Thursday, June 2, 2022

Robert Gore, "Reckoning With Insanity," Part Two

"Reckoning With Insanity," Part Two
by Robert Gore

"The Russian military doesn’t do shock and awe. It does grind, advance... and win. Contrary to Western propaganda, it is well on its way to achieving its objectives in Ukraine. In what looks like a watershed moment, most of the holdouts at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol recently surrendered. (The New York Times couldn’t bring itself to use the term “surrender” in its account of the capitulation.) This gives Russia a land corridor on the Black Sea from southwestern Russia to the Crimean Peninsula.

Left to their own devices the Russians and Ukrainians would eventually reach an agreement that leaves eastern and southern Ukraine in Russia’s hands or closely aligned with it as one or more autonomous states, with pledges from what remained of Ukraine not to join NATO or station nuclear weapons on its territory. Some such resolution was available before the war began. Facts on the ground mean it would now be more far more favorable to Russia than it would have been if war had never started. The war may cost Ukraine direct access to the Black Sea.

The $40 billion war appropriation indicates that the U.S. has no intention of leaving Ukraine and Russia to their own devices. Instead, the U.S. wants to promote a long Ukrainian insurgency that drains Russia politically and economically and in the best of all possible worlds, topples Putin. The concern has been expressed that backed into a corner, madman Putin might then take the conflict nuclear. The more pressing concern: that is the outcome America’s madmen and madwomen want.  A generally unrecognized possibility (in the Western media) is that it could be the American contingent who find themselves backed into a corner.

The U.S. may get its Ukrainian quagmire, but it would be a quagmire for both sides, with all sorts of unintended consequences and ramifications. Is the Biden administration adroit enough to create a tar baby for the Russians without getting itself stuck? Is the Biden administration adroit enough to turn on the White House’s Christmas tree lights? As it became clear that Vietnam was a quagmire, some advocated a nuclear strike on North Vietnam. Finding itself stuck, whoever makes the decisions may decide, unlike the Vietnam experience, that nuclear escalation, either outright or in response to a false flag, is just the answer for the situation.

That danger is heightened by the obvious boomerang of the sanctions imposed on Russia. A leading exporter of grains, oil, natural gas, and minerals, the sanctions and Western fiat debt creation have jacked up the prices Russia receives and left the nation with large current account surpluses. Linking the ruble to gold and insisting on payment in rubles were adroit moves, and the ruble’s exchange value is now higher than it was before Russia invaded Ukraine. By population most of the rest of the world, including China and India, are either actively supporting Russia or refusing to align with the U.S. bloc.

Cutting themselves off from Russian exports, the U.S. and Europe are scrambling for substitutes that in some cases are unavailable at any price and in other cases present problems of quality, reliability of delivery, or suitability for existing infrastructure. For instance, refineries can’t take just any old oil. They are built for certain grades, a fact to which Western policymakers seem oblivious. Rising prices present a host of real economy problems, including compressed margins, that are being reflected in sinking Western stock and bond markets as stagflation looms.

Counterproductive is not a strong enough adjective for Western moves, they’ve been suicidal. If the goal was to force an existential choice on Putin, they may instead force on existential moment on all of us, about which we’ll have no choice. Amidst crashing economies and financial markets, sky-high unemployment, civil unrest, debt funding unavailable or available only at ruinous interest rates, fiat currencies reaching their intrinsic value—zero—and war raging that has leapt its borders in Ukraine and spread out in all directions, can it be said with certainly that our cornered rulers wouldn’t push the nuclear button?

Advocates of nuclear warfare usually talk of “tactical” nuclear weapons - just another bomb in the arsenal. The enemy would supposedly either surrender after their use or limit its counterstrike to similar bombs. The U.S. does have a low-yield nuclear bomb, the B61-3, whose blast can be limited to .3 kilotons, the energy release of 300 tons of TNT. That’s one-fiftieth of the 15-kiloton yield that destroyed Hiroshima.

However, the yield on the B61-3 can be “dialed-up” to 170 kilotons, over 11 times the Hiroshima bomb’s yield, and the U.S.’s highest yielding bomb is 1200 kilotons, 1.2 megatons, 80 times the Hiroshima bomb’s yield. The U.S. tested a 15 megaton bomb, Castle Bravo, in 1954, and the Soviet Union tested bombs in 1961 and 1962 with yields ranging from 20 megatons to the Tsar Bomba’s 50 megatons. That’s over 2,600 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb. They don’t need bombs that big now because missiles can carry multiple warheads, which can be independently targeted. Ten 1.2 megaton warheads would be 12 megatons.

No assurances can be offered that conflict wouldn’t escalate after the first nuclear weapon was detonated. Start tossing megaton-yield bombs around and the casualties would range from millions of people, assuming population centers were bombed, to the elimination of the human race. Even if the blasts themselves didn’t wipe us out, fallout, radiation poisoning, nuclear winter, and the destruction of agriculture might. To advocate use of nuclear weapons that could lead to humanity’s extinction is insane.

Insane, but not inexplicable. Why has the Ruling Caste buried the world in debt that is destroying the global economy? Why are they inflicting deadly medical and pharmacological nightmares? Why are we being forced to abandon nuclear and fossil-fuel power for intermittent and less efficient wind and solar power, which require environmentally unsound extraction, production, and energy-storage technologies? Why is the production and processing of food under attack? Why do they openly embrace massive population reduction and the impoverishment and enslavement of those who are left alive? Why are individual rights relentlessly attacked while collectivism, the separation of income from production, equality of outcomes, status dictated by race, ethnicity, and gender rather than merit, the elimination of personal privacy, and perverse sexual propensities and practices promoted and inflicted on children? Why have they started a war that could lead to the annihilation of the human race?

We keep returning to the same answer. "They want to rule you because they want to kill you because they want to kill existence and themselves. Hard as it may be to comprehend, don’t we know them by their works: by the slavery, carnage, and wars they’ve imposed, the freedoms they’ve robbed, the joy they’ve extinguished? Look at the world with eyes wide open. What do you see?" - “The Last Gasp,” Robert Gore, SLL, 3/24/20

What you see is the only explanation that fits. They are trying to kill themselves and everyone else: suicidal genocide. Don’t choke on this last red pill, although it’s the hardest to swallow. It leaves you standing at the edge of an abyss, a soulless void, but it has the virtue of explanation. And it leaves you with certainty: you must protect yourself and those you love - you’re stronger than you think, and fight them with everything you have - they’re weaker than you, or they, think.

There is no way to prepare for nuclear holocaust and you might not want to be one of the survivors. If humanity stops short of that final destination we must do everything we can to fight our suicidal murderers. Murderous hatred builds nothing, it only destroys. Tax theft, regulatory extortion, and mountains of debt that will never be repaid mark their inability to produce. They need us for that. It’s the linchpin of their schemes for subjugation and our point of attack.

Many people don’t realize that when they deposit the debt-scrip that’s absurdly called money into a financial institution, their only claim on that scrip is as an unsecured creditor of the institution. The institution is free to lend or invest that scrip and their recipients often lend or invest it again. In this way debt pyramids and systemic leverage builds. When the system crashes, as it eventually must, depositors are told to take a number. Perhaps they’ll receive a fraction of the scrip they deposited. Or perhaps not.

"It is a matter of some urgency that the payers apply their leverage while they still have it. Simply put, they need to bankrupt the government before the government bankrupts them. On present course it will go broke, perhaps sooner than most people expect. In its desperate rapacity, it will seize every stream of income and asset it can get its kleptocratic hands on. It is incumbent on those with streams of income and assets to launch a preemptive strike or lose everything, which would surely usher in that dystopian apocalypse."

You don’t have to be David to fight Goliath and you don’t have to be Atlas to shrug. In “Revolution in America,” I made the case that withdrawal of scrip en masse from America’s highly leveraged financial system would undermine the foundation of the Ruling Caste’s tawdry empire. I’m not going to make that case again - interested readers can click the link - but it still stands. In a system as leveraged as ours, mass withdrawal, a preemptive bank run, would be David’s rock and sling.

The situation is more urgent now because Americans will soon be denied yet another freedom - the freedom to withdraw their money from their bank or other financial institution. What’s rarely mentioned in the discussions of central bank digital currencies is that digital scrip will be electronically trapped. Bank withdrawals will be tightly controlled and runs will be no more permitted than disclosures of government criminality or criticisms of the Ruling Caste.

Right now you can withdraw scrip from the system and turn it into Real Money: physical gold or silver. Perhaps you want to keep enough in the system for the transactional convenience of paying your bills. If you take out the rest - your savings - and buy precious metals, with one toss of the rock you’ve increased your personal freedom and autonomy from the government while waging war against it. And it’s legal...for now.

The government is bankrupt. Its only remaining financial strategies are rapacious taxation, endless central bank debt monetization, and consequently, infinite log (99.99999999999⇾ percent) scrip debasement, which leads to the outcome Washington Irving described so well.

Could this delusion always last, the life of a merchant would indeed be a golden dream; but it is as short as it is brilliant. Let but a doubt enter, and the “season of unexampled prosperity” is at end. The coinage of words is suddenly curtailed; the promissory capital begins to vanish into smoke; a panic succeeds, and the whole superstructure, built upon credit and reared by speculation, crumbles to the ground, leaving scarce a wreck behind: “It is such stuff as dreams are made of.” - Washington Irving, “The Crayon Papers,” 1820

As the “promissory capital” vanishes the financial system implodes - it too will be bankrupt because bankrupt governments are its ultimate guarantor. The question is not whether or not it will implode, but whether you choose to be an instigator or a victim of the implosion. You can protect yourself, withdraw your scrip, and exchange it for real-money gold or silver. If enough people do that it’s a run and the rickety edifice collapses. Or you can keep your money within the system. In the dead of night a law or regulation is announced and the next day your scrip is “bailed-in” or converted to central bank digital scrip, which is the same thing. Good luck to you after that.

Collapsed governments won’t have the wherewithal to implement a Great Reset nor, it is to be hoped, wage nuclear war. The collectivist left has long dreamed of collapsing government - Cloward-Piven, Saul Alinsky, and all that - which would be replaced by bigger, supposedly better, but actually more tyrannical government that they control.

The Principled Productive can play Collapse the Government as well, and far better, because government depends on their productivity and amidst the rubble they will be the ones who can actually build back better. Atlases will greet efforts to resurrect and “improve” collapsed welfare-warfare states not with shrugs but with firearms and other weaponry, some of it seized from those collapsed states. In successful enclaves freedom will be the order of the day, simply because freedom works by allowing those who work to work, and there will be much work to be done.

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

I and other bloggers are sometimes criticized as keyboard warriors who only highlight problems without proposing solutions. Okay, here’s a strategy at least, although it’s not a complete solution: attack the Ruling Caste and their governments at their weakest point - indebtedness and inability to produce. I can’t envision a solution that wouldn’t require the commitment and action of a Samuel Adams’ “tireless minority,” which would still have to number in the millions. However, this strategy has the virtues of present legality, no bloodshed, implementation by individuals in whose interests it would clearly be, and compounding effectiveness as more individuals participate. It can be a personal first step, self-protection that takes the initiative against those who would enslave or kill us. These isolated sparks might then become brushfires that merge into a conflagration. If anyone has a better idea, the forum is yours in the comments section."
Hat tip to The Burning Platform for this material.

"Shipping Container Shortage Push Supply Chains To A Breaking Point As Freight Rates Soar 150%"

Full screen recommended.
"Shipping Container Shortage Push Supply Chains 
To A Breaking Point As Freight Rates Soar 150%"
by Epic Economist

"Supply chain problems are getting dramatically worse, aggravated by persistent port congestion and shipping delays, as well as a growing imbalance between container demand and available capacity. To make things worse, businesses are already facing another spike in shipping and freight rates as peak season approaches. Challenges keep piling on, and executives are warning that more port chaos is on the horizon as fears of fresh supply chain disruptions continue to rise.

Ship operators are scrambling to add millions of new containers to address a severe capacity shortage, but the giant boxes are getting stuck on liners and at ports as the shipping industry moves into its busiest period. “Importers are now bringing in cargo just in case, not just in time, and it makes up for more boxes sitting at the port,” explained Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles. Seroka noted that the port of LA will have to handle substantially more cargo in the coming weeks as Shanghai, the world’s biggest port, has opened after a two-month citywide closure to fight a virus outbreak.

According to Simon Heaney, a supply chain researcher at Drewry, a maritime consultancy, there’s going to be a deluge of orders coming out of Shanghai and landing all at the same time in U.S. ports. Since the beginning of March, total dry bulk congestion levels at ports in mainland China have jumped around 40%, according to S&P Global Commodities at Sea.

In a recent interview, Christian Roeloffs, the co-founder and CEO at Container xChange, highlighted that container prices have “skyrocketed” by up to 10-fold on U.S.-China routes in the past two years “owing to one disruption after the other”. “By the way, the first half of 2022 has gone, these disruptions will be faced by the industry well into the year 2023,” he alerted.

Roeloffs warned that the end of lockdowns in Shanghai could trigger “panic shipping” in the next few weeks, as the backlog of containers destined for the U.S. West keeps getting bigger and “everyone wants to be on time for the peak season and wants to make sure that the cargo reaches the West coast on time.”

Consequently, this could spark another round of price rises as companies rush to find vessel capacity to transport their products. New data collected by Xeneta shows that May saw the highest ever monthly increase in long-term contracted ocean freight rates. The unprecedented hike means that long-term rates are now 150.6% up year-on-year. In 2022 alone, costs have climbed by 55%.

The lack of reliability and the continuous deterioration in the accuracy of transit and arrival times in global container shipping means the sector is in the worst state it has been in for 50 years, says Philip Damas, Drewry’s managing director. “There has been no improvement globally in the past year and looking forward our review is that you should not expect an unwinding and resolving of port congestion until 2023,” he forecasted.

All of these factors are setting the stage for another nightmarish period for shipping. Supply chains have been broken and have never had the chance to properly rebound from the bottlenecks that emerged over the past two years. Given this context of persistent deterioration and exhaustion, it's understandable why most people in the industry can see that more turbulence is coming, and the next round of supply chain disruptions is going to be unlike anything we've ever witnessed. A lot more stress is ahead, and the American people will become increasingly frustrated as prices just keep getting higher and higher."

Gerald Celente, "Trends in the News"

Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Gerald Celente, 6/2/22: "Trends in the News"

"Stock Market Hoping For FED Miracle; Credit Freeze Warming Up; Buy Food Now"

Jeremiah Babe, PM 6/2/22:
"Stock Market Hoping For FED Miracle; 
Credit Freeze Warming Up; Buy Food Now"

Gregory Mannarino, "Must Watch! The "Demonic Ghoul" Of The FED Speaks!"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 6/2/22:
"Must Watch! The "Demonic Ghoul" Of The FED Speaks!"

"Our Rulers Have Lost Their Minds"

"Our Rulers Have Lost Their Minds"
by Jeffrey Tucker

"Have a look at the shock on people’s faces as they leave the grocery stores these days, or the look as they stand filling up their tanks at the gas station. Their jaws drop and they wonder what is happening to the world. The answer is the policy disasters of the last two years. The bill is coming due and everyone but the masters of the universe is paying it. The value of the dollar is sinking rapidly, more rapidly than in our lifetimes. Nor is it coming back.

The people who hold power today seem completely clueless about why this is happening. Actually, that’s a charitable interpretation. They might just think it is great. High gas prices are pushing a shift to electric cars, presumably to manage global climate (I’m a serious doubter that anything like that is possible by policy). Or maybe there is an impulse here just to redistribute wealth and disorient people to create new levels of dependency. Whatever the reason, I’m seeing absolutely no signs that anyone at the top has any intention to put a stop to this.

Kill the Snake in the Garden! The Biden administration - total geniuses up there! - have been hunting around for the source of price increases, as if there is some single greatest offender out there in the markets. They won’t blame the Fed of course because the Biden administration considers a monetary policy war against inflation to be a potential political disaster. It would drive the economy into a statistical recession. Then they would doom themselves at the midterm. Better to let inflation rip than risk that.

So instead, they are looking to scapegoat market actors. It’s preposterous: Markets are linked in ways that are impossible to trace and understand. You cannot map it. It’s too complex. It cannot be designed. It cannot be gamed. But tell that to the credentialled experts who believe that they have it all going.

So some geek in the White House noted that shipping prices are through the roof. They reasoned that these high costs are putting pressure on all producers, which in turn is being passed on to consumers. What to do? Crack down on the shippers! That’s exactly what they have done by unleashing the Federal Maritime Commission, “an independent agency that polices international ocean transportation on behalf of American companies and consumers,” according to The New York Times.

What the heck is the FMC going to do? Oh, harass people. Send letters. Investigate. Make big demands. But this much is clear during inflation: Everyone, without exception, has a thoroughly valid reason to raise prices. In this sense, they are all telling the truth that it is not their fault. Finding some single or several or many key offenders during a hyperinflation is like hunting for the offending cloud during a hurricane.

Another Stimulus: One of the great independent journalists who has really found his mojo during this crisis has been Jordan Schachtel. His Substack account seems often ahead of the major news. He drew my attention to something so bizarre that I never imagined it would happen. He believes that the politicians are, right now, plotting another stimulus check drop on citizens as a way of helping people deal with inflation. True story! It’s actually a level of policy insanity I’ve not seen in my lifetime. This would be like pushing a drowning man deep underwater:

Far from coming to terms with their mistakes and acknowledging their errors, the rulers of our fiat system, in their infinite wisdom, may soon decide to fight inflation with… you guessed it, more inflation. Sounds crazy? No way they would be that ridiculous, right? Well, I have some news for you. It’s already happening in Canada.

Quebec has announced that they will give a $500 stimulus check to everyone that makes $100,000 or less. This handout, which is expected to reach 6.4 million Canadians, will "help Quebecers cope with the sharp increase in the cost of living that we have seen in recent months,” Finance Minister Eric Girard said Tuesday.

Following Canada’s lead, a group of Democrat congressmen have just introduced a bill to hand out “gas price stimulus checks” to Americans. The timing of this new bill should not go unnoticed, as midterm elections are just around the corner in November. Two congressmen are hyping a bill to give $100 a month to all citizens who live in areas where gas prices are above $4 per gallon. Do the math on this and you end up with an annual bill of $168 billion. This comes after many people in Congress have started to slightly worry about their spending programs.

And of course, once you do this with gas, there is no reason not to do this with food, rent, medical bills or anything else. You end up with a mind-blowing system in which government is forever printing up the currency to compensate people for the consequences of previous money printing.

CNN is helping to drum up support: "The administration should ask Congress to authorize a payment of $1,100 per household to pay for four months of higher prices going forward, and provide an option for the president to provide a second or even third check to low- and moderate-income families for an additional four months in the event that prices remain high. We don’t know when this crisis is going to end or when prices for essential goods and services will return to more affordable levels."

It’s the Interwar Period All Over Again: Here we have a scenario straight out of the history books. We are talking about Weimar-level insanity here. But what’s to stop it? The current political winds all lean in this direction. So long as Democrats are in control and the Republicans are stupid and afraid, even as the Fed is embarrassingly bowing to every political pressure, something like this cannot be stopped.

If this continues, we could be looking at a full-scale monetary crisis of epic proportions as we approach the midterms. Even then, Congress under Republican control simply cannot manage the Fed, which owes its entire allegiance to the executive in the White House and the deep state. That means two more years even after November of utter policy disasters.

Wow, I really do get tired of reporting terrible news! I wouldn’t have to if the major media could cover these topics with any level of intelligence or honestly. But they don’t. And the failure to do so is having a major impact on the standard of living, which is taking a hit much harder than we have seen since the early 1930s. This is both in the U.S. and Europe. Really all over the world. We can hope and pray for policy rationality to return. But we must also be realistic. This is a crisis with no end in sight."

Musical Interlude: Richard Harris, "MacArthur Park"

Richard Harris, "MacArthur Park"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“Will the spider ever catch the fly? Not if both are large emission nebulas toward the constellation of the Charioteer (Auriga). The spider-shaped gas cloud on the left is actually an emission nebula labelled IC 417, while the smaller fly-shaped cloud on the right is dubbed NGC 1931 and is both an emission nebula and a reflection nebula.
About 10,000 light-years distant, both nebulas harbor young, open star clusters. For scale, the more compact NGC 1931 (Fly) is about 10 light-years across.”
" I do not question the presence of intelligent life on other planets;
 but I do question its existence on this one."
- Dr. Ivan Desantis

"That's Why..."

"That's why crazy people are so dangerous.
You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage."
- Michael Buckley

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"

"No Ways Tired in A Sea of Lies"
by Chris Floyd

"I think we are living in a world of lies: lies that don't even know they are lies, because they are the children and grandchildren of lies. One of the hardest things to accept is that the reality of our world is buried under so many layers of official deception and well-cultivated public ignorance about our history and our political system. Even if you break through somehow, momentarily, and hold up a fragment of the truth, most people have no context for dealing with it. It's like a bolt from the blue, they can't process the information. And so the sea of lies closes over us again, and again, and again. And yet the reality of our future appears on the horizon, denial be damned, an irresistible tsunami of destruction, changing all our lives forever.

These are the facts, and they can't be altered. But how to respond to this catastrophe? Shall we weep, moan, rend our garments, cover ourselves with sackcloth and ashes? Shall we sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of republics? Shall we cower in the shadows and sing glamorous dirges for the Lost Cause, for vanished glories and broken dreams?

Or shall we come out fighting, unbowed, heads high, laughing fools to scorn, rejecting at every turn the moral authority of murderers and thieves to rule our lives, determine our reality, act in our name? Let's dispense with lamentation - give not a single moment to that emotional indulgence - and get right back to work, more determined than ever to bear down harder, dig deeper and excavate the radioactive nuggets of truth still glowing beneath the slag-heap of ruin.

Let's fight, let's reject, let's resist - without violence, the weapon of the stupid, the hormonal secretion of evolutionary backsliders in thrall to the chemical soup in their heads, dull primitives dressing up their ape-lust for power with scraps of religion, philosophy and cant. Let's fight these pathetic, malfunctioning wretches who lay their hands on our world and rape it like beasts in a mindless rut. Fight them with the truths we find, exposing their crimes and deadly hypocrisies to the people they've suckered, perverted and betrayed.

This is not an insurmountable task, no matter how impervious the Machine - that monstrous conglomeration of judicial bagmen, Congressional rubber stamps, psychopathic media moguls, dopehead radio ranters, sex-crazed theocrats, war profiteers, think-tank bleaters, Wall Street sharks, oilmen, Moonies, and woman-haters - might appear at the moment.

I don't know what else we can do, except to keep on telling as much of the truth as we can find, to anyone who will listen: reclaiming reality, fragment by fragment, one person at a time. It's an endless task- maybe a hopeless task- but the alternative is a surrender to the worst elements in our society- and in ourselves. It's worth the fight. Let's take it on. In the words of the old spiritual, let us be in no ways tired. The road back to sanity starts now."

"No Power, No Food, No Water, No Gas - Let’s Party"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly 6/2/22:
"No Power, No Food, No Water, No Gas - Let’s Party"
"The news could not be more dismal today. This is tied up as we enter a season where there will be no power, no food, no water and no gas. People need to realize how bad this is going to get globally. I think it’s time to schedule a good party."

Bill Bonner, "Force and Chicanery"

"Force and Chicanery"
How the elite misgovern the world, one sneaky lie at a time...
by Bill Bonner

Youghal, Ireland - "A quick word of warning. Yesterday was the day the Fed began “running off” its balance sheet. That means it is no longer buying bonds. MarketWatch: "In a nutshell, “quantitative tightening” is the opposite of “quantitative easing”: It’s basically a way to reduce the money supply floating around in the economy. It’s seen as likely to drive up real or inflation-adjusted yields, which in turn makes stocks somewhat less attractive. And it should put upward pressure on Treasury term premia, or the compensation investors need for bearing interest-rate risks over the life of a bond."

It was the Fed’s quantitative easing that ballooned its balance sheet and set the stock market to dancing. Now, colleague Tom Dyson believes quantitative tightening – not the Fed’s baby step rate hikes – will bring the party to an end. Most likely, we’ll see some scary and exciting days on Wall Street as tipsy revelers find their cars, head out onto the highway, and end up in a ditch.

But we left you hanging yesterday, didn’t we? You wanted to know how ‘the law’ could end up on the wrong side of ‘the people,’ didn’t you? You probably also wondered what damned difference it makes. We’re not interested in political philosophy either. We’re just connecting the dots to get a clearer idea of what’s ahead. We look at one… and then another. Gradually… then suddenly… a picture appears.

Decree and Flimflam: For example, yesterday came word of a new “law” – actually, a whole set of regulations, edicts, and proclamations. Reuters: "The Biden administration will announce on Wednesday more than $2.1 billion in funding to shore up weaknesses in the country's food supply system exposed during the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will unveil the new funding, designed to enhance competition in food processing and distribution, increase access to healthy food, and expand markets for farmers, during a speech at Georgetown University."

Translation: Mr. Vilsack, whose department grows no grains, delivers no milk, and neither sows nor reaps, will take $2.1 billion from ‘the people’ who do and distribute it to his pet projects, friends, favored clients… and other well-lobbied insiders. The result: farmers and the public will be poorer… and less able to buy food.

That is how the ruling elite rolls – by decree and flimflam. And it’s why their new ‘laws’ are almost always on the wrong side of the people they’re supposed to serve. Unlike the consensual ‘rules of the road,’ the new laws do not make it easier for ‘the people’ to get where they want to go. Instead, they force them to detour in a different direction.

Jumping to a conclusion, here’s what we see: the entire, global ruling caste, led by the upper 0.001% who gather at Davos, Switzerland, is like a group heirs to a vast fortune who have no idea how the money was made. Just look at America’s jefes. Most have spent their whole lives in politics. Now they appear to be almost preternaturally dumb, with a stupidity that is somewhere between sublime and miraculous. Ms. Yellen didn’t see the price increases coming – even though she is a Ph.D. economist; she thought inflation was too low. How was that possible?

The president’s ‘sanctions war’ against Russia is undermining the dollar-based world financial system, raising prices of food and energy, risking nuclear war and threatening millions with famine. (Admittedly, Joe “the Big Guy” Biden knows much more about the Ukraine than we do; his family earned big money from Ukrainian payoffs.)

“The People”: And the US Congress voted overwhelmingly – with no debate! – to give $40 billion to the Ukraine, even though it has no dog in the fight and no money to give to anyone. Didn’t Congress know that ‘the people’ have no interest in who misgoverns the Donbass? And didn’t Ms. Yellen tell them that the money is needed at home? Washington Examiner: "New budget numbers show the US careening toward calamity. The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget, a respected nonpartisan group, reminded us yet again Tuesday that federal spending plans and debt levels are unsustainable. Lawmakers should get serious about debt reduction now - before it’s too late.

Counting only debt held by the public - which is some 20% lower than total government debt, including intra-governmental transfers - CRFB says that absent strong corrective action, the federal debt is likely to reach 125% of gross domestic product within a decade. Most nations are in a serious danger zone for economic collapse when debt exceeds 100% of GDP."

Where did all that debt come from? Since 1999, the feds have made $25 trillion in new “investments” (the increase in Federal debt); nearly every penny has been lost.

They promised that debt and money-printing would stimulate the economy; instead, real wages are falling… and the economy staggers from one crisis to the next.

They promised more equality; instead, the rich are richer than ever and the gap between rich and poor has grown much wider.

They promised peace and security; instead, they’ve entered one pointless war after another… including risking a nuclear war with Russia.

And now their inflation tax makes almost everyone poorer and brings millions more of the world’s poorest people to the edge of starvation.

So, what do they do? Admit failure and retire? Send out a confessional tweet? “Alas, you can’t make people better off by tricking-up an economy with phony money and fake interest rates. Or by bossing them around with laws and edicts. Sorry.” Nah… they never do that.

Instead, they double down. They get tough. They find new enemies. Russians! White Supremacists! Climate change deniers! They use propaganda and censorship to build support… and advertise their own corruption as virtue. After all, they’re fighting for democracy, for equality, for zero carbon emissions and a virus-free world! And when B.S. fails, they turn to brute force to stay in control.

But force and chicanery are enemies of wealth. The more the elite tries to control ‘the people,’ the less real wealth they produce. Hold onto your hat. Tomorrow as we connect more dots… and look ahead to poverty, chaos, crime and the decline of western civilization. Whee!"
"Joel’s Note: As for that $40 billion of money the US government didn’t have to give… but gave anyway, here’s Dan Denning with an unfashionably traditionalist adherence to legislative due process… “The [$40 billion Ukraine] bill was introduced and passed in the House all in one day. Bills are normally referred to a committee which has jurisdiction over the subject matter. There they are debated, amended, modified, and voted on and passed to the full House for further consideration.

That didn't happen here. It's doubtful most Members even read the bill. And they certainly didn't debate it. The Rules Committee is one of those committees few people know about. But it decides how long and in what way each Bill can be debated when it reaches the floor of the House. You can't offer amendments from the floor. And this bill was debated for exactly one hour.

Obviously the gears of the Executive Branch and the Federal government grind exceedingly fine. They had no trouble itemizing how to spend $40 billion in taxpayer money on connecting Ukraine's electric grid with Europe’s. Or just on all the oversight jobs required to make sure all that money goes into the right hands/pockets.

It's hard to believe we pay people to go to Congress and make laws like this. The old adage is that it would be better to randomly pick people out of the phone book (if they still have those) and send them to Washington instead. Remember that story where Caligula planned to make his horse a Consul? We've got 435 horses asses (more or less) running the House. And 100 jackasses in the Senate.”

The Poet: Robinson Jeffers, “Be Angry at the Sun”

“Be Angry at the Sun”

“That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept,
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.
Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. 
Watch the wheel slope and turn,
They are all bound on the wheel, these people,
Those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.
Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies,
the passionate Man plays his part; 
the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.
You are not Catullus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante’s feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatreds.
Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and dupes
to be duped.
Yours is not theirs.”

- Robinson Jeffers, 1941

"I Assure You..."

"You may wonder about long-term solutions. I assure you, there are none. All wounds are mortal. Take what's given. You sometimes get a little slack in the rope but the rope always has an end. So what? Bless the slack and don't waste your breath cursing the drop. A grateful heart knows that in the end we all swing."
- Stephen King

“Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake”

“Complexity Theory: the Avalanche and the Snowflake”
by Jim Rickards

“One of my favorites is what I call ‘the avalanche and the snowflake’. It’s a metaphor for the way the science actually works, but I should be clear: it’s not just a metaphor. The science, the mathematics and the dynamics are actually the same as those that exist in financial markets.

Imagine you’re on a mountainside. You can see a snowpack building up on the ridgeline while it continues snowing. You can tell just by looking at the scene that there’s danger of an avalanche. It’s windswept… it’s unstable… and if you’re an expert, you know it’s going to collapse and kill skiers and wipe out the village below. You see a snowflake fall from the sky onto the snowpack. It disturbs a few other snowflakes that lie there. Then, the snow starts to spread… then it starts to slide… then it gains momentum until, finally, it comes loose and the whole mountain comes down and buries the village.

Question: What do you blame? Do you blame the snowflake, or do you blame the unstable pack of snow? I say the snowflake’s irrelevant. If it wasn’t the one snowflake that caused the avalanche, it could have been the one before, or the one after, or the one tomorrow. The instability of the system as a whole was the problem. So when I think about the risks in the financial system, I don’t focus on the ‘snowflake’ that will cause problems. The trigger doesn’t matter.

A snowflake that falls harmlessly – the vast majority of all snowflakes – technically fails to start a chain reaction. Once a chain reaction begins, it expands exponentially, can ‘go critical’ (as in an atomic bomb) and release enough energy to destroy a city. However, most neutrons do not start nuclear chain reactions, just as most snowflakes do not start avalanches.

In the end, it’s not about the snowflakes or neutrons. It’s about the initial critical state conditions that allow the possibility of a chain reaction or an avalanche. These can be hypothesized and observed at large scale, but the exact moment the chain reaction begins cannot be observed. That’s because it happens on a minute scale relative to the system. This is why some people refer to these snowflakes as ‘black swans’, because they are unexpected and come by surprise. But they’re actually not a surprise if you understand the system’s dynamics and can estimate the system scale.

It’s a metaphor, but really the mathematics behind it are the same. Financial markets today are huge, unstable mountains of snow waiting to collapse. You see it in the gross notional value of derivatives. There is $700 trillion worth of swaps. ($2.5 Quadrillion by other reputable estimates. – CP) These are derivatives off balance sheet, hidden liabilities in the banking system of the world. These numbers are not made up. Just go to the IS annual report and it’s right there in the footnote.

Well, how do you put $700 trillion into perspective? It’s ten times global GDP. Take all the goods and services in the entire world for an entire year. That’s about $70 trillion when you add it all up. Well, take ten times that, and that’s how big the snow pile is. And that’s the avalanche that’s waiting to come down.”

"She’s Gonna Blow: It’s Weimar, But Where Is Our Adolf?"

"She’s Gonna Blow: 
It’s Weimar, But Where Is Our Adolf?"
by Fred Reed

"As the sentient have presumably noticed, the United States is in crisis, the country’s problems are profound, intrinsic, without solution, and worsening. When a population reaches the point of despair, even desperation, when it sees a darkening future for itself and its children, people yearn for a strong man who will forcibly put things right. Yet it is unlikely that helicopters of Marines from Quantico will descend on the White House and announce the dictatorship of some general. Military officers are too well paid and comfortable to worry about the country. It is hard to imagine an American Mussolini. Trump is a caricature and no one else comes to mind. Yet “unrest” - less euphemistically, “chaos” on the order of Mr. Floyd’s massive riots, is possible. We have seen it. We can see it again.

Consider America today. By comparison with Japan, China, Korea, it is a barbarity, a dumpster, an asylum, an abattoir, an astonishment. San Francisco loses conventions because of needles and excrement on the sidewalks. Almost weekly we see multiple shootings in stores, high schools and, now, grade schools. Murders of whites by blacks run at thirty a month, the news being suppressed. In cities across the country crime is out of control, the tax bases moving out, bail abolished so criminals are freed in hours. stores leave to escape undiscouraged shoplifting and robbery. Seven hundred homicides a year in Chicago, 300 in Baltimore, and at least twice as many shot but survive, similar numbers in a dozen cities. For practical purposes law does not exists in these ungovernable enclaves. 

Sexual curiosities, once called perversions, flourish with American embassies hoisting flags in support of transsexualism Mobs topple historical statues. Many tens of thousands live on sidewalks and a hundred thousand a year die of opioid overdoses. The country drops math requirements and English grammar in schools, AP courses, and SATs as racist. The economy declines, jobs have left for other climes, medical care in beyond most people’s means, government is corrupt and incompetent, and wars are unending. There is actual hatred between racial, political, and regional groups. Ominously, gun sales are up.

How is this going to end well? How did we get here? America has never been a nation in the correct sense of the word, a people sharing values, language, a culture. Rather it has been, and is, a collection of peoples having little and common and, often disliking each other. West Virginia has nothing in common with Massachusetts which has nothing in common with the Deep South which has nothing in common with coastal California which has nothing in common with Cavalier Virginia which has nothing in common with Latinos who have nothing in common with blacks.

Until perhaps the early Sixties, the regions got along with each other reasonably well because there was little communication between them. Roads were poor, the internet was not even on the horizon. Radio stations and newspapers were local, reflecting the surrounding culture and taste. The central government was remote and had little influence locally. Each region lived as it wished.

Providing a degree of commonalty was that the country was overwhelmingly white, European, Anglophone and, at least nominally, Christian. It was socially conservative, largely consisting of small towns. The resulting culture was unsophisticated but civilized. In the suburbs of Washington (I was there) you really could leave your bike anywhere and it would be there when you came back. In summer children really could play great sprawling multiblock games of hide-and-seek after dark and no one worried. In high school in rural Virginia (I was there too) the boys had guns for hunting deer and shooting varmints in the bean fields and you could leave your .410 in the back seat of your jalopy in the school’s parking lot. Nobody thought of shooting anyone. It wasn’t in the culture. If a thing isn’t in the culture, it doesn’t happen. You don’t need policemen. The boys didn’t use bad language around the girls or vice versal and nobody even thought of disrespect to teachers. There were class clowns (I may know somewhat of this), but no real misbehavior. It wasn’t in white, technically Christian, semi-rural culture.

Then many things happened. In no particular order: The reach of the federal government grew and grew. Washington, which had been a distant city concerning itself with foreign policy and the economy, could now impose its values on remote society. It did.

Washington discovered the “separation of church and state,” which had lain unnoticed in the Constitution since 1789. In regions of deep religiousness, it became illegal to recite the Lord’s prayer, to have creches on the town square at Christmas, or two sing carols on the public streets. It had nothing to do with meticulous adherence to the Constitution, but everything to do with the discovery by angry minorities that they could impose on majorities. In short, like many movements to come, it was a revenge operation. It has become a de facto program of de-Cristinization, weakening a source of social cohesion and leading to anger.

The federal government began to dictate what could be taught in local schools. Teachers were forbidden to mention Creationism because a judge in Philadelphia, who appeared to have the scientific grasp of a potato chip, said this transgressed the doctrine of separation. The decision had little practical relevance as there was no likelihood that hearing of Genesis would turn students away from the study of biochemistry. It was, however, an early manifestation of class snobbery against what was seen as primitive Christianity that would later coalesce into hostility toward the Deplorables.

Remote anonymous committees in New York wrote highly ideological textbooks imposed on distant states which did not share those ideologies. The effectiveness of this relied on the principle that outraged parents in Arkansas would have no idea how to oppose distant bureaucracies of whose existence they were unaware and whose phone numbers they could not find. American government is democratic while not allowing the people to exercise power. It is a brilliant system, until it explodes.

Compulsory racial integration, as distinct from desegregation, was an untarnished disaster. Few wanted it, and few want it. The people who imposed it did not, and do not, send their children to black schools. The races transparently do not want to live together. If blacks move into white neighborhoods, “white flight” occurs and if whites move into black neighborhoods, blacks furiously complain of gentrification.

When two cultures have utterly different views of acceptable language, dress, behavior, study, and curricula, mixing them does not work. In the schools, academic standards fell. Discipline became a problem. Across America, cities burned because of conflict between black populations and white police. Eurowhite culture, it turned out, was incompatible with Negro culture. The potential for yet greater disaster seems great, and no one has a solution. There probably isn’t a solution.

The Constitution, which once provided political stability withered, being ignored or interpreted into unrecognizability by judges or made irrelevant by changes in technology and society. Freedom of speech, which meant that I could say that the President was a fool and should be removed from office, became freedom of expression, meaning that porn sites, accessible to children of nine years, could upload videos of a German Shepherd copulating with a beautiful blonde tied down to a bed. Some doubted that the writers of the Constitution had this in mind when providing the Bill of Rights, but none could gainsay the Supreme Court or the federal power.

The behemoths of the electronic media imposed political censorship. Being private enterprises, they could not be disciplined. They became more and more an arm of the central government, which became more and more the property of the Northeastern coastal elites. Entities with names like Google, Twitter, and Facebook cleansed themselves of content thought inappropriate, websites delisted, credit card accounts closed. People disappeared by the electronic media were almost as disappeared as those disappeared in Latin America, though less bloodily. The intention and effect are the same.

An unexpected effect of censorship was that those doing the censoring also censored themselves. The media, talking to each other, reading each other, having no contact with or interest in the silenced and deplorable, had no idea of the anger out there. This brought us Floyd and Trump as deep wells of undetected anger exploded. The media are doing it again.

The current regime in Washington appears deliberately and intensely divisive. Biden has attacked the South, supporting renaming of military bases in deliberate affront. A thorough racist, he frequently denounces whites. He denounces Trump and his supporters, nearly half of America. He has ostentatiously chosen black women as justice of the Supreme Court, member of Federal Reserve, Vice President, and White House spokeswoman. While these may or may not be competent, he announced them as diversity hires. He is poised to assault owners of guns, sure to provoke fury, has involved America in another war, and wants a federal Ministry of Truth to prohibit ideas he doesn’t like. Profoundly partisan, he makes no attempt to calm things or promote tranquility.

The universality of the internet made difficult or impossible the maintenance of distinct values or mores. It became impossible for the cultivated to inculcate in their children manners, good English, and appreciation of learning when the electronics bathed them in not only the traditionally low culture of America but also the anticivilization of the ghetto. America undergoes both enforced peasantrification and homogenization. Anger grows.

Congress and the Constitution largely ceased to function, leaving Presidents to rule by executive order, this not being entirely distinguishable from dictatorship. This included the making of war, which became both common and beyond public influence. The legislature no longer governed but was the storefront for special interests of immense power. There remained no body interested in the wellbeing of the country. This led to offshoring of jobs, poverty in Appalachia, the Rust Belt and rural Deep South, the impoverishing influx of cheap Mexican labor, Donald Trump, and intense regional hatred. Here we are.

This can’t last. The hatreds are intense, the guns everywhere, anger growing at crime, something akin to economic desperation appearing. Washington will leave nowhere alone, will not address national problems, will always give priority to its military, its wars and its empire over domestic needs. The hostility that fueled the Floyd riots, the burning cities, the looting and vengeful vandalism, are still there. She’s going to blow. Watch."

"A Sad Fact..."

"A sad fact, of course, about adult life is that you see the very things you'll never adapt to coming toward you on the horizon. You see them as the problems they are, you worry like hell about them, you make provisions, take precautions, fashion adjustments; you tell yourself you'll have to change your way of doing things. Only you don't. You can't. Somehow it's already too late. And maybe it's even worse than that: maybe the thing you see coming from far away is not the real thing, the thing that scares you, but its aftermath. And what you've feared will happen has already taken place. This is similar in spirit to the realization that all the great new advances of medical science will have no benefit for us at all, thought we cheer them on, hope a vaccine might be ready in time, think things could still get better. Only it's too late there too. And in that very way our life gets over before we know it. We miss it. And like the poet said: The ways we miss our lives are life."
- Richard Ford

The Daily "Near You?"

Delaware, Ohio, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"What If..."

"What if when you die they ask, "How was Heaven?"
~ Author Unknown

A truly terrifying thought...

Gregory Mannarino, "Keep Your Eyes On The Debt Market! It's A Ticking Time Bomb!"

Gregory Mannarino, AM 6/2/22:
"Keep Your Eyes On The Debt Market! It's A Ticking Time Bomb!"

"Now Even The Elite Are Openly Admitting That America Is Facing An Absolutely Enormous Economic Crisis"

"Now Even The Elite Are Openly Admitting That America
 Is Facing An Absolutely Enormous Economic Crisis"
by Michael Snyder

"Not too long ago, the elite were trying to put a happy face on our growing economic problems. It was obvious that things were trending in a very alarming direction, but they kept assuring us that any bumps in the road were just temporary and that a new golden age of prosperity was just around the corner. Needless to say, there were dead wrong, and now some of them are publicly admitting the truth. For example, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon just publicly stated that an economic “hurricane” is rapidly approaching…

"Jamie Dimon is no meteorologist, but the JPMorgan Chase CEO is predicting an economic “hurricane” caused by the war in Ukraine, rising inflation pressures and interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve. “Right now it’s kind of sunny, things are doing fine. Everyone thinks the Fed can handle this,” Dimon said at a Bernstein conference. “That hurricane is right out there down the road coming our way.”

JPMorgan Chase is one of the most important financial institutions in the entire world. So it is a really big thing for Dimon to make a statement like this. Of course he is right on target. An economic hurricane is coming, and it is going to be far more horrible than most Americans could possibly imagine right now.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also just said something that is making a lot of headlines. Last year she insisted that high inflation would just be “transitory”, but now she is openly admitting that she “was wrong”… “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy […] that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.”

.@SecYellen on inflation being transitory: “I was wrong then about the path that inflation would take. As I mentioned, there have been unanticipated and large shocks to the economy […] that I, at the time, didn’t fully understand.” https://t.co/AlrXn4kT0r pic.twitter.com/9tqxo0iA3B
— The Hill (@thehill) June 1, 2022

It isn’t exactly a surprise that she turned out to be completely wrong about high inflation being transitory. We knew that she was wrong when she said it. But I will give her credit for publicly admitting a mistake. Many in Washington will never do such a thing under any circumstances.

At this point, it should be obvious to everyone that we are in the midst of an absolutely horrifying inflation crisis. On Wednesday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States jumped another nickel to $4.67. But the real story is the crazy prices that we are starting to see out on the west coast. For instance, one gas station in Los Angeles is now charging more than 8 dollars a gallon for regular gasoline…

"A Chevron station in downtown Los Angeles on the corner of Alameda Street and Cesar E. Chavez Avenue is charging customers over $8 for regular gasoline causing some locals to complain about price gouging, KTTV Los Angeles reported on Tuesday. In a statement to KTTV, Chevron pointed out that the majority of its California branded stations are independently owned and that “unique” factors are contributing to gas prices in the Golden State."

How soon will we see someone break the 10 dollar a gallon threshold? Will it be by the end of the summer? In some cities, the price of a gallon of gasoline is already higher than the hourly minimum wage. That is nuts!

Of course diesel prices have been rising even faster, and this is putting a tremendous amount of financial strain on America’s farmers. If you doubt this, just check out what Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller just told Maria Bartiromo…"When Bartiromo noted “filling a tractor daily now costs farmers $1,000 – twice what it was a year ago,” Miller responded, “it’s through the roof, but it’s not just diesel. It’s fertilizer prices. It’s parts. We can’t get new tractors, new combines. We can’t get new tillage equipment,” he stressed. “So we have to keep running our older equipment, which we can’t get parts for. And so it’s just a whole comedy of errors, and it just multiplies on top of itself.”

When costs go up for farmers, they inevitably get passed on to consumers. And we have already been seeing food prices spike dramatically. Just check out these numbers from April…"Food grains - including corn and wheat - were up 2.8 percent for the month and 45 percent compared with a year ago. Feed grain prices increased 7.8 percent from the prior month and 33 percent from a year ago.

The poultry and egg index jumped 22 percent from March and 94 percent from a year earlier. The April market egg price, at $2.21 per dozen, is 81.0 cents higher than March and $1.64 higher than April 2021. The price of chickens raised for meat, at $1.05 per pound, is 15.3 cents higher than March and 49.7 cents higher than a year ago. At 95.3 cents per pound, the April turkey price is 2.5 cents higher than the previous month and 18.5 cents higher than April 2021. Milk prices climbed 4.12 percent in April and are up 47 percent compared with a year earlier."

In the entire history of our nation, we have never seen anything like this. But as I keep warning my readers, this is just the beginning. In fact, one prominent Texas farmer is warning that food prices “are going to double”…“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen. “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”

Can you imagine that? Can you imagine what it will do to our country if food prices double from their already extremely inflated levels? People will go absolutely bananas. But this is exactly the type of scenario that I have been warning about for years. Eventually, food will become such a prime target for thieves that we will actually see armed guards escorting grocery store delivery trucks. And civil unrest will erupt all over the planet as millions upon millions of poor people get hungrier and hungrier.

Unfortunately, even though so many are now sounding the alarm, the vast majority of the population still has no idea what is coming our way." *
* Isn't it a little late in the game for this?
No point saying here it comes... it's here.
Robert Palmer, "You're Gonna Get What's Coming"

"Stocking Up At Kroger! Preparing For More Price Hikes!"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 6/2/22:
"Stocking Up At Kroger! Preparing For More Price Hikes!"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger and are noticing a lot of price increases! Times are getting tough, so we are seeking out things to stock up on at Kroger. 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!"
“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen. “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”

"How It Really Is"

 

Me too! lol

Wednesday, June 1, 2022

"Brace For Electricity Shortages That Will Scare The Living Daylights Out Of You"

Full screen recommended.
"Brace For Electricity Shortages That Will 
Scare The Living Daylights Out Of You"
by Epic Economist

"America’s energy crisis is getting worse by the day, and U.S. consumers are about to face a triple threat: simultaneous shortages of electricity, oil, and gas. The recent closure of key power plants is leaving the country without enough generation capacity ahead of the summer. At this point, rolling blackouts are already a certain fate. On top of that, national reserves of oil and gas have hit dangerously low levels, and this means Americans are not only going to pay a heavy price but also scramble to get adequate supplies of energy in the coming weeks.

On the very same day that the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released a report warning the U.S. electric grid doesn’t have enough generation capacity and that blackouts are expected to occur all across the country this summer, an important clean energy power plant was shut down in Michigan. The Palisades Power Plant, an 811-megawatt nuclear facility was deactivated due to a mechanical problem, leaving the Midwest without critical energy supplies and at risk of “energy emergencies during peak summer conditions,” according to NERC.

Palisades was located very close to the area served by the Mid-continent Independent System Operator (MISO), the region that NERC identified as being particularly short on energy supplies. NERC noted the MISO region has 3,200 megawatts less generation capacity this summer than it did last year. In contrast, consumer demand is expected to increase by a considerable margin over the next few weeks, which led NERC to warn that “extreme temperatures, higher generation outages, or low wind conditions” will mean that the Midwest is highly susceptible to “load-shedding to maintain system reliability” — the industry’s preferred term to describe rolling blackouts.

At the moment, around 25 percent of the country’s nuclear plants are at risk of shutting down due to economic reasons, according to the DOE. Palisades was just the first one to go on a long list of planned closures. Since 2013, 12 commercial reactors have been closed — including in New York, Massachusetts, Nebraska, and Iowa — and none have opened. At least seven more have announced closure plans in the next three years, including Diablo Canyon, the last remaining nuclear power plant in California.

The closure of such plants is also going to result in higher electricity costs because generators are forced to burn more natural gas to produce more power to meet the demand, and right now gas prices are absolutely soaring. According to CNBC’s Kelly Evans the energy crisis will keep getting worse: “It’s hard to see how energy prices get back to “normal” anytime soon, and the risk of bigger price spikes and worse supply problems looms very large this summer,” Evans noted.

But it’s not only the coming power shortages that will impact consumers this summer. Fatih Birol the head of the International Energy Agency has warned that the energy crisis now underway will be far more “severe and longer-lasting than the oil price shocks of the 1970s,” since it's applying pressure on three separate fronts. "Back then it was just about oil," he said. "Now we have an oil crisis, a gas crisis and an electricity crisis simultaneously."

In short, the closure of key power plants will increase carbon emissions, reduce energy affordability, and hurt the resilience and reliability of America’s electric grid. And the lack of enough fuel reserves may result in serious disruptions that may paralyze the U.S. economy. America is facing the worst energy crisis in the modern era, and the government is whistling past the graveyard. Wise leaders would be doing everything possible to expand energy capacity, ensure reserves, and strengthen infrastructure. Alas, we do not have wise leaders. What we will have instead is soaring energy bills, absurd prices at the pump, broken supply chains, and devastating shortages in every corner of the nation."

"The New Great Depression Has Begun; They Are Going To Punish The Economy And You; Stockpile Food Now"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/1/22:
"The New Great Depression Has Begun;
They Are Going To Punish The Economy And You; Stockpile Food Now"
Related:
Excerpt: "Looming Price-Hikes On Food Set 
To Hit Americans Even Harder This Fall"
"In its effort to contain inflation, the Federal Reserve has launched what many expect to be an ongoing series of interest rate increases, which are already taking a toll on stock and housing markets, with job losses likely to follow. As weary as Americans have become from paying record high gas and grocery prices, however, another round of price hikes is making its way through the food supply chain and is expected to reach consumers this fall.

“People don’t realize what’s fixing to hit them,” said Texas farmer Lynn “Bugsy” Allen. “They think it’s tough right now, you give it until October. Food prices are going to double.”
Full article here: