Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Greg Hunter, "Petro-Ruble Takes Down Dollar & Drives Up Gold"

"Petro-Ruble Takes Down Dollar & Drives Up Gold"
By Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter said that at the end of last year, both the lies and money printing were going to get much worse. Holter predicted, “The risk for a meltdown from these levels, the risk has never been higher or could be higher than it is right now. You have got everything going in the wrong direction.” Fast-forward to today, and you see huge inflation, economies wrecked and Russia demanding payment for oil and gas in rubles. Holter explains, “This is the biggest news since 1973 when oil started being backed by the U.S. dollar. There is nothing bigger. Understand, Gaddafi (Libya) did this. Saddam Hussein (Iraq) talked about the gold dinar, or a gold backed currency, and what happened? They got killed, and their countries got invaded and their gold stolen. This time is different because you are not going to have the U.S. military go into Moscow, depose Putin and steal their gold. From a Russian standpoint, they are selling Russian goods, they want to be paid in rubles and they want to buy gold. They are not provoking a war, and they are not provoking the west, but they have created a currency war between the ruble and the dollar. What happens with the arbitrage is the world does the dirty work by making a profit if western gold is too cheap. It’s brilliant.”

So, the dollar will get creamed in buying power? Holter says, “It’s already getting creamed in buying power. This will ultimately affect all financial markets. It’s going to affect credit markets. Don’t forget, the dollar is a creation of credit. This is basically a natural way of destroying a financial Ponzi scheme. All Putin is saying is I want what’s best for Russia. We are going to sell our goods, we want to be paid in our currency and we are making it real by basically backing it with gold. We want real and fair settlement. In what world would anyone have imagined that it was the ruble that took the dollar down? That’s what it looks like is going to happen.”

Holter says get ready for extreme financial problems in the not-so-distant future. Holter warns, “I think we are headed for a calamity in the very near future. I think, at this point, it’s a coin flip that we do or don’t go through a Mad Max world for a spell. Is that spell a week, two weeks, two months or more? I don’t know. I do fully expect disastrous times. This is going to be 2008 on steroids.”

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter of JSMineset.com. (There is much more in the 48 min. interview)

"Is Dollar Tree Still Worth It? - Best vs Worst Deals!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 4/6/22:
"Is Dollar Tree Still Worth It? - Best vs Worst Deals!"
"In today's vlog we are shopping at Dollar Tree to find the best and worst deals since they increased their store prices to $1.25 per item. It is getting rough out here as stores around the country continue to raise their prices!"

"Why Most People Will Not Survive: Stimulus Check Update, Chip Shortage, Housing Market Crisis"

Full screen recommended.
Ron Yates, 4/6/22:
"Why Most People Will Not Survive: 
Stimulus Check Update, Chip Shortage, Housing Market Crisis"

Gregory Mannarino, "Forget Russia/Ukraine. The Real War Is Against You!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/6/22:
"Forget Russia/Ukraine. The Real War Is Against You!"

"20 Facts About The Emerging Global Food Shortage That Should Chill You To The Core"

"20 Facts About The Emerging Global Food Shortage
 That Should Chill You To The Core"
by Michael Snyder

"A very alarming global food shortage has already begun, and it is only going to get worse in the months ahead. I realize that this is not good news, but I would encourage you to share the information in this article with everyone that you can. People deserve to understand what is happening, and they deserve an opportunity to get prepared. The pace at which things are changing around the globe right now is absolutely breathtaking, but most people assume that life will just continue to carry on as it normally does. Unfortunately, the truth is that a very real planetary emergency is developing right in front of our eyes.

The following are 20 facts about the emerging global food shortage that should chill you to the core…

#1 One of France’s most important government officials is telling us that we should brace ourselves for an “extremely serious” global food crisis…"France’s Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said the EU must get to grips with the prospect that the war in Ukraine could prompt an “extremely serious” global food crisis."

#2 Joe Biden recently admitted that food shortages are “going to be real”, and his administration is now openly using the word “famine” to describe what is coming…"The Biden administration is worried Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will cause famine in parts of the world, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chair Cecilia Rouse told CNBC on Friday."

#3 It is being reported that food prices at German supermarkets will soon go up between 20 and 50 percent…"Just days after Germany reported the highest inflation in generation (with February headline CPI soaring at a 7.6% annual pace and blowing away all expectations), giving locals a distinctly unpleasant deja vu feeling even before the Russian invasion of Ukraine broke what few supply chains remained and sent prices even higher into the stratosphere…

On Monday, Germany will take one step toward a return of the dreaded Weimar hyperinflation, when according to the German Retail Association (HDE), consumers should prepare for another wave of price hikes for everyday goods and groceries with Reuters reporting that prices at German retail chains will explode between 20 and 50%."

#4 Rationing has already begun in Spain…"In Spain, the country started experiencing sporadic shortages of different products like eggs, milk and other dairy products almost immediately following the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. In early March, major supermarkets like Mercadona and Makro began rationing sunflower oil."

#5 Rationing has also already started in Greece…"In Greece, at least four national supermarket chains have started rationing food products like flour and sunflower oil due to critically low supplies caused by the crippled supply chains coming out of Russia and Ukraine."

#6 The head of BlackRock is warning that this will be the very first time this generation “is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want”…"On Tuesday, BlackRock Inc. President Rob Kapito told an audience in Austin, Texas, hosted by the Texas Independent Producers and Royalty Owners Association, that an entire younger generation is quickly finding out what it means to suffer from shortages, according to Bloomberg. “For the first time, this generation is going to go into a store and not be able to get what they want,” Kapito said. “And we have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”

#7 Since this time last year, some fertilizer prices have gone up by as much as 300 percent.

#8 Many farmers in Africa will not be able to afford fertilizer at all this year, and it is being projected that this will reduce agricultural production by an amount capable of feeding “100 million people”…"With prices tripling over the past 18 months, many farmers are considering whether to forgo purchases of fertilizers this year. That leaves a market long touted for its growth potential set to shrink by almost a third, according to Sebastian Nduva, program manager at researcher group AfricaFertilizer.Org. That could potentially curb cereals output by 30 million tons, enough to feed 100 million people, he said."

#9 Russia is normally one of the biggest global exporters of fertilizer…"Russia is a key global player in natural gas, a major input to fertilizer production. Higher gas prices, and supply cuts, will further drive fertilizer prices higher. Russia is one of the biggest exporters of the three major groups of fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium). Physical supply cuts could further inflate fertilizer prices."

#10 In a typical year, Russia and Ukraine collectively account for approximately 30 percent of all global wheat exports.

#11 Half of Africa’s wheat imports usually come from either Russia or Ukraine.

#12 Other nations rely on wheat exports from Russia and Ukraine even more than Africa does…"Armenia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and Eritrea have imported virtually all of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine and must find new sources. But they are competing against much larger buyers, including Turkey, Egypt, Bangladesh and Iran, which have obtained more than 60 percent of their wheat from the two warring countries."

#13 One Russian official is warning that his nation may soon only export food to “friendly nations”…"A Russian government official has threatened that Russia will limit its vital food exports to only nations it considers “friendly”. Dmitry Medvedev, a senior Russian security official who previously served as the nation’s president, has threatened that Russia may soon cut off the West from food exports."

#14 On Friday, it was announced that another 5 million egg-laying chickens in Iowa would have to be put down because of the bird flu.

#15 The death toll from the bird flu in Iowa alone will be pushed beyond 13 million as a result of this latest incident.

#16 Overall, this is what the total national death toll from the bird flu currently looks like: “22 million egg-laying chickens, 1.8 million broiler chickens, 1.9 million pullet and other commercial chickens, and 1.9 million turkeys”.

#17 China’s agricultural minister has announced that the winter wheat harvest in China could be “the worst in history”.

#18 We are being warned that the winter wheat harvest in the United States will be “disastrous” due to severe drought.

#19 During a recent interview, one prominent U.S. farmer stated that most Americans won’t like it when “your grocery bill is up $1,000.00 a month”.

#20 The head of the UN World Food program says that what the planet is now facing is unlike anything that we have seen since World War II… “Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.”

We have been warned over and over again that this day was coming, and now it is here. Like I said at the beginning of this article, I hope that you will share this information with as many people as possible, because this crisis really is going to affect every man, woman and child on the entire planet.

In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this, and conditions are getting worse with each passing day. A truly nightmarish global food crisis really is upon us, and hundreds of millions of innocent people are going to deeply suffer as a result."

Tuesday, April 5, 2022

"I Won't Buy A House Now, Hold Off; Households Are Running Out Of Money; Mortgage Rates; Gas"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 4/5/22:
"I Won't Buy A House Now, Hold Off; 
Households Are Running Out Of Money; Mortgage Rates; Gas"

Gerald Celente, "And The Loser Is Freedom, Peace And Justice"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, "The Trends Journal":
"And The Loser Is Freedom, Peace And Justice"
"The Trends Journal is a weekly magazine analyzing global current events forming future trends. Our mission is to present Facts and Truth over fear and propaganda to help subscribers prepare for What’s Next in these increasingly turbulent times."

As only Gerald can, lol

"35 Shocking Facts About Housing's New Crisis"

Full screen recommended.
"35 Shocking Facts About Housing's New Crisis"
by Epic Economist

"We’re in the middle of the greatest housing bubble in history, and prices are about to go even higher before a crash occurs to push them back down. Ordinary Americans are facing huge challenges to afford their mortgage or rent payments, and that is causing a lot of financial stress for millions of families out there. Hundreds of thousands of hard-working Americans may lose their homes in the coming months as they become unable to keep up with soaring costs and rising interest rates.

Over the past 10 years, home prices rose by almost 70 percent, and we can say for sure that incomes did not increase accordingly. The cost of living in the United States continues to escalate to stratospheric levels, but on the other hand, working conditions continue to deteriorate and most middle-class jobs do not offer enough financial support for workers to purchase a home. In fact, even middle-class renters are also cost-burdened by surging prices, and affordability is set to get much worse this year as the inventory of vacant homes and apartments plunges to the lowest level in decades while demand stays elevated.

More and more families are getting completely priced out of the market. Meanwhile, wealthy investors have been buying entire neighborhoods and engaging in bidding wars, oftentimes offering millions above the original asking price – something most families can not do. That is helping the housing bubble to grow even larger as prices are propped up by financial speculators. On top of that, supply chain issues have been contributing to the spike in construction costs. Shortages of raw materials and shipping disruptions have pushed the price of key building materials such as plywood and lumber to record triple-digit increases over the past 12 months. 

We all grew up thinking someday we would have our own homes where we would comfortably live with our families. But that dream has been removed from our reach. Tonight, many parents are going to have to sleep in their cars with their children because they’ve been evicted from their homes. A job loss or one unexpected health expense can push you into a debt spiral that can make you lose everything you own. And in the current economic environment, where living expenses continue to hit one new high after the other while our buying power continues to collapse, afford surging housing costs has become a privilege. 

This new housing crisis is impacting the future of the younger generations, who will have to wait much longer to start building equity. And this is the best-case scenario because when we consider today’s labor market and the lack of good jobs, it is safe to say that many people will not have the chance to buy a home at all. Conditions will continue to get worse in the real estate market this year, and we'll all have to make heroic efforts to be able to cope with the challenges ahead. A new housing crisis is brewing and in today’s video, we complied some shocking stats that expose what’s truly going on in the housing market. Here are 35 shocking facts about the new housing crisis."

Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"

Full screen recommended.
Liquid Mind, "My Orchid Spirit (Extragalactic)"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Colorful NGC 1579 resembles the better known Trifid Nebula, but lies much farther north in planet Earth's sky, in the heroic constellation Perseus. About 2,100 light-years away and 3 light-years across, NGC 1579 is, like the Trifid, a study in contrasting blue and red colors, with dark dust lanes prominent in the nebula's central regions.
In both, dust reflects starlight to produce beautiful blue reflection nebulae. But unlike the Trifid, in NGC 1579 the reddish glow is not emission from clouds of glowing hydrogen gas excited by ultraviolet light from a nearby hot star. Instead, the dust in NGC 1579 drastically diminishes, reddens, and scatters the light from an embedded, extremely young, massive star, itself a strong emitter of the characteristic red hydrogen alpha light."

Chet Raymo, “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”

 “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
by Chet Raymo

"In a short story that was published posthumously in the New Yorker, the inestimable Primo Levi meditated on the limits of language. The story was called “The Tranquil Star.” He writes "The star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous," and realizes immediately that the adjectives have failed him: “For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us.

Until fairly recently in human history, there was nothing smaller than a scabies mite, writes Levi, and therefore no adjective to describe it. Nothing bigger than the sea or sky. Nothing hotter than fire. We can add modifiers: very big, very small, very hot. Or use adjectives of dubious superlativeness: enormous, colossal, extraordinary. But, really, these feeble stretchings of language don't take us very far in grasping the very, very, very extraordinarily diminutive or spectacularly colossal dimensions of atomic matter or cosmic space and time. We can overcome the limitations of language, Levi say, "only with a violent effort of the imagination."

I spent more than forty years trying to find ways to violently stretch the imaginations of my students (and myself) to accommodate the dimensions of the universe revealed by science. I would project onto a huge screen a photograph of a firestorm on the Sun, then superimpose a scale-sized Earth, which fit comfortably inside a loop of solar fire. I would take the class into the College Quad here near Boston, where I had set up a basketball to represent the Sun, then gathered 100 feet away with a pinhead Earth; we walked together with our pin in the great annual journey of the Earth, and looked through a telescope at the marble-sized Jupiter than I had previously installed at the other end of the long Quad (the next closest star system would have been a couple of basketballs in Hawaii). We walked geologic timelines that took us from one end of the campus to the other.

In one of my Globe essays I used this analogy: “Imagine the human DNA as a strand of sewing thread. On this scale, the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell would be about 150 miles long, with about 600 nucleotide pairs per inch. That is, the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to 1000 spools of sewing thread, representing two copies of the genetic code. Take all that thread - the 1000 spools worth - and crumple it into 46 wads (the chromosomes). Stuff the wads into a shoe box (the cell nucleus) along with - oh, say enough chicken soup to fill the box. Toss the shoe box into a steamer trunk (the cell), and fill the rest of the trunk with more soup. Take the steamer trunk with its contents and shrink it down to an invisibly small object, smaller than the point of a pin. Multiply that tiny object by a trillion and you have the trillion cells of the human body, each with its full complement of DNA.”

Or this description from 'Waking Zero': “The track of the Prime Meridian across England from Peace Haven in the south to the mouth of the River Humber in the north is nearly 200 miles. If that distance is taken to represent the 13.7 billion year history of the universe, as we understand it today, then all of recorded human history is less than a single step. The entire story I have told in this book, from the Alexandrian astronomers and geographers to the present-day astronomers who launch telescopes into space, would fit neatly into a single footprint. If the 200 miles of the meridian track is taken to represent the distance to the most distant objects we observe with our telescopes, then a couple of steps would take us across the Milky Way Galaxy. A mote of dust from my shoe is large enough to contain not only our own solar system but many neighboring stars.”


But as hard as one tries, the scale of these things escape us. If one could truly comprehend what we are seeing when we look, say, at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo above, which I have done my best to convey to myself and others in a dozen ways, it would surely shake to the core some of our most cherished beliefs. Just as our language is contrived on a human scale, so too are our gods.”

"It'll Do..."

Deputy Wendell: "It's a mess, ain't it, sheriff?"
Sheriff Ed Tom Bell: "If it ain't, it'll do till the mess gets here."
"No Country For Old Men"

Oh, the mess is here alright...

"Memento Mori"

"Memento Mori"
by Ryan Holiday

"Were all the geniuses of history to focus on this single theme, they could never fully express their bafflement at the darkness of the human mind. No person hands out their money to passersby, but to how many do each of us hand out our lives! We're tight-fisted with property and money, yet think too little of wasting time, the one thing about which we should all be the toughest misers."  - Seneca

Born with a chronic illness that loomed large throughout his life, Seneca was constantly thinking about and writing about the final act of life. "Let us prepare our minds as if we'd come to the very end of life," he said. "Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life's books each day. The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."

Most interestingly, he quibbled with the idea that death was something that lay ahead of us in the uncertain future. "This is our big mistake," Seneca wrote, "to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death." That was Seneca's great insight - that we are dying every day and no day, once dead, can be revived.

So we should listen to the command that Marcus gave himself. He wrote,"Concentrate every minute like a Roman on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions." The key to this kind of concentration? "Do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life."

That's the power of Memento Mori - of meditating on your mortality. It isn't about being morbid or making you scared. It's about giving you power. It's to inspire, to motivate, to clarify, to concentrate like a Roman on the thing in front of you. Because it may well be the last thing you do in your life.

The Stoics were philosophers, but more than that they were doers. They didn't have room for big words or big ideas, just stuff that made you better right here, right now. As Marcus Aurelius said: "Justice, honesty, self-control, courage, don't make room for anything but it - for anything that might lead you astray, tempt you off the road, and leave you unable to devote yourself completely to achieving the goodness that is uniquely yours."

“Requiem for a Ladybug”

“Requiem for a Ladybug”
by Frankly Francis

“You lie still less than a foot away on top of the soft mouse pad that protects me from carpal tunnel syndrome. I noticed this morning, through eyes not yet clarified by my first coffee of the day, your presence in my study. Odd, I thought, that you would even be present now. It is certainly past your time of the year in these parts.

I had the presence of mind to reckon that your life must be short. Rather than remove you from my space, both physical and mental, I decided that if these were your final moments then my study could be your Hospice and I your companion.

Your flight and movement were a little chaotic, seemingly random. You nestled in the heat of the light in the globe of my desk lamp, you circled my cranium, you landed in various spots, and in and on various objects on my desk while I got about the business of the day.

Sometimes I could see you, other times I did not know where you were. Then you would rise again to a new location. I wondered if you had any purpose in this, if there was more going on than my conscious programming allowed me to realize.

Perhaps it was, in your reality, some last business to be done? Or perhaps a ritual of your species’ existence? I hoped that if there is any pleasure in being a Ladybug that it was satisfying in some way, even so far from your natural habitat. Then you landed on your final resting spot and moved no more.

For me, my study is a place of many good things. I hope in your last moments it was to you as well. Rest in Peace my little Ladybug. And thanks for reminding me of the preciousness and fragility of life.”

"None Of You Understand..."

The Daily "Near You?"

Bullhead City, Arizona, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

Gregory Mannarino, "Alert! The FED Is Selling Yet Another Epic Lie"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 4/5/22:
"Alert! The FED Is Selling Yet Another Epic Lie"

"Peter Schiff's Last Warning: The Crash Will Be WORSE Than 2008"

Full screen recommended.
Freenvesting, "Peter Schiff's Last Warning: 
The Crash Will Be WORSE Than 2008"

"Peter Schiff was warning about the 2008 financial crisis before it happened. “The crisis that’s coming is going to be far worse than anything that was experienced in 2008,” says the economist. Peter D. Schiff is an economist, stock broker, financial specialist, host of the Peter Schiff Show Podcast, and author. He is the CEO and chief global strategist of Euro Pacific Capital Inc. Mr. Schiff has also written a number of books on investing over the years. He educates people all over the world about free market economics and the principles and benefits of individual liberty, limited government and sound money."

Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
00:48 - The Primary Factor
01:40 - 2 Ways Money Will Be Taken Away From You
04:58 - What’s Happening Now
07:30 - The Problem Nobody Understands
11:41 - Who Gets Rich During Inflation?
15:23 - “The Government Will Take Most Of What You Have…”
16:25 - How To Invest In This Environment?

"Global Crisis with Food Shortages and Real Estate Crashing"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 4/5/22:
"Global Crisis with Food Shortages and Real Estate Crashing"
"These problems are global. Everything is affected right now. This includes our banking system, real estate, food shortages and massive inflation. People need to prepare for what is coming. The signs are everywhere and people just want to go about their day."

"This Brave Ahab"

"This Brave Ahab"
by Bill Bonner

San Martin, Argentina - "Oh to be as carefree… as optimistic… and as brain dead as an American stock market investor! By our reckoning, US stocks are about $25-$30 trillion overvalued. Typically around 80% of GDP, the Wilshire 5000, which captures all US publicly-traded equities, is now almost at 200%.

What would it take to drive investors away from the stock market? A tsunami washing over Manhattan? A nuclear war? The dead rising from their graves? Already, there’s a war on… and one of the combatants has nukes in his arsenal. Inflation is already at 8%; it looks like it will hit double digits soon. The bond market has just delivered its most reliable recession signal – the dreaded ‘inverted yield curve.’

And the Biden Team has just proposed the highest income tax rates in the developed world. Fox News: "The budget blueprint that President Biden unveiled last week includes several tax hikes on the ultra-wealthy and corporations that would push the top U.S. rates on both individual and corporate income to the highest level in the developed world, according to a new analysis published by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation." Hey… it probably won’t pass! And now, the Fed is determined to stamp out inflation by raising rates.

Cometh the Clouds: Higher interest rates will put the refinancing machine into reverse. Instead of refinancing debt at lower rates, debts will be refinanced at higher rates, causing the overall debt pile (and the economy) to shrink. Many households and businesses will find that when the weather was fair and the going was good, they went a little too far. Cometh the clouds and they will be unable to refinance debt. Instead, they will default. Far and wide… public, private, questioning… asset prices will go down.

Uh oh. You’d think that would make stock gamblers a little nervous. But no… here’s the head-scratcher headline from MarketWatch: "US stock futures edge higher as investors prepare for steep rise in interest rates."

And here’s Larry Lindsey. MarketWatch again: “I do think we’re going to have a recession, probably in the next quarter,” Lindsey said, in an interview on CNBC. “Inflation is eating into consumer spending power, they’re going to have to cut back,” he said. The former Fed governor also said the U.S. central bank was “nowhere close” on being able to control inflation.

Among serious commentators (of whom, there are no more than a half dozen), the prevailing view is that the Fed will have no choice. After having recklessly goosed up stock prices for the last 14 years, the Fed must now reckon with its mistakes and goose them down. It pushed down interest rates far too low (below zero!) for far too long (almost 14 years).

The phony and unnatural interest rates created a whole phony and unnatural economy that now depends on ultra-cheap credit. The ultra-cheap credit created a culture of rampant speculating and borrowing… which led to an Everest of debt, public and private – now about $87 trillion, or roughly $50 trillion more than in 2007.

With so much debt, investors, business, households and the government are desperate to keep interest rates low. To that end, the Fed has had to make more and more cash and credit available. It and other central banks added some $25 trillion in new money since the Wall Street bailout of 2008-2009.

All this easy credit and money printing has produced the inevitable inflation… made much worse by Covid shutdowns, trade barriers, and sanctions – especially against one of the world’s largest energy exporters, Russia.

All The World’s Central Bankers: And now… faced with double-digit inflation, what’s a poor central banker to do? He has no choice. Not in Europe. Not in Britain. And not in America. He has to take the knife between his teeth and climb the rigging. David Stockman: "The fools in the Eccles Building will have no choice but to throw on the monetary brakes far harder than now planned or expected during the next 8 months. That’s because the inflation menace will be in their face via the “incoming data” at 8-10% on a Y/Y basis or higher, while the negative GDP of recession will not show up until Q4 2022 or early next year."

All the world’s major central bankers – save for those in Russia, where the key lending rate is already 20% – are in the same boat. All followed the same course. All now find themselves on rough seas…and all must now batten down the hatches, take down the sails, and ride out the storm. That would be the reasonable thing to do. That is what investors should expect.

But investors are still sans-soucis. They are still comfortably ensconced in their deck chairs… enjoying the fading light and waiting for another drink. Whatever happens – earthquake… WWIII… plague – they still believe that Captain Powell will make sure that nothing bad happens to them. And you know what? They may be right. This brave Ahab… on the high seas of high finance… may be just mad enough, weak enough, or just plain dumb enough, to turn a very bad situation into an even worse one. More to come…"

"Massive Price Increases At Meijer! Empty Shelves Everywhere! - What's Next?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, AM 4/5/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Meijer! 
Empty Shelves Everywhere! - What's Next?"
"In today's vlog we are at Meijer and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"

"How It Really Is"

 

"What Is The 'Great Reset' And What Do The Globalists Actually Want?"

"What Is The 'Great Reset' And 
What Do The Globalists Actually Want?"
By Brandon Smith

"I first heard the phrase “Great Reset” way back in 2014. Christine Lagarde, who was head of the IMF at the time, was suddenly becoming very vocal about global centralization. It was an agenda that was generally only whispered about in the dark corners of institutional white papers and the secretive meetings of banking elites, but now these people were becoming rather loud about it.

Lagarde was doing a Q&A at the World Economic Forum and the notion of the “Reset” was very deliberately brought up; what the project entailed was vague, but the basic root of it was a dramatic shift away from the current economic, social and political models of the world into a globally centralized and integrated system – A “New World Order,” if you will…

It’s important to remember that we had just jumped through the fires of an international credit collapse which started in 2008 and had continued to cause uncertainty in markets for years. The central banks had dumped tens of trillions of dollars worth of stimulus into the system just to keep it on life support. Some of us in the alternative media believed that these actions were not meant to save the economy, only zombify the economy through currency devaluation and inflation. Not long down the road, this zombie creation would turn on us and try to eat us alive, and only the central bankers new exactly when this would occur.

Think of the crash of 2008 as Stage 1 of the Reset agenda; the globalists were getting cocky and were ready to unveil their plans to the public.

Lagarde’s discussion at the WEF was also held around the time that Klaus Schwab was introducing his 4th Industrial Revolution concept, which is a little more forward with what the globalists really want. He talks excitedly of a true “global society” and a world in which people turn to Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a better means of governance. He even suggests that laws would eventually be dictated by AI and that courts would be run by robots.

Of course, he admits that this cannot happen without a period of economic deconstruction in which people and governments will have to choose between sacrifice for the sake of stability or continued pain in the name of holding on to the “old ways.” Look at it this way: The Great Reset is the action or the chaos, and the 4th Industrial Revolution is the intended result or planned “order.” That is to say, it’s a new order created out of engineered chaos.

Yeah, it sounds like bad science fiction, but remember these are the people that enjoy the undivided attention of many of our political leaders and they rub elbows with the central bankers at the Federal Reserve. I’ll say it again: The proponents of the Great Reset and the 4th Industrial Revolution, who want to completely undermine and reconstitute our society and way of life, are close partners with our national leaders and the very bankers that could force such a reset to happen through a deliberate collapse.

The globalists have been trying to rebrand and repackage their New World Order agenda for many years, and the Reset was what they came up with. Rather than being innocuous sounding, the term threatens systemic upheaval and an erasure of the past. When you “reset” something it usually goes back to zero – A blank slate that the engineers can use to rewrite the code and the functions. But what does this really mean?

What do the globalists REALLY WANT? Here are the details, so far as I can prove or support with evidence, of what the “Great Reset” actually is and what programs they hope to enforce:

Total Global Economic Centralization: Some people might claim that we already have global economic centralization, but they don’t understand what this really means. While national central banks are all members of the IMF and the Bank for International Settlements and take their marching orders from these institutions, what the globalists want is open global governance of finance, probably through the IMF.

In other words, it’s not enough that they manipulate economies secretly by using national central banks as proxies; what they want is to stop hiding and to come out into the light as the magnanimous rulers they think they are. The ultimate goal of full centralization is to erase the very idea of free markets and to allow a handful of people to micromanage every aspect of trade and business. It’s not just about influence, it’s about economic empire. But in order to achieve a global central bank they must first implement a one world currency plan.

A One World Digital Currency System: The IMF has been talking about using their Special Drawing Rights basket as the foundation for a global currency for years (since at least the year 2000). Around a decade ago China started taking on trillions of dollars in debt just to qualify as a member of the SDR system, and the IMF has hinted that when all is said and done that system will go digital. All that is needed is the right kind of crisis to shock the public into compliance.

This was evident at the height of the covid pandemic lockdowns and the threat of economic disaster when globalist institutions began to suggest that the IMF’s SDR could be used as a safety net for nations, with strings attached, of course. But beyond the stresses of the pandemic there is a much bigger crisis; namely the stagflationary crisis now on our doorstep. With multiple national currencies in decline and the dollar’s world reserve status increasingly in question, I have no doubt that the globalists will take the opportunity to offer the public their digital currency as a solution.

The new system would be more like a phantom currency for a time. The SDR would be the glue or the backing while national currencies remain in circulation until the digital framework becomes pervasive. The IMF and the people behind it would become the defacto world central bank, with the power to steer the course of all national economies through a single currency mechanism.

On the micro-economic side, each and every individual would now be dependent on a digital currency or cryptocurrency which removes all privacy in trade. All transactions would be tracked, and by the very nature of blockchain technology and the digital ledger this would be required. The money elites wouldn’t have to explain the tracking, all they would have to say is “That’s how the technology functions; without the ledger it doesn’t work.”

A Global Social Credit System: The evil inherent in globalism was readily apparent during the recent lockdowns and the violent push for medical tyranny. Despite the fact that covid only had a median Infection Fatality Rate of only 0.27% according to dozens of official studies, the WEF contingent of politicians and world leaders were frothing at the mouth, proclaiming that the existence of covid gave them the right to take total control of people’s lives.

Klaus Schwab and the WEF happily announced that the pandemic was the beginning of the “Great Reset” and the 4th Industrial Revolution, stating that the covid crisis presented a perfect “opportunity” for change.

The vaccine passports were thankfully defeated by numerous conservative red states in the US, leading to the complete reversal of such policies across most of the western world. We were free for years while many blue states and other countries were facing authoritarianism and this caused a lot of problems for the globalists. It’s hard to institute a global medical dystopia when people around the world can look at the conservatives in the US and see that we are living just fine without the controls.

The vax passports need to be understood as a first step towards something else – The beginning of a massive social credit system much like the one being used in China right now. If you think cancel culture is a nightmare today, just think what would happen if the collectivist mob had the power to drop a review bomb on your social credit account and declare you to be untouchable? Imagine if they had the power to simply shut down your ability to get a job, to shop in grocery stores and even shut down access to your money? Without your compliance to the collective, access to normal survival necessities would be impossible.

This is what the globalists want, as they openly admitted at the start of the pandemic, and the vax passports would have been an introduction to that technocratic horror had we conservatives not stood our ground.

You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy By 2030: The “Sharing Economy” (also sometimes referenced in parallel with “Stakeholder Capitalism”) is a concept that has been making the rounds in the WEF for a few years now. The media has attempted at every turn to spread lies and disinformation claiming that the plan does not exist; but again, it is openly admitted.

The sharing economy is essentially a communistic economy, but distilled down to a bizarre minimalism even people who lived in the Soviet Union did not have to experience. The structure is described as a kind of commune based society in which people live in Section 8-style housing, with shared kitchens, shared bathrooms, and barely any privacy. All property is rented, or borrowed. All cars are borrowed and shared, most transit is mass transit, basic personal items such as computers, phones, and even cooking utensils might be shared or borrowed items. As the WEF says, you will own nothing. Being happy about it is another matter.

The argument for this kind of society is of course that “climate change” and the frailties of consumer economics demand that we reduce our living standards to near zero and abandon the sacred ideal of property ownership for the sake of the planet.

Set aside the fact that carbon based global warming is a farce. The world’s temperatures have only risen by 1 DEGREE CELSIUS in the span of a century, according to the NOAA. This was data that climate scientists had attempted to hide or gloss over for years, but now it is out there for everyone to see. There is no proof of man made global warming. None.

The globalists have been scheming to use environmentalism as an excuse for centralization since at least 1972, when the Club Of Rome published a treatise titled ‘The Limits To Growth’. Twenty years later they would publish a book titled ‘The First Global Revolution.’ In that document they specifically recommend using global warming as a vehicle:

“In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.”

The statement comes from Chapter 5 – "The Vacuum", which covers their position on the need for global government. The quote is relatively clear; a common enemy must be conjured in order to trick humanity into uniting under a single banner, and the elites see environmental catastrophe, caused by mankind itself, as the best possible motivator.

They present the solution of the shared economy concept as if it is a new and bold idea. What the globalists ultimately want for their Great Reset, however, is a tidal wave reversal from freedom and individual prosperity back to a very old manner of doing things, similar to ancient feudalism. You become a peasant working on land owned by the elites, or by the state, and you will never be allowed to own that land.

The only difference would be that in a feudal empire of the past peasants could not own land because of the class system. This time around, you won’t be allowed to own anything, including land, because wanting to own anything is “selfish” and destructive to the planet.

Total Information Control: The truth is a rare commodity these days, but nowhere near as rare as it will be if these elitists get what they want. The globalists are far more open about their agenda today than they have ever been before, and I suspect this is because they believe they will be able to rewrite the history of today’s events with impunity after the Reset unfolds. They think they will own the world of information and will be able to edit our cultural memory as they go.

The mainstream media calls all of this “conspiracy theory.” I call it conspiracy reality. It’s hard to deny openly spoken admissions by the globalists themselves, all they can do is try to spin the information as much as possible to keep the public on the fence in terms of what needs to be done, which is a purge of the globalists from our country and perhaps the entire world.

If we do not do this, there will come a time when nothing I say here is remembered and no evidence of the Reset plan will exist. The establishment will have eliminated all notions of it from written history, leaving only a fantasy tale of how the world collapsed and a small organization of “visionary” globalists saved it from oblivion through a new religion of centralization."

Gregory Mannarino, "Blackrock Warns: Expect Much Higher Inflation And Shortages"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 4/5/22:
"Blackrock Warns: 
Expect Much Higher Inflation And Shortages"

"Economic Market Snapshot 4/5/22"

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...
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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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the better I understand the guillotine."
- George Bernard Shaw
Oh yeah...
And now... The End Game...

Monday, April 4, 2022

"They’ve Secretly Raised Your Taxes"

"They’ve Secretly Raised Your Taxes"
by Jim Rickards

"Inflation is not a guessing game anymore; it’s here. Every time you buy gas at the pump or groceries at the supermarket or book a plane ticket, the price increases are staring you in the face. The problem is that inflation cannot be isolated. It’s not limited to what you pay to fill up your car, for example. Truckers have to pay the same higher prices for diesel fuel, which add to transportation costs and to the final prices of delivered goods. It’s a clear example of the ripple effect.

That much is clear. What is less clear are the thousands of ways that inflation hurts you that are invisible. The most important of these is that inflation is a tax. The government borrows dollars, and you earn dollars. Taxation is one way that governments take money from citizens to pay off government debt. But taxes are unpopular and hard to get approved by Congress.

Inflation works much better. It reduces your real income since the dollars you earn are worth less. And it reduces the government debt because the money the government owes is easier to repay for the same reason – the dollars are worth less. So inflation works the same as a tax increase except that you can’t see it and Congress doesn’t have to lift a finger. Nice, right?

Sleight of Hand: Another damaging effect of inflation has to do with the difference between nominal income and real income. Nominal income is the amount of money you make measured in dollars. Real income is the amount those dollars are actually worth when adjusted for inflation.

For example, your wages might have gone up 5% (that’s the latest annualized wage increase as of April 1, according to the Labor Department). That’s a nice gain, but with inflation of 7.9% (also the latest data we have), your real wages actually went down 2.9% (5.0 – 7.9 = -2.9). You got a raise in nominal terms, but you took a pay cut in real terms. Many people are not familiar with this simple formula for converting nominal gains to real gains. But everyone is familiar with how long their paycheck lasts.

More and more Americans are finding that by the time they pay the rent or mortgage, put gas in the car, buy groceries and pay some medical bills, they’re out of money. They’re waiting for the next paycheck. There’s nothing left over for a dinner out, a new pair of shoes or a visit with family members. The economic consequences of this decline in real incomes are huge. If you buy coffee at the grocery store instead of going to Starbucks or go jogging instead of paying a visit to the gym, then service and retail industries all around the country start to suffer. This can be followed by layoffs at some of those outlets and even more cuts in discretionary spending as the laid-off workers tighten their belts.

China Locks Down 26 Million in Shanghai: A lot of the inflation today comes from the supply side, not the demand side. It has to do with supply chain disruptions and the cascade of consequences from the economic sanctions because of the war in Ukraine. None of these situations will show any improvement in the short run. They may actually get worse, as the situation in China suggests…

"China is currently experiencing a severe outbreak of COVID. The reason for this is China’s badly flawed and ineffective zero COVID policy. When a case does emerge, they immediately shut down the surrounding area, quarantine everyone, test everyone, trace any contacts and send the infected to isolation camps for two weeks or longer.

When an outbreak spreads, they will lock down entire cities and ban all transportation to or from that city. This is happening in Shanghai now. The entire city of 26 million has been shut down. Citizens are being ordered to stay inside. Visits outside for food and water are severely limited.

Shanghai is one of the largest cities in the world and is adjacent to Ningbo, one of the largest container cargo ports in the world. With the latest lockdown, you can expect further supply chain disruptions. China’s policies are a drag on global growth and represent another disruption to global supply chains."

There’s nothing the Fed can do to stop the inflation because it’s coming from the supply side, which the Fed has no control over. Higher interest rates won’t increase the supply of oil. The Fed has no mandate to drill for oil or discover natural gas resources. The Fed is essentially helpless.

A Drop (of Oil) in the Bucket: To help lower gas prices, Biden plans to release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. But that will accomplish nothing at all. Here’s why…The U.S. uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day. So the 1 million barrel release from the reserve only adds about 5% to the supply. But it doesn’t really add anything to the supply because importers will simply reduce imports or domestic drillers will reduce output to equilibrate for the new oil. There never was an oil shortage in the U.S., so adding a new source of oil doesn’t alleviate a shortage that never existed. It simply causes some oil to be redirected to other buyers.

Oil is a global market. The price is set mainly on futures exchanges in London and New York. Those markets focus on a wide variety of market variables of which the release from the reserve is only one. In fact, global output is about 92 million barrels per day, so the U.S. reserve addition is only 1.08% of total output. That’s hardly enough to affect the world price one way or the other.

A Cheap Political Stunt: It’s also the case that U.S. refineries are not geared to process the type of oil in the reserve without significant modifications that take time. In short, the oil from the reserve does not convert easily to refined product and will have minimal impact on retail gas prices.

Finally, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is meant to be strategic. It’s not a short-term price manipulation tool; it’s meant to give the U.S. a cushion in the event of a war or natural disaster that directly affects the U.S. itself. Biden’s release will reduce the cushion and leave the U.S. more vulnerable to a true disaster. Biden’s release from the reserve will not affect the price at the pump, not affect the world price and reduce U.S. readiness. It’s a cheap and dangerous publicity stunt.

The bottom line is there is practically only one way for the Fed to stop the inflation. That’s by raising rates until they cause a recession. It’s a fair question whether the cure (recession) is worse than the disease (inflation). Since this is the incompetent Fed we’re talking about, we may even get both inflation and recession."