Consumer prices soared by the most in four decades in January, with inflation across the economy showing few signs of peaking even after months of increases.

The Consumer Price Index’s 7.5% annual surge at the start of 2022 was the biggest leap since 1982 and topped already elevated expectations for a 7.3% rise, based on Bloomberg consensus data. On a month-over-month basis, the CPI unexpectedly posted a 0.6% increase for a back-to-back month, whereas economists had been looking for a deceleration. Core inflation, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, also exceeded estimates, showing a 6.0% year-over-year jump in January.

The report served as one of the clearest affirmations that inflation — described as recently as November by the Federal Reserve as “transitory” — has become a persistent feature of the economic recovery.

Emily McCormick
February 10, 2022
What economists are saying about soaring inflation
[We live in interesting times.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]

My position has always been that the Federal Reserve is not a banking institution on a mission to protect American financial interests. Rather, I believe the Fed is an ideological suicide bomber waiting to blow itself up and deliberately derail or destroy the American economy at the right moment. My position has also long been that the bankers would need a cover event to hide their calculated economic attack, otherwise they would take full blame for the resulting disaster.

Brandon Smith
December 4, 2021
Mainstream Economists Are Struggling To Hide The Incoming Economic Collapse
[There is a lot of good stuff in this article. This claim isn’t part of the good stuff.

If the claim were true then the creators of the Fed have been waiting over 100 years to detonate their bomb, right?

Or, I suppose, it could be the Fed has somewhat recently been taken over by the suicide bombers without a single defection from the conspirators or underlings.

Extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence. I say there is far from sufficient evidence to support this claim.

It could be that past, present, and future actions will be mostly consistent with this hypothesis but have a different true intent. Sort of a like a lie that snowballs as the liar has to lie more and more to cover up the original lie. Then witnesses require silencing to hide the vast number of lies. The original lie wasn’t intended to result in murder, but that is where the slippery slope led. I could believe that sort of thing is what has happened.

Sometimes it’s too tempting to take the easy way out for the short term benefit when the long term consequences are murky. I believe that is far more likely than a “suicide bomber” conspiracy.—Joe]

Sooner or later, this is what socialist regimes always do.

They tell us to study hard, get a good job and work as hard as we can.

And then they give our money to people that haven’t done any of those things.

Eventually they run out of other people’s money, and so then they just start wildly creating more.

Unfortunately, every time that this has been tried throughout history it has always ended in disaster, and now it is our turn.

Michael Snyder
November 14, 2021
This Is How They Intend To Get Us To “You Will Own Nothing And Be Happy”
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Let’s say the ultimate paranoid understanding is this is a collapse of civilization to some degree.  In order to understand this, we should extract ourselves from as many of these failing systems as possible.  If you can extract yourself from the money system as much as possible, the school system and any of these systems because they are all going to fail, and you don’t want to be dragged down by them.  Here’s how bad it’s going to get…

Members of Congress will be rushing out of meetings, heaving their guts out and vomiting all over the hallways because of the emotional shock because of the death of the dollar.  The death of the dollar is not going to be a slow thing.  It will come to the point, probably fairly rapidly, and it might even be in just a couple of weeks because we have this drop dead date on December 3^rd.  Anyway … This is the thing to imagine, and that is we are coming to the end of a civilization.

Clif High
November 16, 2021
Collapse of Civilization Coming
[Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.

While I can believe there is a very good chance of economic collapse of the U.S. within the next few years, and I can believe it will be “rapid”, my best guess is that “rapid” will be on the scale of months or possibly weeks.

My “prediction” is based on the time scales seen in other hyper inflation situations.—Joe]

Government’s track record in creating public goods that are of actual value to people and that do not waste resources is nothing short of dismal. Then add the public choice aspect to the whole thing, that politicians have their own interests and therefore may not pursue the public good even if they know it. The assumption that government will fix the economy and increase our standard of living beyond what entrepreneurs can do is unbearably naïve.

I do not think these problems matter much to proponents of MMT, however. Because it is not a theory of how the economy works and so does not concern itself with worldly things like production, innovation, entrepreneurship, scarcity (other than as potentially causing inflation), or time. It is a pseudoreligious conviction that anything is possible and that the one and only solution is always Glorious Government.

Per Bylund
September 14, 2021
The Political Alchemy Called Modern Monetary Theory
[This article is the best explanation I have read on why MMT cannot work.

Some of big takeaways not outlined in the quote above:

• Government creation of currency is not the same as creating money.
• Government spending diverts resources from meeting the demands of the public markets.
• Reducing the production of goods and services in the market result in inflation.
• Idle/unused resources are sometime idle/unused for a good reason and are best left that way for now.

Previous critiques have left me somewhat unconvinced. I was certain MMT was fatally flawed, but I couldn’t find the clear flaws and conclusively prove to myself it was a terrible disaster in the making I was certain it had to be. This article was a huge help to me.—Joe]

Congress is going to pass wild spending package after wild spending package, and the Fed is just going to continue to pump billions upon billions of fresh dollars into the financial system.

This is the greatest financial bubble in the history of the world, and it will be fascinating to watch how long it can last before it finally implodes.

Michael Snyder
August 11, 2021
I Feel Like I Am Living In Crazytown
[For certain values of “fascinating”.

Prepare appropriately.—Joe]