"All the economic signs point downward. We were just told that inflation has hit 8.5% and no one that buys anything believes that. There is a huge amount of FOMO when it comes to real estate. This is not just here in the states this is around the globe."
"Take risks! That is really what life is about. We must pursue our own happiness. Nobody has ever lived our lives; there are no guidelines. Trust your instincts. Accept nothing but the best. But then also look for it carefully. Don't allow it to slip between your fingers. Sometimes, good things come to us in a such a quiet fashion. And nothing comes complete. It is what we make of whatever we encounter that determines the outcome. What we choose to see, what we choose to save. And what we choose to remember. Never forget that all the love in your life is there, inside you, always."
"It was the essence of life to disbelieve in death for one's self, to act as if life would continue forever. And life had to act also as if little issues were big ones. To take a realistic attitude toward life and death meant that one lapsed into unreality. Into insanity. It was ironic that the only way to keep one's sanity was to ignore that one was in an insane world or to act as if the world were sane."
"The financial world is rapidly changing, and the countdown for the end of the dollar’s hegemony has effectively begun. As the West attempts to sanction Russia into surrender, the Russian government has started to trade commodities in roubles on the global market, and given that numerous countries rely on Russian exports, many nations are walking away from dollar-based transactions and toward a commodity-based financial system. In other words, that means our strategy to confront Russia has backfired, and we’re now in deep trouble. A commodity revolution has started, and the downfall of the dollar is being greatly accelerated.
In a very enlightening article recently published on GoldMoney.com, the financial expert Alasdair Macleod exposed that the end of the dollar-based system is being hastened by rising geopolitical tensions and trade restrictions imposed on Russia. According to Macleod, the West, led by the United States, is desperately trying to sanction Russia into economic submission, but so far it has only succeeded in pushing energy, commodity, and food prices significantly up, harming its own economy the most. In the US, inflation is already rampant, but in Europe, central banks will have to inflate their currencies to afford the rising prices. Meanwhile, Russia is linking the rouble to commodity prices backed by gold, and over the past two years, China has stockpiled tons of commodities and essential grains in anticipation of the consequences of the West’s inflationary measures, allowing its currency to rise against the dollar.
That is effectively enabling China and Russia not to go down the same path of the West’s inflating currencies. In fact, both countries are adopting a sounder money strategy to fulfill their goals of having stable prices and interest rates while Western nations continue to march in the opposite direction. Pure finance or finance based on fiat currencies is being rapidly replaced with commodity finance due to a simple matter of convenience. Foreign nations hold the US dollar in their reserves to be able to trade on the global market, but now they are now realizing that the American currency is becoming increasingly more volatile as inflation runs at the fastest pace in 40 years. Commodities pegged on gold, on the other hand, can be far more stable and grant more independence for these nations to trade on the global market.
How can we sanction the world’s most important producer of energy supplies and one of the biggest supplier of a wide range of commodities and raw materials, including grains and fertilizers, without causing damage to everyone else but the intended target? That’s the question our leaders should’ve asked themselves before imposing those restrictions. With two simple measures, linking the rouble to gold for domestic credit institutions and only accepting payments in rouble for energy supplies, the Russian government managed to accelerate the end of the fiat dollar era that has ruled the financial world since the suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971.
Given that Europe is the largest importer of Russian energy supplies, it either goes against its own restrictions and complies with the Russian government or struggles with insufficient alternatives. And the more the United States scrambles to enforce its authority, the greater the possibility of a split in the Western partnership. While Europe desperately needs Russian energy, the US doesn’t, so it is not willing to compromise. However, it is clear that Europe will not bow down to America’s orders. It simply can’t afford to support US policies unconditionally. That means that our greatest ally could just turn its back on us, and if or when that happens, other nations could follow the same move.
This financial conflict seems to be reaching a breaking point for the US dollar. It is simply not wise to hold on to a collapsing currency, especially when it is the main exchange currency of the global financial system, and foreign countries are starting to wake up to this fact and dump their dollar reserves. Our leaders have become too greedy to pay attention to the consequences, and now we are going to be left with a huge mess on our hands and decades of financial stress and social instability plaguing our country."
"Inflation Psychology and The Real Motive for War In Ukraine"
by Addison Wiggin
“I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation,
usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments.”
- F.A. Hayek
"We begin the week with a warning and a question. First, a quick look behind the curtain at The Wiggin Sessions. As you know, when the pandemic locked everyone down, I stayed in touch with the editors, publishers, writers and authors – a network I had built over nearly two decades as a financial publisher. Like everyone else, all these meetings were held via zoom. Many of them were recorded.
The lockdowns dragged on. One Friday night, on the rare occasion we were in the offices downtown, we got stranded because of a tornado warning… also a rare occasion in Baltimore City. What’s a writer to do during such a rare occasion? A colleague and I popped open a bottle of wine and started scribbling ideas on a whiteboard. “Why not share these zoom videos with a wider audience?” we asked ourselves... boom! The Wiggin Sessions were born.
Admittedly, it wasn’t all that dramatic at first. Although in some of those early sessions, you could have gotten a decent glimpse of my kitchen. Not long after, I retreated to a corner of my basement and assembled a makeshift studio.
Then, like a pig rooting for truffles, we started to venture further into the forest of internet memes and stick our snout deeper into the news cycle. Pardon the zoomorphic description. We’ve now hosted nearly one hundred of these interviews… and as you know have recently started posting them on YouTube and stripping the audio for a podcast. This week is officially episode #53 of The Wiggin Sessions. To celebrate, this morning, I printed out (yes, printed) an essay called “On Interviews… and learning the meaning of generosity through conversation.” In other words, I just decided this morning I had better know how to do this properly if I’m not going to waste your time.
Okay, I just had to get that off my chest. Wish me luck, as I wish you as well, moving forward. On to today’s warning and today’s question.
Last week, as you’re also likely aware, we chose to tackle the Fed’s ability to “nuke the economy” by simply “normalizing” interest rates to historical levels. We also looked at the myriad ways in which the U.S., Nato and the West have “poked the bear” in Eastern Europe for 30 years since the Warsaw Pact disabled itself in December 1991.
Our warning regards inflation and is simply this: beware “inflation psychology”. The phenomenon is summarized in the the Hustle like this:
Expectations for high inflation lead to 3 trends:
• Workers ask for raises to hedge against the rising prices they have experienced.
• Consumers accelerate purchases of goods to avoid higher prices in the future. Research has shown that households are 8% more likely to buy durable goods (cars, refrigerators, etc.) when they expect a bump in inflation.
• Businesses increase future prices after forecasting rising costs and robust consumer demand.
In other words, the perceived need for a higher salary and for higher prices to withstand future inflation leads to higher prices and higher salaries. And inflation keeps churning on.
The last great inflationary cycle we experienced in the U.S. was back in the 1970s – more precisely it began during the Great Society spending spree of the Johnson administration in 1965. And didn’t end until the much ballyhooed Fed Chair Paul Volcker hiked interest rates up in the 20% range 16 years later. “The deeper inflationary psychology takes hold,” the Hustle surmises, “the harder it is to shake off and the longer the cycle continues.”
Root causes of our current our current inflationary psychosis as we’ve been wont to express here in these missives: supply chain disruptions (courtesy pandemic lockdowns among other things); higher than expected demand (goosed by federal gimmie/stimmie checks and historically significant, and radically experimental, zero-to-negative interest rates); and for the trifecta an “unexpected” invasion of Ukraine by its larger Eastern cousin.
Okay, let’s file away this inflation psychosis idea for later this week when we discuss the world’s first global “social media war” and “network swarm” with Global Guerilla, John Robb.
As for today’s question, here goes: How is it that while Ukraine’s president, Vlodimir Zalenskyy, has been around the world in 46 six days (via zoom) begging for sanctions against the Russians, the Ukrainian state energy corporation, Naftogaz, has continue to pocket billions in transport fees from Russian gas passing through their pipelines en route to Germany? The answer involves a trillion plus cubic meters of natural gas off the coast of Odessa in the Black Sea. An area once remembered by Vladimir Putin fondly as the international waters of the USSR.
And inquire with today’s Wiggin Sessions guest, James West of the Midas Letter, if not Nazi’s or Nato, what is the real Russian motivation for invading the Ukraine? Why is the CRB Index screaming “imminent financial mayhem”? Listen to our Wiggin Sessions interview with James West, here:
"Since its inception in 1990, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’ (FAO) Food Price Index has never been higher than it was in February, compliments of endless money printing and many decades of corrupt monetary policy. The corporate-controlled media, however, is blaming Vladimir Putin as it always does whenever the financial terrorists find themselves in another bind.
Food inflation is soaring around the world by about 12.6 percent monthly, at this point, and the only thing the talking heads in the media are allowed to say is that it’s Russia’s fault for invading Ukraine. At 12.6 percent monthly, food prices will double every six months. This will lead to widespread food riots, famine and food scarcity in almost every nation, including the USA.
Never mind the fact that inflation has been on a steady upward trajectory for many years, or the fact that governments’ Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) plandemic tyranny destroyed the supply chain. No, just make Putin the punching bag, as usual.
According to the latest reports, prices for food commodities like grains and vegetable oils reached their highest levels ever in February. And ABC News claims that this is because of “Russia’s war in Ukraine,” and not because of central banks like the Federal Reserve that have been printing fiat currency like crazy over the past several years.
“The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization said its Food Price Index, which tracks monthly changes in international prices for a basket of commodities, averaged 159.3 points last month, up 12.6% from February,” ABC further reported.
Will the world ever wake up to the reality of financial terrorism and how it destroys economies?A 17.1 percent rise in grain prices is also being blamed on the war in Ukraine, which has become something of a catch-net for every bad thing that happens these days. “This is really remarkable,” said Josef Schmidhuber, deputy director of FAO’s market and trade division, about the current inflationary climate. “Clearly, these very high prices for food require urgent action.”
The worst-hit commodity is vegetable oils, which rose 23.2 percent over the past month. Ukraine is the world’s leading exporter of sunflower oil while Russia holds the second spot, so it is easy for the overlords to blame the conflict between these countries as the culprit. “There is, of course, a massive supply disruption, and that massive supply disruption from the Black Sea region has fueled prices for vegetable oil,” Schmidhuber further told reporters in Geneva.
Schmidhuber says he cannot calculate specifically the exact degree to which the war is causing these financial problems, and that “logistical factors” are also playing a role, as are poor weather conditions in some countries. “Essentially, there are no exports through the Black Sea, and exports through the Baltics is practically also coming to an end,” he explained.
A big red flag that points to financial terrorism as Enemy No. 1 in all this is the fact that the globalists have been trying to crush decentralized cryptocurrency ever since Putin invaded Ukraine, claiming that he might try to “evade” banking sanctions if the crypto-sphere is not quickly swept into the clutches of the existing financial paradigm.
In other words, the globalist central bankers do not want people migrating away from their fiat currency Ponzi schemes and into crypto, so they are using Putin as their scapegoat to claim that crypto needs to be destroyed in order to keep everyone “safe” against the war, or something. “For me, the most depressing thing is not bankers and politicians,” wrote someone at Natural News about the situation. “I expect them to be evil, just like I expect cockroaches to be cockroaches.”
“No, the most depressing thing is the stupidity of average people, who only think what their cell phones tell them to think. Just as the peasants supported vax mandates because ‘Covid,’ the peasants now support tyranny because ‘Ukraine.'”
"What's happening at the center of spiral galaxy NGC 5643? A swirling disk of stars and gas, NGC 5643's appearance is dominated by blue spiral arms and brown dust, as shown in the featured image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The core of this active galaxy glows brightly in radio waves and X-rays where twin jets have been found.
An unusual central glow makes NGC 5643 one of the closest examples of the Seyfert class of galaxies, where vast amounts of glowing gas are thought to be falling into a central massive black hole. NGC 5643, is a relatively close 55 million light years away, spans about 100 thousand light years across, and can be seen with a small telescope towards the constellation of the Wolf (Lupus)."
“There was a moment yesterday evening when the elements conspired to evoke these few lines, spoken by Macbeth:
“Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse.
The fading light. The crows gliding down the fields to the trees in Ballybeg:
Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse.”
It’s all there, in those few lines – the mysterious power of poetry to infuse the world with meaning, to anoint the world with a transforming grace. One could spend an hour picking those lines apart, syntax and sound, sense and alliteration. The t’s of light thickening, tongue against the teeth. The alar w’s making wing. The owl eyes of the double o’s. The d’s nodding into slumber - day, droop, drowse.
The poet Howard Nemerov says of poetry that it “works on the very surface of the eye, that thin, unyielding wall of liquid between mind and world, where somehow, mysteriously, the patterns formed by electrical storms assaulting the retina become things and the thought of things and the names of things and the relations supposed between thing.” It works too in the mouth, in the physical act of speech - tongue, teeth, those d’s gliding deeper into the darkness of the throat.
I stand in the gloaming garden and the black birds glide, down, down to Ballybeg, and I marvel that with so few syllables Shakespeare can - across the centuries - teach me how to see.”
"Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey, that reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we live it. After all, Number One, we're only mortal."
"Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi was a 13th century Afghan poet and philosopher who heavily influenced both eastern and western poetry. His poetry is divided into categories: the quatrains and odes of the "Divan," the six books the "Masnavi," the discourses, the letters and the "Six Sermons." Rumi's major poetic work is "Matnawiye Ma'nawi," a six-volume poem, considered by many literary critics to be one of the greatest works of mystical poetry ever written. Rumi's prose works included "Fihi Ma Fihi," "Majalese Sab'a" and "Maktubat." His prose work largely contains sermons and lectures given by Rumi to his disciples and family members. Following Rumi's death, his followers founded the Mevlevi Order, also known as the "Whirling Dervishes."
"A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet for sale, who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing, cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. "
"It is truly astounding to watch so many good, well-meaning people fall for the media’s Ukraine narrative. “Putin is a madman, a butcher and a war criminal who has irrationally invaded a peaceful neighbor that was just minding its own business” runs the storyline that is being pounded into our heads twenty-four hours a day.
Even though Vladimir Putin may not be the nicest man in the world, none of the presently peddled Ukraine narrative is true. In fact, the truth is the opposite of what is being said. Simply put, the Ukraine narrative bears all the hallmarks of another coordinated misinformation campaign. Those who are falling for it need to ask themselves why they should trust anything put out by our thoroughly corrupt corporate media given their consistent record of lying, distortion, and all-around treachery.
The evidence of the last several years makes it clear beyond any doubt that the American media are nothing but agents of fake news and misinformation. Do you want some examples of the misinformation campaigns they have run?
Do you remember the Russian collusion scandal? They accused Donald Trump of partnering with the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton. None of it turned out to be even remotely true, yet they fanned the flames of this fake story for years. It turns out that it was actually Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind this completely false tale. To date the media has issued no correction or apology.
Do you remember the media’s claim that Hunter Biden’s laptop was a product of the Russian disinformation campaign? They ran this false story even though they knew very well that the drive was genuine, since it had been carefully authenticated by the New York Post which first reported on the story. The New York Post made authentication evidence available for everyone to see. The mainstream media, however, chose to look the other way. Instead, they solicited the help of fifty-one unscrupulous FBI, CIA and national security operatives who falsely implied that the hard drive was a product Russian disinformation.
Needlessly, to say it is now widely acknowledged that the hard drive is genuine, a fact which has been noted even by such hyper partisan outfits as the New York Times and the Washington Post. The refusal of the media to report on the hard drive with the collaboration of national security operatives constituted great treachery, since the hard drive contained extensive evidence of the criminality on the part of the Biden family.
Mark Levin talks about the evidence of the Bidens’
crimes and corruption found on Hunter Biden’s hard drive.
If the hard drive had been truthfully reported on by the state media, Joe Biden could have never become president of the United States. He would face criminal prosecution instead. And yet having evidence of Biden’s deep corruption, the mainstream media accorded him fawning coverage and portrayed him as an honest politician and a good man.
Watch Rudy Giuliani discuss the crimes of the Biden family.
Hunter Biden’s hard drive constitutes the greatest political scandal in US history. The censorship of this story during the 2020 election campaign is a stunning example of journalistic malfeasance.
And what the media’s narrative about Rachel Levine? This is a biological man who has lived most of his life as such – marrying a woman and fathering children by her. But the media claim that he is now a woman. This is obviously not true, since a man cannot be a woman. Everybody sees and knows this and yet the media insists on the falsehood.
Such brazen lying is one of the most egregious forms of gaslighting and journalistic malpractice seen to date. To add an injustice to the lie, USA TODAY named Levine one of the top twelve women in America. By this act they demeaned and humiliated real women. They let a man usurp an honor that should have rightfully gone to a deserving woman.
Do you remember the stories about Covid and the vaccines? Do you remember the narrative that the vaccines were 95 percent effective and perfectly safe? Do you remember the claim that if you get the vaccine, you will not get Covid? Do you remember the claim of “a pandemic of the unvaccinated”? Do you remember the story of Dr. Fauci as a selfless public servant who only cares about public health? (See Robert Kennedy’s book here for a dose of truth on this one.)
Well, all of it turned out to be lies. It was all fake stories and disinformation propaganda from beginning to end.
We could go on and on and on. But this should suffice to show what those who work for the corporate media are all about. These people are professional liars and gaslighters. They are some of the most hardened deceivers around. They lie into the public’s eyes with a straight face. They are subverters of reality who run constant interference against truth. They are perjurers devoid of conscience. How can, then, anybody trust what they say? Given their record, it is safe to assume that the truth is one-hundred-and-eighty-degree opposite of what they claim.
Do you remember their recent heroes? They were people like George Floyd and Joe Biden. Do you remember how they cried with joy at CNN when they saw Joe Biden being inaugurated even though they knew what a corrupt person he was?
Today the same people who lionized George Floyd – who, as a matter of record, was a career criminal, drug addict and porn actor – lionize Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Don’t you think there is something suspicious about this?
When someone becomes the darling of the progressive woke left and is lionized by the likes of CNN, MSNBC, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of the gaslighting media, we should immediately doubt the story. And yet so many good people have fallen for it. The inability of the public to learn from the media’s glaring record of mendacity is truly mind-boggling.
The Ukraine narrative is pure propaganda and misinformation that belongs to the same category of intentional deception as the tales of the safe and effective vaccines, honest Joe Biden, of men being women, the Russian collusion and many others. This is what the great Paul Craig Roberts had to say about our present situation:
"Just as everything you were told about Covid by the media and health and government officials was false, so is everything you have been told by the same propagandistic liars about Ukraine. Americans have had nothing but lies since the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy, of his brother, US Senator Robert Kennedy President-in-Waiting, Martin Luther King, the Vietnam war, 9/11, Saddam Hessein’s nonexistent “weapons of mass destruction,” Assad’s “use of chemical weapons,” Iranian nukes, the extraordinary lies about Kaddafi, Covid pandemic, Russian invasions. The entire Western World lives in The Matrix, a world created by propaganda. The vast majority of people in the West have no idea of the reality in which they live. This makes them impotent and completely unable to protect their freedom. They are sitting ducks for tyranny which is fast enclosing around them."
Roberts is right on the money. We are in a deep and dangerous predicament due to the fact that large portions of the public have been thoroughly brainwashed by the scheming corporate media. If you want to truly educate yourself about who is responsible for the Ukrainian crisis, we suggest that you watch a couple of videos by brilliant and honest men who know what they are talking about.
Below is a 2015 lecture by Professor John Mearsheimer who is one of the most distinguished political scientists in the world. This presentation was given more than six years before the start of the presently unfolding Ukrainian conflict. In it Professor Mearsheimer uncannily predicts what was bound to happen to Ukraine. This is what he said at the time:
“What is going on here is that the West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.” In the course of his talk, Professor Mearsheimer explains the underlying roots and causes of the war that is now unfolding in Ukraine. The whole video is one hour and fourteen minutes long, but you only need to watch the first forty-six minutes which cover Prof. Mearsheimer’s talk (the remainder is a question-and-answer session).
Next is a Zoom talk given by Jim Rickards who is one of the most astute experts on geopolitics today. He is a lawyer, best-selling author and investor. Rickards is an advisor on capital markets to the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. You can read his biography here. Rickards’ excellent talk on the Ukrainian crisis is less than 24 minutes long.
Unlike the lying, mendacious media who constantly subvert reality by running one brazen misinformation campaign after another, these men say the truth about the Ukrainian situation. Listen to what they have to say and learn the truth. And never again believe what the perfidious deceivers in the legacy media say about anything."
“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith
“If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
“The bewildered herd is a problem. We've got to prevent their roar and trampling. We've got to distract them. They should be watching the Superbowl or sitcoms or violent movies. Every once in a while you call on them to chant meaningless slogans like "Support our troops!" You've got to keep them pretty scared, because unless they're properly scared and frightened of all kinds of devils that are going to destroy them from outside or inside or somewhere, they may start to think, which is very dangerous, because they're not competent to think. Therefore it's important to distract them and marginalize them.”
If Production Stops Humanity Has Nothing To Eat 'In 90 Days'”
by Michael Snyder
"We are far closer to a potential global cataclysm than most people would dare to imagine. Right now, leaders from all across the political spectrum are openly warning us that a worldwide food crisis is coming. But when people in the western world hear of such warnings, most of them assume that it will just be something that affects poor people in Africa or Asia. Unfortunately, that will not be the case this time around. We truly are in unprecedented territory, and we are going to see things happen in the months ahead that once would have been absolutely unthinkable.
Global hunger had already been steadily rising for the past couple of years due to the COVID pandemic, and now a confluence of events here in 2022 threatens to create a true global nightmare. At this moment, we are still eating food that was previously grown, but it is the food that will not be grown in the months ahead that will be the real problem. Because the truth is that we do not have much of a buffer to work with at all.
David Friedberg is an “early Google executive who started the farming insurance company Climate Corporation”, and he just told the All-In podcast that the Earth operates on “a 90-day food supply”… “The whole planet Earth operates a 90-day food supply, that means that once we stop making food, humans run out of food in 90 days.” It is estimated that approximately 7.9 billion people currently live on the planet, and feeding everyone is a real challenge even if everything goes perfectly.
Unfortunately, global conditions have been much less than perfect for the past couple of years, and Friedberg says that the new global energy crisis has pushed the cost of key fertilizer components to levels that are absolutely insane… “The price of nitrogen has gone from $200 to $1,000, the price in potassium has gone from $200 to $700, and the price of phosphorus has gone from $250 to $700. So now it is so expensive to grow a crop, that a lot of farmers around the world are pulling acres out of production. So they’re going to grow less this year than they would have otherwise because it is so expensive and they can not access fertilizer,” he explained. “Food supplies are going to go down and it is going to be catastrophic.”
Many farmers all over the world will try to grow food without fertilizer this year, but that will result in a whole lot less food being grown. In one of his latest videos, Chris Martenson compared rice plants that were grown with phosphorus to rice plants that were not given any phosphorus. I was absolutely blown away by the difference.
As global food production drops precipitously, there simply will not be enough food for everyone in the months ahead. Of course the wealthy nations will buy up what is available, driving up prices in the process, and the poorer nations will be left out in the cold.
In fact, this is already starting to happen. In March, the global price of food rose at the fastest monthly pace ever recorded…"March’s food price index from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) printed 159.3 points in March, up 19.15 points from February, when it had already reached record highs. The index was up 33.6% from the same time last year."
The March rise in food prices is a stunning 12.64% MoM – almost double the previous record monthly surge…If you are looking for “red flags”, you just found one. Food riots have already begun in some parts of the globe. For example, you can see a clip from the rioting in Peru right here. In the months ahead, it is only going to get worse.
Thanks to the war in Ukraine, the price of wheat was up almost 20 percent last month alone…"The war has helped push cereal prices up 17% over the past month with the closure of ports throttling wheat and maize exports from Ukraine. Russian exports have also been slowed by financial and shipping problems. World wheat prices soared by 19.7% during March, while maize prices posted a 19.1% month-on-month increase, hitting a record high along with those of barley and sorghum."
As I have discussed perviously, Russia and Ukraine normally export enormous amounts of food to the rest of the planet. But that won’t be the case this year. Sadly, it is being projected that corn production in Ukraine will be cut by more than half in 2022… "Ukraine is one of the world’s top exporters of corn, sunflower oil, and wheat. Disruptions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have stoked fears the war-torn country could experience a 50% decline in crop output this year, according to Bloomberg. Forecast data from ag expert UkrAgroConsult show Ukraine’s corn output could be as low as 19 million tons, about half of last year’s 41 million tons." And the Ukrainians have already announced that they won’t be exporting any of their production at all this year because they need it to feed their own population during the war.
Here in the United States, the bird flu pandemic continues to escalate, and as a result the price of eggs has more than doubled in recent weeks…A deadly and highly infectious avian flu is forcing US farmers to kill millions of egg-laying hens, reducing the country’s egg supply and driving up prices. On Thursday, retailers paid between $2.80 and $2.89 for a dozen large grade A white eggs in the Midwest, according to the USDA’s daily Midwest regional egg report. That’s more than double the roughly $1.25 they cost in March, according to data compiled by Brian Earnest, lead protein industry analyst at Cobank, which provides financial services to agribusiness."
That is extremely alarming. So what is going to happen if this pandemic continues to wipe out millions of chickens every month? Meanwhile, certain shortages that have been simmering for a long time are now reaching critical levels. For example, Walgreens has announced that it is going to start rationing baby formula…"A national shortage of baby formula brought on by pandemic-related supply-chain issues has forced US retailers such as Walgreens to ration the all-important product. The company – the second-largest pharmacy store chain in the United States behind CVS – said Friday that amid the supply-chain crunch, it is limiting customers to three infant and toddler formula product purchases at a time, at its 9,021 US locations."
This wasn’t supposed to happen. According to the optimists, things were supposed to be getting back to normal by this point. But instead things are getting even worse. According to the Daily Mail, “29 percent of all top-selling formulas are out of stock at stores across the nation” right now. Unfortunately, this is just the beginning.
Everyone agrees that the global food crisis is going to intensify in the months ahead, and David Friedberg is trying to warn us about what could happen if widespread panic sets in…“I don’t know about death, there will be famine. Famine is to be short of calories. There will be strategic reserves released, but it won’t be enough. We won’t have enough. The way supply chains are set up, there will not be enough,” he said. “As you know with any market, when there is scarcity, people come in and buy at a faster pace. So this is a market dynamic. It is not like people are physically hoarding loaves of bread, but commodity traders, countries, strategic reserves start buying up what they can get to prepare for the famine… prices go even higher and it kicks other people out of the market. The whole thing gets ugly fast.”
We have been warned over and over again that this was coming, and now it is here. You may have noticed that my articles have been longer than usual lately, and that is because there is so much more information that I need to share with you each day.We truly are entering a full-blown planetary emergency, and I am trying to do my best to sound the alarm. Unfortunately, most of the population is still not taking this crisis seriously. So many people out there are fully convinced that they will always be able to rely on the system, and a lot of them will continue to believe that even as the system literally collapses all around them."
San Martin, Argentina - "A quick update from the ranch: “Carlos was murdered,” said our informant. “Because the Originarios want to take over the valley. “ Speaking to us behind closed doors, in a dusty storeroom… “His wife had hooked up with ‘Fat Mary.’ She was going to move in next to them. They were building another house for her. The only reason she’s not there now is because her son got struck by a car; he’s in the hospital in a coma. Otherwise, she’d already be living there…”
Our head swirled and ached. Too many issues to deal with. We doubt that Carlos was murdered. But we don’t know what happened. This farm is like nothing we’ve ever had to deal with. We are meant to be judge, accountant, priest, social worker, engineer, banker – and yet, we have neither the authority, nor the expertise, to do any of these things. The Originarios keep attacking, encroaching, squatting, building houses, stealing water and rustling cattle… And more and more, this looks like a battle we will lose.
Lost Causes: Wars are hard to win; often, they’re not worth fighting. During the Cold War, for example, a candidate for prime minister of Denmark came up with a novel and refreshing idea. He proposed to replace the entire defense budget with a single recording – ‘We surrender’ – in Russian.
But now we have another war. And our blood is up. This is no time to wave the white flag. Here’s Ron Estes: "The international community has rarely been as united as it is today to apply sanctions against Russia for its invasion and occupation of sovereign Ukrainian territory."
Oh yeah? The Financial Times reports: "Two weeks after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine, South African president Cyril Ramaphosa held a phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. On the same day, European leaders meeting in Versailles warned democracy itself was at stake. Yet Ramaphosa struck a very different tone. “Thanking His Excellency President Vladimir Putin for taking my call today, so I could gain an understanding of the situation that was unfolding between Russia and Ukraine,” he wrote on Twitter. Ramaphosa, who has blamed Nato expansion for the war, said Putin “appreciated our balanced approach”."
There is nothing ‘balanced’ about the US approach… or its media accounts. The Ukraine and Russia have lived cheek by jowl for centuries… sharing a similar Slavic language… a similar culture… and very similar politics. Both were parts of the Soviet Union for 70 years… of which many leaders – Nikita Krushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and Konstantin Chernenko – were Ukrainian, not Russian. So too were many of its jailers, its soldiers, and its executioners. During WWII, when the Nazis invaded, many Ukrainians took the German side, collaborating with the Wehrmacht and even surpassing the SS in its viciousness towards the Jews.
But mirabile dictu… the Ukrainians have all been bleached white by the Western press. We see the photos of the ‘freedom fighters’… and their poor families, driven from their homes. We are invited to mourn the dead Ukrainians as if they were dear friends. But when we are told of Russian casualties, it is with a tone of delight. Ukrainian lives matter; Russian lives don’t.
Psychic Satisfaction: There are good guys. And bad guys. Black and white. Saints and sinners. We don’t wonder that the Russians are devils; the surprise is that the Ukrainians – who have so much in common with their Russian cousins – have all sprouted wings. It must be one of the most dramatic redemptions in history.
How come most of the world’s people – China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Brazil – are either on the other side… or neutral? How come they have refused to join the crusade? Even in the “west” support for America’s sanction war is more bluff and bluster than reality. Here’s ‘RealityCheck:’"Is the European Union Really Standing with Ukraine?" "Europe’s purchase of Russian energy supplies since it invaded Ukraine: $38 billion. Amount of European Union aid to Ukraine to help it resist the Russian invasion: $1.09 billion.
We have no insight into which side God is on… or whose victory would make the world a better place. We’d be just as happy to see both sides lose. Because, Tolstoy was mostly right; war is a scam: "The Government and all those of the upper classes near the Government who live by other people’s work, need some means of dominating the workers, and find this means in the control of the army. Defense against foreign enemies is only an excuse. The German Government frightens its subjects about the Russians and the French; the French Government frightens its people about the Germans; the Russian Government frightens its people about the French and the Germans; and that is the way with all Governments... They stir up their own people and some foreign Government, and then pretend that for the well-being, or the defense, of their people they must declare war: which again brings profit only to generals, officers, officials, merchants, and, in general, to the rich. In reality war is an inevitable result of the existence of armies; and armies are only needed by Governments to dominate their own working classes."
Tolstoy overlooks the great joy and pride the working classes get out of seeing their boys kick foreign butt. It brings them a psychic satisfaction that is hard to measure. And now, goaded by their ‘upper classes,’ they cheer on the Ukrainians as if it were the home town in the SuperBowl. But war is no game. And the sanctions war is no more likely to end well than the wars in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. More to come…"
"Have you stopped to ask yourself: what exactly are the USA’s interests in Ukraine? The answer: just about none whatsoever if you discount all the effort and capital expended there the past decade to make it a problem for our designated hobgoblin, Russia. During these eight years Ukraine was an ATM for “Joe Biden’s” family, an inconvenient embarrassment for the US State Department, which has not been able to cover it up.
In fact, their first attempt to do so - the seditious maneuvers leading to Trump impeachment no. 1 - only shined a light onto the dishonest activities of US Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and her State Department colleagues, in collusion with George Soros’s Atlantic Council, to conceal their involvement in Ukraine’s corrupt political affairs. This gang included agent provocateur’s rotating in-and-out of government such as Jake Sullivan and Anthony Blinken, now the two top foreign policy officers in “Joe Biden’s” government (National Security Advisor and Secretary of State).
Donald Trump enabled more mischief by sending what he proudly called “lethal aid” in the form of Stinger missiles and other arms to Ukraine in a foolish attempt to out-hawk his predecessor, Mr. Obama, whose main weapon against Ukraine was Vice-president Biden and his grifting family. Poor Mr. Trump apparently had to do something to prove that he was not “Putin’s puppet,” and that something was to give Ukraine tacit permission to bombard the breakaway Donbas region on Russia’s border. Was that supposed to not have consequences?
Throughout all this, NATO has acted as a conduit for arming and training a 400,000-troop Ukrainian army, a violation of several formal agreements between Russia and the West. NATO, otherwise, does not have the will, or even the means, to engage militarily with Russia. And America, at the head of NATO, has so far refrained from starting World War Three by way of sending US troops or war-planes into Ukraine. So, Russia has gone about the plodding business of neutralizing Ukraine’s trouble-seeking military and rearranging the map so that Ukraine won’t be able to act as a proxy antagonist in America’s ill-conceived campaign to destroy Mr. Putin and his country.
The operation will probably end this month. My guess is that Mr. Zelensky will be allowed to remain president of what remains on the map, minus Donbas and the region along the Black Sea coast from Mariupol to Odessa. Mr. Zelensky will not have a functioning military to make trouble with. Other patches of Western Ukraine may be distributed among Poland, Moldova, Romania, and Hungary, leaving a large rump of Ukraine between Lvov and the Dnieper River devoted mostly to the growing of wheat. A stable, agricultural Ukraine will be a benefit to a hungry world, while it will no longer be in a position to launch hostilities or be of much use as a money-laundering facility. In short, with some luck, Ukraine will cease to be a threat to world peace.
Ukraine may have been “Joe Biden’s” last opportunity to screw things up on the world scene. As the military conflict resolves, Ukraine can’t be used by the White House as a shield to divert America’s attention from the political cancer of Biden family corruption, and the systemic illness of the nation’s institutions. Merrick Garland may not be able to contain the open case against Hunter Biden to mere rinky-dink tax violations - and if he tries to limit the US Attorneys in charge of the case, he will be setting himself up for an obstruction of justice rap some months from now. The laptop is out now, too many people have copies of the hard drive, and some are working diligently to make the mess of it more easily searchable. So, expect much more to come.
It won’t be easy for the Democratic Party to get rid of “Joe Biden.” Nobody can feature Kamala Harris in the oval office, and were she to somehow gracefully remove herself from the scene, next-in-line would be Nancy Pelosi who, in addition to being long-in-the-tooth, seems to be literally drunk half the time in her public appearances. And behind her: Patrick Leahy, Senate President Pro Tem, who is nearly as senile and incoherent as “Joe Biden.”
Lots of other spooky things are churning meanwhile in the zeitgeist. Overnight, with his blundering sanctions, “Joe Biden” killed the little credibility left in the shreds of Bretton Woods and gave a green light for Russia to start a world-wide move to gold-backed currencies. That could easily turn the current US dollar inflation from an annualized 8 percent to a runaway hyperinflation, where prices double in weeks or days. It’s becoming ever clearer that special counsel John Durham means business and many a swamp creature must be quivering in its burrow awaiting indictment. The controversy over the 2020 election will prove to be not as over as many have hoped and imagined. And we await developments on the after-effects of all those vaxxes and boosters carried out all over Western Civ. These dangerous currents amount to a huge riptide in global events that will carry many people and whole societies out to sea."
"We have all seen it. One bank after another has a warning for us about the economy and inflation. They are trying to be novel and telling us what we are headed for. This is great, but nothing compares to what real people are experiencing and the economic downturns that they are living through."
"In today's vlog we are at Walmart 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!"
"Peter Schiff talks about rising inflation, painful cost of living,
wiped out middle class."
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Full screen recommended.
Gerald Celente, Peter Schiff,
"Economy Headed for Dramatic Collapse, Prepare Now"
"Peter Schiff, the chief economist at Euro Pacific Capital, told Gerald Celente in an interview published Thursday that Americans need to be prepared for a “dramatic collapse” of the economy. “Interest rates are going substantially higher from here. They’re still much too low,” he said. “We’re now kind of approaching three percent yields on U.S. treasuries, we’re not quite there yet.”
"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."
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
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