I can cook well enough to keep myself from going hungry. So it should come as no surprise I was only able to recognize the last item:
Via a tweet from Tanya Tay Posobiec @realTanyaTay. This has more impact when you discover Tanya was born in the USSR.
I want to give a warning – It’s very easy in this situation to assume that Pelosi and even Biden are making these arguments because they are too stupid to grasp the fundamentals of debt creation, money velocity and fiat. That said, never mistake evil for mere ignorance.
Brandon Smith
March 17, 2022
The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing
[Emphasis added.—Joe]
To begin with, the shitty, corrupt system that’s been in place since 1913, which is the ultimate Ponzi scheme- is finished.
In 2015 I listed several scenarios which could torpedo the dollar:
–China announces the yuan will be a gold-backed currency
–China announces they will no longer accept dollars for international commerce
–Saudi Arabia (now heavily backed by China) announces they will no longer accept dollars for oil
–China and Russia announce they’re dumping all US debt instruments
I was wrong; our leaders created a situation where bullets 2-4 have happened, or will soon. And ironically enough, Russia just backed the ruble with gold, so bullet one is somewhat covered.
In short order, our phony leaders have basically forced China, Russia, India and even Pakistan to join up, and permanently yank the carpet from under the fiat-money banking system that the globalists base their power on.
No bullshit, that’s just the truth.
Capitalist Eric
March 31, 2022
Crash Positions
[Via Rolf on Gab.
Very grim. I wish I could refute his conclusions. Perhaps some economists could do that but the list of economists I don’t trust is much larger than the list I do trust.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
I think it’s important that people within the liberty movement and outside of the liberty movement start thinking about the scale of the crisis we are facing. It’s not just about economic disaster and adapting to the loss of supply chains and stable currencies; it’s not just about survival. It’s also about fighting back against the inevitable government response to the crisis. They will try to take advantage of people’s pain, and use it to lure those people into slavery. This cannot be allowed to happen.
Brandon Smith
March 17, 2022
The Stagflation Trap Will Lead To Universal Basic Income And Food Rationing
[Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
As an electrical engineer I find this “interesting”:
Washington state plans to ban most non-electric vehicles by 2030, according to a newly signed bill by Gov. Jay Inslee.
The bill says that all vehicles of the model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in the state must be electric.
As the next year’s model come out in the fall the target for their mandate will be in a little over seven years. I don’t think the electrical infrastructure can be upgraded to handle the new load in time. This will be especially true if the leftist politicians pushing to remove many of the hydroelectric dams are successful.
It is my belief they hope to bring wind and solar online. But those sources are intermittent. Those cars are going to be lower in the priority que than heating and lighting homes and offices. If you pull into the charging station during peak usage in early January with little wind and almost no solar for a few days you could be told you won’t be able to recharge until the wind blows from the south again so the heating load isn’t so high. Perhaps in a week or two. Or maybe you can find a black market diesel generator if you know who to ask and have the cash to pay for it.
My guess is that one of two things will happen.
I often wonder if the economic destruction authoritarians create is due to obliviousness, maliciousness, or a deliberate gamble that things will somehow recover from their reign of power.
We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.
The Left are suspicious of the government on defence and law & order.
The Right are suspicious of the government on welfare and education.
Both are correct.
Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith
Tweeted on March 22, 2022
[I agree and go further. I am suspicious of government on all things.
The profile of Ms. Smith on Twitter may be of interest to some:
Who is Alice Smith? The great-great-great-granddaughter of Adam Smith. Follow me on my adventures down the capitalist rabbit hole! 2+2=4
I presume this is the Adam Smith who wrote The Wealth of Nations. This book had a big influence on me.—Joe]
This governmental freefall has been overseen by a tragically bewildered, petulant, and incompetent president. In his confusion, an increasingly unpopular Biden seems to believe that his divisive chaos is working, belittling his political opponents as racist Confederate rebels.
As we head into the 2022 midterm elections, who will stop our descent into collective poverty, division, and self-inflicted madness?
Victor Davis Hanson
January 19, 2022
Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse
[I’m nearly certain that is the wrong question to ask. It is my understanding that in chaotic times people give their support to “strong” (authoritarian) people who claim they can fix the broken system. Mussolini and Hitler come to mind…
Hence, I think the better questions are:
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
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]
The U.S. isn’t the only place with inflation these days. Turkey is on track to have inflation somewhere between 20% and 40% this year. Other countries are interesting as well. The top 20 are:
| Country | Last | Previous |
| Venezuela | 1,575.0 | 1,946.0 |
| Sudan | 366.0 | 388.0 |
| Lebanon | 174.0 | 144.0 |
| Syria | 139.0 | 134.0 |
| Suriname | 69.5 | 59.8 |
| Zimbabwe | 58.4 | 54.5 |
| Argentina | 52.1 | 52.5 |
| Iran | 35.7 | 39.2 |
| Ethiopia | 33.0 | 34.2 |
| Angola | 26.9 | 26.6 |
| Turkey | 21.3 | 19.9 |
| Zambia | 19.3 | 21.1 |
| Nigeria | 16.0 | 16.6 |
| Guinea | 12.7 | 13.1 |
| Georgia | 12.5 | 12.8 |
| Kyrgyzstan | 12.5 | 13.5 |
| Sierra Leone | 11.6 | 10.9 |
| Pakistan | 11.5 | 9.2 |
| Ghana | 11.0 | 10.6 |
| Haiti | 10.9 | 12.2 |
The US. is in 58th place with 6.2%. At least those are the “official” numbers. As the Reason article notes the official numbers and what is really happening don’t necessarily agree.
“Interesting” things happen with high inflation. There are numerous examples of hyper inflation (defined as greater than or equal to 50% per month) for individual countries. You might want to read up on them. But there will be new books required if it goes global.
The consequences of government responses to COVID, such as reduced production and “free money” make inflation worse. With yet another variant/excuse to adversely affect the economy we might get to read some of those new books on inflation in a year or two. Assuming, of course, we can afford the cost of the paper or electricity to charge your Kindle.
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]
It’s hopeless to expect the government to cut down on deficit spending or money printing anytime soon. It’s all they know how to do.
Jim Rickards
November 9, 2021
First Down Payment on a Boondoggle
[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 3rd. 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]
When Brother Doug and I get together we frequently have long talks about our country’s political state. The illegal gun laws, the U.S. debt, the out of control printing of money, etc..
One of the things Doug frequently points out is that the average person doesn’t get outraged because the legacy media gives the political left cover through, at best, selective reporting of the facts and implications of things that are not true. And frequently outright lies.
So how do we combat these lies? Doug and I get frustrated at this point. Politely pointing out their errors doesn’t work. After all, as Lyle frequently points out a good case can be made they actually pride themselves on there ability to lie and get away with it.
I finally came up with decent response. I have created a new blog post category, Legacy Media Liars. This category will be used to call out individuals (when available) as liars. I don’t know that my blog has enough Google Page Rank to bring searches for the liars names into the top ten on Google but it’s better than doing nothing.
I have gone back to a few previous posts and categorized them as well to kind of jump start the category. This is as if I actually will be short on material. The Rittenhouse verdict probably gave me 100 articles to blog about in the first 12 hours after the verdict was announced.
This is going to be a busy category.
A unique patient identifier will weaken health care by making individuals reluctant to share personal information—such as drug and alcohol use and past sexual history—with health care providers. It will also discourage sick individuals from seeking medical care for fear their physicians will discover they are unvaccinated, smoke, are overweight, or engage in other unapproved behaviors.
A unique medical ID could also be tied to government records of gun purchases. Someone with “too many” guns could be labeled a potential mental health risk and harassed by law enforcement. This is especially likely if the gun grabbers are successful in their push to enact “red flag” laws in every state.
Fortunately, there is a growing resistance to vaccines and other mandates. This resistance is unlikely to passively accept a federally-issued unique patient identifier. If those of us who know the truth take advantage of the opportunity presented by the resistance to COVID tyranny, we can not only stop the scheme to force every American to obtain a “unique patient identifier” but end all government control of our health care.
Ron Paul
November 11, 2021
Resist the Unique Patient Identifier!
[One thing he didn’t mention that I suspect will develop is a black market in health care. This will include all the quality control and fraud issues of black markets.
I fully support Paul in his goals and appreciate his efforts. However, I suspect Paul is a bit too optimistic. My bet is the only way we will get government to stop controlling our health care is by an economic collapse of the Federal government.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
What is wonderfully surprising is the spontaneous emergence of a pure gold currency in a remote region of southeastern Venezuela around the towns of Tumeremo and El Callao. The region abounds with precious metal ores and has a long history of luring prospectors and miners seeking their fortunes. Today, however, many of the larger mines are controlled by the government military, which is battling local gangs and guerillas. Despite the violence and lawlessness, jobless Venezuelans from far and wide are flooding into the area to work in thriving illegal mines in exchange for payment in gold nuggets. As a result, gold flakes, which are peeled off raw nuggets with hand tools, have become the currency of choice in the region with prices for commodities and services quoted in grams of gold. Half a gold gram buys you a one-night stay in a local hotel, while a meal for two at a Chinese restaurant and a haircut will cost you a quarter of a gram and an eighth of a gram, respectively. The gold flakes are carried in people’s pockets—usually wrapped in the nearly worthless bolivar notes. While some shops are equipped with scales to weigh the gold flakes, most sellers and their customers have become so familiar with the flakes that they evaluate them by sight. For example, the barber and his customer who transacted for the haircut agreed that three gold flakes equaled the one-eighth gram price (approximately $5.00). Gold is also starting to penetrate the nearby cities, such as the regional capital Ciudad Bolivar, as stores in shopping malls gladly accept the gold in exchange for dollars from miners who are seeking to cash out.
Joseph T. Salerno
October 28, 2021
Venezuelans Turn to Gold Nuggets as the Local Currency Implodes
[From reading the article you can see how the use of other precious metals would also be a useful currency as well. Brass, steel, and copper jacketed lead would seem to be quite useful in getting and maintaining access to the mines and protecting private mints.
This may be coming soon to a country near you. Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
Shortages of both goods and services combined with massive government spending are resulting in inflation. And now there are predictions of increasing electrical power outages:
Across the nation, severe weather fueled by climate change is pushing aging electrical systems past their limits, often with deadly results. Last year, the average American home endured more than eight hours without power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — more than double the outage time five years ago.
I suppose you can call it “climate change”. Assuming it’s the political climate you have in mind. From the same article:
…state regulators largely have rejected these ideas, citing pressure to keep energy rates affordable. Of $15.7 billion in grid improvements under consideration last year, regulators approved only $3.4 billion, according to a national survey by the NC Clean Energy Technology Center — about one fifth.
After a weather disaster, “everybody’s standing around saying ‘why didn’t you spend more to keep the lights on?’” Ted Thomas, chairperson of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But when you try to spend more when the system is working, it’s a tough sell.”
Politicians are demanding “green electricity”. But most types of “green electricity” are unreliable and more expensive. And at the same time there are demands to remove hydroelectric dams. Then they demand electricity be “affordable”. The grid is aging and stretched to the limit by increased consumption, decreasing production, and regulators don’t allow rate increases to replace and improve the equipment. Socialism, it’s the poison pill working it’s evil upon humanity.
A phrase comes to mind which was commonly used in regards to the “eco-freaks” when I was electrical engineering school, “Let them freeze in the dark.”
But the problem is it won’t be those who created the problem who “enjoy” the fruits of their work. It will be those who are out of political favor who will be last in line to get their share of the rationed electricity, food, medical care, etc.
Our situation will likely slowly deteriorate on all fronts then as all the reserves in the system are consumed it will be a rapid, catastrophic, and systemic failure. Prepare appropriately.
I need to include good backup electricity for my underground bunker.
It doesn’t matter what you’re allowed to say if it doesn’t matter what you say. It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to call the oligarchic puppet put in office by the last fake election a dickhead. It doesn’t matter if you’re allowed to Google any information you want only to find whatever information Google wants you to find.
Caitlin Johnstone
October 10, 2021
The Science Of Propaganda Is Still Being Developed And Advanced
[True.
I’m at a loss for a solution as is Johnstone.
Sometimes I wonder if a major reset (economic collapse?) would improve things. But when I give it more than a moment’s thought I decide things will get worse under those sort of circumstances.—Joe]
he New York Fed’s August survey of consumer expectations showed that Americans anticipate food prices to rise by 7.9 percent in a year, higher than the overall inflation expectation of 5.2 percent.
Federal Reserve officials have repeatedly characterized the current bout of inflation as “transitory” though they have increasingly expressed concern about the risk of a de-anchoring of inflationary expectations. That’s where confidence in the “transitory” narrative falls and people start to believe and behave as if inflation will be far stickier than previously believed, impacting wage and price-setting behavior and potentially even sparking the kind of upward wage-price spiral that bedeviled the economy in the 1970s.
Tom Ozimek
October 9, 2021
Food Prices Hit Highest Level in a Decade
[See also Biden’s Inflation Now Costs Families $2.1K A Year And About To Get Worse.
One of the things about economics, the stock market, and retails sales that was difficult for me to accept was that significant components are emotion driven. It wasn’t that I rejected that it was true. It was that I wanted it to be false.
I wanted to believe that “everyone”, at least a sufficiently high percentage of people, would act rationally enough that most of the time shortages, crazy housing/tulip-bulb/Dot-Com/whatever bubbles and extreme economic cycles wouldn’t occur. I would think, “How many times must these lessons be taught in the school of hard knocks before people learn the lessons?” The answer I didn’t want to accept was that the majority of people will never learn the lesson.
I’ve become more cynical (realistic?) in my old age.
If people believe there is high inflation coming then they increase the odds that it will happen.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]
By 1997, I had graduated from a steady, iconic and expensive list of higher educational institutions which emphasized critical thinking, objective data, historical context and basic math.
But had I told a single professor back then that one day we’d see the simultaneous occurrence of Treasury Yields at 1.35%, and an “official” YoY CPI (inflation) growth rate of 5.4%, and an S&P reaching all-time highs above 4000, despite negative annual GDP rates, and consumer sentiment tanking, it’s likely they’d ask me to return my diplomas.
Why?
Because everything I (and all the rest of us) had been taught long ago was that rising risk assets reflect healthy economic growth, vigorous natural demand and a robust confidence in continued productivity and hence free-market price discovery.
That, at least, was the “reality” that nine years of secondary (post high-school) education gave me before I began my first toe-dip into the public exchanges (i.e., asset bubbles) of 1999.
…
Nothing I learned in school was “real” and nothing about our current moment in time has even the slightest resemblance to anything remotely characterized as natural, free-market or fair-price-driven.
Nothing. Not even close.
Matthew Piepenburg
September 14, 2021
Nothing is Real: A Visual Journey Through Market Absurdity
[Emphasis in the original.
We live in interesting times.
Prepare appropriately.—Joe]