. economists working for the government? Can’t they figure out how to make the economy produce the wealth we need… and match expenses with income, without having to cheat people?

The short answer is: no. The “American model” doesn’t work. Why… and how… is what we are exploring now.

Futile Progress: Oh, Dear Reader… we are just beginning to nibble on the magic mushroom… Our head spins already. And suddenly, the dots come together. Before, we only saw through a glass darkly; but now, face to face… Human progress has been going on for a long, long time. We learned how to harness horses… and then, how to harness the atom.

Our institutions evolved, too… both political and economic… from the family-based tribe to the Delaware-based corporation…And the most important thing we learned was how to make progress – how to increase output per hour… and what kind of stop lights and roundabouts we needed to help keep the economic traffic flowing.

But “progress” only has value if it is connected to human choices. Suppose you figured out how to turn wine into water. It might be a tech tour de force. But people would still laugh at you. It would be like putting in a highway to a place no one wanted to go. And where do people want to go? You have to let them tell you.

Evolution of Democracy: That’s why “democracy” was supposed to be such an improvement. “The people” could speak out, loud and clear, at every election, forcing the government to respond to their wants and needs. And it’s why the “progress” in human government generally led us away from strictly controlled and highly regimented societies toward more individual liberty, where people could decide for themselves what they wanted..

From serfdom to freedom… and from raw power to persuasion; that was progress. Three 20th-century backtests confirmed it… Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China – in these regimes, the elites did the deciding for everyone. People were told what to do. Prices and output were centrally controlled. Alternative points of view were eliminated. And the result was less wealth… and less progress. By 1991, all three major experiments had been judged failures (leaving only those in backwaters such as Cuba and North Korea to stumble on).

And here we are today, informed by those marvelous episodes (at a cost of more than 100 million lives)…and graced by modern, consensual democracy.

Broken Democracy: But something is wrong. People are leaving their jobs in droves – 4.2 million in August alone, according to the latest Labor Department update. We have less and less control over our own government… while we are subject to more and more of its laws, rules, edicts, and mandates. Our choices are narrowing. Growth rates are declining. Consumer inflation is going up. Debt is increasing. Anger is rising. And the rip-offs are getting worse. How come? Monday, we will take a bigger bite."

- www.rogueeconomics.com

"Real Courage..."

 

"Here's Why the New War on Meat Consumption Could Lead to Food Shortages"

"Here's Why the New War on Meat Consumption

 Could Lead to Food Shortages"

by Chris MacIntosh

"Coercion is no longer taboo." Has there ever been a time in history where those who have been coercing have been on the right side of history? "The Ministries of Finance and Agriculture have advanced plans to buy out hundreds of farmers and, if necessary, expropriate them, in order to quickly reduce nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. This Is apparent from documents that have been viewed by NRC. The cost of this operation could amount to 17 billion euros. The plans point to a rigorously different approach, in which coercion is no longer taboo."

I’d actually be shocked if we don’t magically experience an "outbreak of mad cow disease" or some such thing after which we’ll find men with stern faces and women with deep scowls telling us how dangerous the consumption of meat is - because - well, the disease, of course.

We’ll see the usual "experts" trotted out (on the payroll of course), publishing gushing propaganda about the benefits of synthetic lab grown meat as well as the horrors of eating food from God's green earth. That the synthetic lab grown meat is simply processed food, arguably the leading cause of cancer, will be called out by professionals in the industry only to be ridiculed and censored for "misinformation."

You see, you can't patent nature, and if you can’t patent it, you can’t do what Monsanto has done to the grain industry, which is to create a never-ending revenue stream and complete reliance on their seeds and all manner of chemicals required to keep said seeds from failing. It is an incredibly profitable business operation.

The desire to do the same with the meat market is insanely strong. In the meantime, we’re headed for serious food shortages. I’m not joking. Here is what happened when the Bolsheviks under Stalin tried putting the production of food in the hands of the state. It is known as the "Holodomor genocide," otherwise known as the terror-famine.

Like the impending disaster we’re walking into - this, too, was man made. It is worth noting the components or tools used in this genocide. You may recognize them:

● Confiscation of citizens assets (you will own nothing and be happy).

● Assets placed in the hands of bureaucrats.

● Restriction of population movement (read: lockdowns).

It was a peacetime catastrophe. Today is similar. The world is not at war. At least not yet, though tensions are rising, of course, and we are now set up for large scale food shortages. Nobody knows for sure how many died in the Holodomor genocide. Estimates range from 4 to 12 million.

Don’t get me wrong... we’re not there but the facts are hard to ignore, and the elimination of private property ownership specifically with respect to food production is indeed similar. We are moving into an economy that is controlled and one whereby private property ownership is being repudiated and replaced with state ownership. We’ve more than enough evidence to know that this ends with skinny people, flies, and a diet of cabbage. And I hate cabbage… and you should, too. Horrible stuff!"

- internationalman.com

"Poster Boy"

"Poster Boy"

by Jim Kunstler

"Maybe Dr. Sanjay Gupta was born at night - but surely not last night. Apparently, CNN’s house doctor went into his interview on the Joe Rogan Experience with eyes wide shut. Did his handlers and preppers not have a clue that Joe would give Sanjay the business about CNN’s deliberate, incessant, and epic lying in the service of forces that seek to destroy the country, its people, and western civ with them?

The issue was Mr. Rogan declaring publicly that he took ivermectin with a suite of other drugs to get over Covid-19 in a few days’ time and then CNN’s defaming of the Nobel Prize winning drug as “horse de-wormer,” and defaming Joe Rogan for taking it. CNN’s bad faith propaganda plays a key role in the dishonest and untrustworthy campaign by America’s public health officialdom, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, to prevent the clinically-proven ivermectin early treatment protocol from being recognized by the FDA, because doing so would nullify the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the still-unapproved Covid-19 “vaccines.”

It was painful to watch Sanjay wriggle and try to squirm away from the accusation that his network lies knowingly to the public (and that he abets it). “It’s a lie that they’re conscious of, it’s not a mistake,” Joe Rogan said, pithing the famous TV doc like a common carpet moth. “You know that they know they’re lying,” he pressed on. “Do you think that’s a problem, that your news network lies?”

Yeah, it’s a problem, Sanjay finally admitted, lamely. And it’s no small problem that the nation’s community of doctors has allowed itself to be buffaloed into killing tens-of-thousands of patients across the land who are denied life-saving treatments, while harming and killing many others with “vaccines” which deliver toxic spike proteins that damage blood vessels and organs.

Sanjay Gupta is now the discredited poster boy for American doctors-without-honor and a medical system in abject collapse. All this lying by the government, the doctors, and the news media led to “Joe Biden’s” dastardly “vaccine mandate” - and fake, too, since there is still no actual legal instrument behind it - that is the final insult to medicine as legions of health-care workers ranging from doctors and nurses to janitors quit their jobs rather than submit to forced “vaccinations.”

The vax mandate is in-step with the primary motive of the Democratic party’s neo-Jacobin program, which is to push people around, to coerce them to do things that common sense and the instinct for survival argue against, and then to punish the people sadistically when they refuse, and to do it for the sheer pleasure of inflicting harm on their enemies - who happen to be the citizens of the USA. That is your “Joe Biden” government, from top to bottom, a matrix of fakeness and malice.

The vax mandate is doing a stellar job of wrecking every other public service from sea to shining sea as police, firemen, EMTs, 911 operators, and soldiers in the US military demur from the shots. And, of course, there are all he private companies going along suicidally with the scheme: the airlines, the railroads, the truckers, the retailers, you name it, all shedding employees and the ability of the companies to function. Naturally, the news media is trying to hide the damage, but in another week the net effect will be of the world’s biggest-ever general strike. Every activity in the country will stand still; some activities will just crash-and-burn; and many will not return to their prior states-of-operation.

This is not just a matter of the kiddies missing their Christmas presents. That’s just a dumb-ass sentimental ruse to divert your attention from the entire armature of American life imploding at warp speed. Christmas presents! How about no food, no gasoline, no heat, no money, and no public safety? That’s where this is taking us, and in the fast lane. And it hardly matters whether the financial markets manage to stay artificially levitated. Reality has already discounted the financial markets because they have forfeited their basic function, which is to signal the true price of everything. The true price of a society lying to itself about everything will be the sickness and death of the society.

We must be very close to a clear majority of the people in America recognizing the danger we are in and identifying the source of that danger. When that moment arrives, will we be able to do anything about it? It may take extraordinary measures not seen before in our political history."

- https://kunstler.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "AM/PM 10/15/21"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 10/15/21:

"Alert! People Are Dumping Dollars As Inflation Skyrockets"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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Gregory Mannarino, PM 10/15/21:

"NOTHING Is What It Seems To Be And Nothing Is By Accident. 

The Road To Serfdom And Enslavement"

 - https://traderschoice.net/

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 10/15/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 10/15/21"

"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

○

"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/

 October 14th to 15th, 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://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.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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"How It Really Is"

"We're so freakin' doomed!"

- The Mogambo Guru

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"Supply Chain Backlog to Last Until Summer of Next Year, 

Despite 24/7 Operating Hours: Officials"

Greg Hunter, "Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/15/21"

"Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/15/21"

By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com 

"Looks like America is waking up to fake everything. Let’s start with the fake CV19 jab mandate by the Biden Administration. Where is the Executive Order (EO)? Where is the legislation from Congress and signed by VP Biden? Guess what? It’s not there. That’s right. There is no Biden EO mandating the vax jabs. There is nothing in the Federal Register, and maybe that’s why Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green simply states the vax jab mandate “does not exist.” It’s totally fake and designed to herd people into getting this experimental death shot.

How about the fake FDA approval of Comirnaty? You cannot get Comirnaty in the USA, and in my opinion, you never will. Pfizer says it is totally “interchangeable” with the BioNTech CV19 injection. How can that be when one that is approved is not available (and will not have a liability shield). The one that is “approved” is only available under an extended “Emergency Use Authorization” (EUA)? The EUA means the BioNTech CV19 injection is, in fact, experimental, and the FDA specifically says the BioNTech CV19 injection “has not been approved.” (End of page 11 top of page 12) Because of the EUA, Pfizer has a liability shield against all deaths and injuries. So, I ask again, how can the Comirnaty and BioNTech CV19 injections be “interchangeable” when one is approved and one is NOT? They simply are not “interchangeable,” and the entire thing is a massive bait and switch fraud and record Nuremburg code violation.

The fake economy has been propped up so long with massive amounts of printed money inflation is now taking off. That is not fake. The fake propped up financial system is plagued with rising inflation, supply chain disruptions and a massive labor shortage, which could all lead to a gigantic collapse of the system and soon. Oh, and let’s not forget about the totally fake elections the Deep State wants desperately to keep covered up!!"

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble he talks about these 

stories and more in the Weekly News Wrap-Up 10/15/21.

- https://rumble.com/

"Be Unshakable - Ultimate Stoic Quotes Compilation"

RedFrost Motivation, 

"Be Unshakable - Ultimate Stoic Quotes Compilation"

"Powerful wisdom from Marcus Aurelius, Seneca and Epictetus"

Performed by Chris Lines

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. 

You want to live but do you know how to live? 

You are scared of dying but tell me, 

is the kind of life you lead really any different to being dead?"

- Seneca

"Beef Will Now Be A 'Luxury Product', And Cheap Chicken Dinners 'Are Coming To An End'”

"Beef Will Now Be A 'Luxury Product',

And Cheap Chicken Dinners 'Are Coming To An End'”

by Michael Snyder

"The “reset economy” is coming, and it isn’t going to be very pleasant. Rather than viewing the economic chaos caused by the pandemic as a negative thing, many among the worldwide elite consider it to be a golden opportunity to fundamentally transform the global economy according to their values. As they radically reshape our economic system, one of their primary goals will be to make any products that are “bad for the environment” cost a lot more. In other words, behaviors that produce a lot of carbon emissions must be punished. That is particularly bad news for those that love to eat a lot of meat, because the production of meat is considered to be particularly “harmful” for the environment.

In recent months, you may have noticed that the price of meat has already been rising quite aggressively. This fits very well with what they are trying to do, because they want people to start eating a lot less of it. In fact, one prominent CEO was recently quoted as saying that beef is going to be “a luxury product” from now on… “Beef is not going to be super climate friendly,” Danish Crown Chief Executive Officer Jais Valeur said in an interview with Danish newspaper Berlingske. “It will be a luxury product that we eat when we want to treat ourselves.” Valeur said pork would be a more climate-friendly protein. Danish Crown is one of Europe’s largest pork producers, although it is also a player in the beef market.

So if you are accustomed to eating beef on a regular basis, I guess you are just going to be out of luck. Of course they will offer lots of “burgers” and “steaks” made out of microalgae or bugs that you can try instead.

I am afraid that chicken is on the chopping block too. The head of the biggest chicken producer in the UK just warned that the days of cheap chicken dinners “are coming to an end”… "Britain’s biggest chicken producer said that the country’s 20-year cheap food binge is ending and food price inflation could hit double digits. “The days when you could feed a family of four with a 3 pound ($4) chicken are coming to an end,” Ranjit Singh Boparan, owner of the 2 Sisters Group, said."

But don’t worry, they are working really hard to develop some squishy plant-based “chicken alternatives” that will surely have your mouth watering. These new “alternatives” won’t be cheap either, but the truth is that the price of just about everything is spiking these days. Just check out these numbers from a local CBS News report… "The price increases have hit certain industries particularly hard over the last year. Used car prices are up about 24 percent. The cost of meat has gone up 12 percent in 12 months. Home heating oil is up an estimated 43 percent. Another area on the top of many commuters’ minds: gas prices, which have risen by more than $1 a gallon."

As I discussed yesterday, heating bills are going to put a lot of financial stress on millions of American families this winter. Unfortunately, a lot of people still aren’t taking this new global energy crisis seriously enough. The truth is that this is a really, really big deal. If you doubt this, just take a look at what is already happening in India and China… "Meanwhile, Coal India, the world’s biggest coal miner, said it had temporarily stopped supplying non-power users as India battles one of its worst ever power supply deficits. China’s power crisis, caused by shortages of coal, high fuel prices and booming post-pandemic industrial demand has halted production, including at factories supplying big brands such as Apple."

Needless to say, a global energy crisis will be a perfect opportunity for the global elite to push their “green energy solutions” on all of us. In order for most people to be willing to accept a radical “solution” they often need to be faced with a major problem first, and the global elite understand this very well.

Speaking of major problems, the global supply chain crisis just continues to get worse, and one prominent executive is now warning that it could “last well into 2022”… "Dutch navigation and digital mapping company TomTom warned that supply chain problems in the auto sector could last well into 2022. “Collectively we have underestimated how big the supply chain issues, and especially for semiconductor shortages, have been or have become”, TomTom Chief Financial Officer Taco Titulaer told Reuters."

That is certainly bad news, and it looks like I will definitely have a lot to write about in the months ahead. Sadly, it appears that the Biden administration is not approaching these issues with the seriousness that they deserve. In fact, White House chief of staff Ron Klain seems to think that they are just “high class problems”… "White House chief of staff Ron Klain endorsed former Obama administration economist Jason Furman’s claim that the country’s inflation, supply chain, and other economic problems only affect a small part of the U.S. population.

Furman, the chairman of former President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers and an economics professor at Harvard University, tweeted Wednesday night that “most of the economic problems we’re facing … are high class problems.”

Really? Are empty shelves all across America a high class problem? Are soaring heating bills a high class problem? As I discussed yesterday, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. households “have faced serious financial problems” within the last few months. Is that a high class problem too?

The truth is that the stage is set for a global economic nightmare of epic proportions, and what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg. But like I said, the global elite don’t fear the changes that are happening. In fact, they intend to engineer even more change. Many of them truly believe that human activity must be very tightly constrained for the good of the planet, and so they envision a future in which our behaviors are very closely monitored, tracked and controlled.

So it may not be too long before highly advanced meters independently control the temperature levels in your home, you are not allowed to purchase certain products you used to buy because they are “bad for the environment”, and your food is made out of some of the most disgusting things imaginable. Many would consider such a society to be a “utopia”, but it sounds like an endless dystopian nightmare to me."

- http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

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"10 Shortages That Are Getting Worse"

Must Watch! "Nothing Can Save This Economy - Brace For Impact; No One Is Working; Markets Rage"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 10/14/21:

"Nothing Can Save This Economy - Brace For Impact;

 No One Is Working; Markets Rage"

Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"

Full screen recommended.

Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"

Musical Interlude: Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"

Procol Harum, "A Salty Dog"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A mere seven hundred light years from Earth, toward the constellation Aquarius, a sun-like star is dying. Its last few thousand years have produced the Helix Nebula (NGC 7293), a well studied and nearby example of a Planetary Nebula, typical of this final phase of stellar evolution. A total of 90 hours of exposure time have gone in to creating this expansive view of the nebula. 

Combining narrow band image data from emission lines of hydrogen atoms in red and oxygen atoms in blue-green hues, it shows remarkable details of the Helix's brighter inner region about 3 light-years across. The white dot at the Helix's center is this Planetary Nebula's hot, central star. A simple looking nebula at first glance, the Helix is now understood to have a surprisingly complex geometry."

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

"As The Global Energy Crisis Explodes You Should Prepare Yourself For An Extremely Painful Winter"

Full screen recommended.

"As The Global Energy Crisis Explodes You Should 

Prepare Yourself For An Extremely Painful Winter"

by Epic Economist

"An energy crisis of epic proportions is rapidly spreading across the globe and it will hit us where it hurts the most - in the wallet. Energy prices are traded globally, which means that price increases in one part of the planet eventually affect markets elsewhere. That's what happening now, with natural gas produced in the U.S. now heading for Europe and pushing prices to soar both here and there. As energy supplies get tighter and tighter all over the world, power bills can only go higher. In fact, the federal government is warning that Americans' heating bills will rise more than 50 percent this winter. Needless to say, millions of families won't be able to afford that.

This global power crunch has been unfolding for months, but only now the mainstream media has started to use the term “energy crisis” to describe what we are facing. Recent reports alert that "the world is entering a new energy crisis the like of which hasn’t been seen since the 1970s". On the other side of the ocean, prices for gas in Europe and Asia are at an all-time high, while oil prices are at a three-year high, and the price of coal is simply skyrocketing due to energy shortages across China, India, and Germany.

Even CNN is warning that energy prices are about to hit 'astronomical' levels. The frenzy to secure natural gas supplies is consequently pushing up the price of coal and oil, which can be used as substitutes in some cases. That's why global markets should brace for "astronomical increases in natural gas prices, skyrocketing coal costs, and predictions of $100 oil," CNN reported. These circumstances are triggering widespread alarm amongst central banks and investors. Rising energy prices are fueling inflation, which has already been a major concern for the global economy over the past year. But dynamics over the winter could make the situation even worse.

This week, economists said that U.S. consumers should "get ready to pay sharply higher bills for heating this winter, along with seemingly everything else". The U.S. government warned on Wednesday that households will see their heating bills jump as much as 54% compared to last winter, which led some economists to argue that a 54 percent increase would be the "best-case scenario". Many of them argue that prices will shoot up a lot higher than that because energy costs in America have been hitting absurd levels already. This also means that millions of families are not going to be able to afford higher energy bills, and that is going to intensify their financial struggles.

Way before the energy crisis erupted, a large portion of the U.S. population was already facing financial difficulties to pay energy bills. Another recent survey found that roughly 40 percent of all U.S. households “have faced serious financial problems” in the last few months, including struggling to afford medical care and food. Among those lower-income households, 30% reported they had lost all their savings during the recession. The survey was conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and it also showed that the percentage of households reporting acute financial problems rose to 59% in families that had an income under $50,000 a year.

Normally, such a high rate of people facing financial hardships would be an indication of rampant unemployment. But as we have been discussing in the past few videos, the U.S. is actually in the middle of one of the most dramatic shortages of workers right now. Pretty much every industry is short-staffed and this is creating a series of disruptions in our economy. Every day, more and more jobs are vacant and employers are getting increasingly desperate to find personnel. On the other hand, the vast majority of available jobs are very low-paying, and rising inflation is devaluing wages at record speed.

The latest data suggests that inflation is rising at the fastest pace in 30 years. And leading the increase in consumer prices are higher prices for food and energy, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. And now this massive energy crisis is about to take our economic problems to a whole new level while millions of Americans keep their thermostats uncomfortably low during another dark winter. Everything that we buy that requires shipping from another country or another region is going to become significantly more expensive. And as inflation spins out of control and the winter approaches, many American families are going to be forced to make some very difficult choices. We will be extremely lucky if blackouts and power outages do not happen because if something similar to what occurred in Texas last winter takes place all across the country, we will have to deal with some absolutely disastrous consequences very soon."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com​