Quote:A couple of months ago, a woman paid a visit to Jeff Schrier's used car lot in Omaha, Nebraska. She was on a tight budget, she said, and was desperate for a vehicle to commute to work.
She was shown three cars priced at her limit, roughly $7,500. Schrier said the woman was stunned.
"'That's what I get for $7,500?'" he recalled her saying. The vehicles had far more age or mileage on them than she had expected for something to replace a car that had been totaled in a crash.

The woman eventually settled on a 2013 Toyota Scion with a whopping 160,000 miles on it. Schrier isn’t sure he made any profit on the deal. "We just helped her out," he said.
As prices for used vehicles blow past any seemingly rational level, it is the kind of scenario playing out at many auto dealerships across the country. Prices have soared so high, so fast, that buyers are being increasingly priced out of the market.
Consider that the average price of a used vehicle in the United States in November, according to Edmunds.com, was $29,011 — a dizzying 39% more than just 12 months earlier. And for the first time that anyone can recall, more than half of America's households have less income than is considered necessary to buy the average-priced used vehicle.
The days when just about anyone with a steady income could wander onto an auto lot and snag a reliable late-model car or buy their kid's first vehicle for a few thousand dollars have essentially vanished.
“I’ve never seen anything remotely close to this — it’s craziness,” said Schrier, who has been selling autos for 35 years. “It’s quite frustrating for so many people right now.”
When the government reported that consumer inflation rocketed 6.8% in the 12 months that ended in November — the sharpest jump in nearly 40 years — the biggest factor, apart from energy, was used vehicles. And while the rate of increase is slowing, most experts say the inflated vehicle prices aren't likely to ease for the foreseeable future.
The blame can be traced directly to the pandemic's eruption in March of last year. Auto plants suspended production to try to slow the virus’ spread. As sales of new vehicles sank, fewer people traded in used cars and trucks. At the same time, demand for laptops and monitors from people stuck at home led semiconductor makers to shift production from autos, which depend on such chips, to consumer electronics.

When a swifter-than-expected economic rebound boosted demand for vehicles, auto plants tried to restore full production. But chip makers couldn’t respond fast enough. And rental car companies and other fleet buyers, unable to acquire new vehicles, stopped off-loading older ones, thereby compounding the shortage of used vehicles.
Bleak as the market is for used-car buyers, the computer chip shortage has also driven new-vehicle prices higher. The average new vehicle, Edmunds.com says, is edging toward $46,000.
Even so, prices of used cars are likely to edge closer to new ones. Since the pandemic started, used vehicle prices have jumped 42% — more than double the increase for new ones. Last month, the average used vehicle price was 63% of the average new vehicle cost. Before the pandemic, it was 54%.
At this point, Schrier has to tell lower-income buyers that he has very few used vehicles to sell them.
“What used to be a $5,000 car," he said, “is now $8,000. What used to be $8,000 is now $11,000 or $12,000.”
Including taxes, fees, a 10% down payment, and an interest rate of around 7.5%, the average used vehicle now costs $520 a month, even when financed for the average of nearly six years, Edmunds calculated.
To make that payment and afford such other necessities as housing, food, and utilities, a household would have to take home about $60,000 a year, or $75,000 before taxes, said Kimberly Palmer, a personal finance specialist at NerdWallet. In 2020, the U.S. median pretax household income was $67,521, the Census Bureau says.
“The average person," Palmer said, “can’t afford the average used car right now.”
Ivan Drury, a senior manager at Edmunds, said that while he doesn’t track used vehicle prices relative to household income, he thinks November marked a record “in the worst way possible for affordability.”
Monthly payments for the average used vehicle, he noted, were $413 two years ago, $382 five years ago and $365 a decade ago. The November average payment of $500-plus for a used vehicle, Drury said, is about the average that was needed five years ago for a brand-new vehicle.
“People are going to have to make hard decisions, maybe cut back in other areas,” Palmer said. “It means that it’s stressful for a lot of families.”
Used vehicle prices are so high that Karl Hogan of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh, was able last month to quickly sell his 2007 Toyota Tacoma small pickup truck, with more than 170,000 miles on it. Even with the vehicle's age and mileage, a man from Ohio forked over $6,500 for it.
Hogan didn’t have to budge from the asking price. When some would-be buyers offered him less money, he told them: “I’ve got 12 other guys behind you.”
A week before the sale, when he bought his new Tacoma, Hogan had been on the other side of the equation. The dealer wouldn’t budge from his $38,000 sticker price.
“If I didn’t take it," Hogan said, "there were three people waiting. I couldn’t get any off, but I wanted a new truck.”
David Paris, a senior manager at J.D. Power, noted that used vehicle prices are directly tied to the cost of new ones. Though some automakers report that the computer chip supply is gradually improving, prices paid by dealers at used vehicle auctions kept rising through November, Paris said.
“We’re not seeing any softening in prices, which is extremely rare for this time of the year,” he said.
New vehicle dealers have about 1 million vehicles available nationally — scarcely one-third of the normal supply, Paris said. And the vast majority have already been sold.
Given pent-up demand from consumers, prices for new vehicles are expected to remain historically high until the supply returns to around 2 million or 2.5 million and automakers resume discounting, which could take well into 2023. Once new vehicle prices do ease, the pressure on used-vehicle prices would eventually follow.
Yet even after that, the availability of vehicles will be tight because traditional sources of used vehicles — autos turned in from leases and trade-ins or sold by rental companies — have essentially dried up.
For the past decade, cars returning from two- and three-year leases were a leading source of almost-new used vehicles. But that was when more than one-third of U.S. new vehicle sales were leases, a figure now down to 22%, said Edmunds’ Drury. Because there aren’t many new autos, people with expiring leases are often buying those cars once their leases end.
Rental companies, another key source of late-model used cars, can’t buy new ones now and are holding the ones they have. Some rental companies are even buying used vehicles. Given all those factors, Paris expects the shortage of used cars to worsen through 2024.
Among the few consumers who stand to benefit are those who want to sell a used car and don't necessarily need to replace it. The average trade-in value in October, Paris said, was $9,000 — twice what it was a year earlier.
But for people who have no vehicles to trade in and only modest incomes, the options are few to none. Palmer of Nerdwallet said lower-income people may simply have to pay for repairs to keep a current vehicle running as long as possible. Even that option, though, can become prohibitively expensive.
J.D. Power’s Paris says that if they can afford it, buyers should consider a new vehicle. He recently managed to get a couple thousand dollars whacked off the sticker price on a new Ram pickup, though he had to travel from the Washington, D.C., area to Philadelphia to reach a willing dealer he had located by searching internet forums.
“If you look hard enough and are willing to wait and travel," he said, “you can find deals across most brands.”

Quote:BUMPED by request. Unfortunately, there is a lot of wrong information being discussed and shared.  Even reputable regional media are giving inaccurate information, making wrong interpretations {LINK}, and generally getting the explanations wrong.  Additionally, there’s general misinterpretations of ordinary outages based on the day of the week (Sunday) and bad weather in the Northeast {ex Twitter Thread}.
All of these #BidensEmptyShelves assumptions, which are being heightened by increased attention and social media, are leading to confusion.
An empty retail shelf or case for a 24, 36 to 48-hour period is not, I repeat, NOT, part of a systemic supply chain disruption.  Those are mostly location and regional specific out of stock situations caused by localized events, weather and employee shortages.
What CTH has been describing for the past several months is NOT what is noted above.  What we have been describing is a long term supply chain crisis that will slowly unfold over a period of about a week or two, and then remain a problem over time, for a period of 6+ months. {GO DEEP}
The thirteen bullet points below are the issues we will first notice as the general food supply chain begins to show signs of that type of vulnerability.  This outline explains why it is happening and how long it can be expected.
In the previous October, November and December warnings, we emphasized preparation and counted down the 90-day window.  Now, as we enter the final two weeks before mid/late January, the date of our original prediction, it appears that some media are starting to catch up, and the larger public is starting to notice.
Feel free to note in the comments section what is happening in your area.  Hopefully, most of us are much better positioned than the average person who has not been following this as closely over the past several months.

Initial food instability signs in the supply chain.  Things to look for: 
(1) A shortage of processed potatoes (frozen specifically).
And/Or a shortage of the ancillary products that are derivates of, or normally include, potatoes.
(2) A larger than usual footprint of turkey in the supermarket (last line of protein).
(3) A noticeable increase in the price of citrus products.
(4) A sparse distribution of foodstuffs that rely on flavorings.
(5) The absence of non-seasonal products.
(6) Little to no price difference on the organic comparable (diff supply chain)
(7) Unusual country of origin for fresh product type.
(8) Absence of large container products
(9) Shortage of any ordinary but specific grain derivative item (ex. wheat crackers)
(10) Big brand shortage.
(11) Shortage of wet pet foods
(12) Shortage of complex blended products with multiple ingredients (soups etc)
(13) A consistent shortage of milk products and/or ancillaries.
These notes above are all precursors that show significant stress in the supply chain.  Once these issues are consistently visible, we are going to descend into food instability very quickly, sector by sector, category by category.
At first, each retail operation will show varying degrees of the supply chain stress according to their size, purchasing power, and/or private manufacturing, transportation and distribution capacity.
♦ BACKGROUND – Do you remember the dairy farmers in 2020 dumping their milk because the commercial side of milk demand (schools, restaurants, bag milk purchasers) was forcibly locked down?   Plastic jugs were in short supply, and the processing side of the equation has a limited amount of operational capacity.
To remind us of how the issues started in 2020, a dairy farmer helps to explain:
“Are we dumping milk because of greed or low demand, no. It’s the supply chain, there are only so many jug fillers, all were running 24/7 before this cluster you-know-what.
Now demand for jug milk has almost doubled.  However, restaurant demand is almost gone; NO ONE is eating out. 
Restaurant milk is distributed in 2.5 gal bags or pint chugs; further, almost 75 percent of milk is processed into hard products in this country, cheese and butter. Mozzarella is almost a third of total cheese production; how’s pizza sales going right now??
A bit of history – Years ago (40+) every town had a bottler, they ran one shift a day, could ramp up production easily.  Now with all the corporate takeovers (wall street over main street) we are left with regional “high efficiency” milk plants that ran jug lines 24/7 before this mess, no excess capacity.
Jug machines cost millions and are MADE IN CHINA. Only so many jugs can be blown at a jug plant.  We farmers don’t make the jugs, damn hard to ramp up production.
I’m a dairy farmer, believe me NO dairyman likes dumping milk; and so far there is NO guarantee they will get paid. Milk must be processed within 48 hours of production and 24 hours of receipt in the plant or it goes bad. Same with making it into cheese and butter, and neither stores well for long.
The same supply line problems exists where restaurants are supplied with bulk 1 pound blocks of butter or single serv packs or pats; and cheese is sold in 10 to 20 pound bags (think shredded Mozzarella for pizza).  Furthermore, it is not legal for this end of the supply chain to sell direct to consumers in most states.
Take cheddar cheese for instance; it goes from mild to sharp to crap in storage. Butter, frozen, only stores for so long and then must be slowly thawed and processed into other uses as it gets “strong”.  At Organic Valley we cook it down into butter oil or ghee for cooking.
We are headed for the same problem with canned veggies.  The vast majority of produce comes off and is processed in season; canned or frozen.  The supply is already in cans for the season; restaurants use gallon cans or bulk bags of frozen produce.
At some point we will run out of consumer sized cans in stock because home size sales are up (40%+) and restaurant sales are almost nonexistent.  Fresh produce out of U.S. season comes from Mexico (different climate).  I’m talking sweet corn, green beans, peas, tomatoes, all veggies are seasonal in the USA.  Fresh, out-of-season, row crops are  imported.  (There are exceptions, like hydroponic grown, but small amount of total).
Someone mentioned “time to raid all those bins of corn”.  Those bins on the farm contain yellow corn, cattle feed and totally unfit for human consumption, now or at harvest.
Eggs? Same problem.  Bakeries and restaurants of any size use Pullman egg cases, 30 dozen at a pop, 30 eggs to a flat, 12 flats to a case.  There are only so many 1 dozen egg cartons available and only so many packing machines.
Industrial bakeries and processors of packaged food buy bulk liquid eggs, no carton at all.  Also in many states it is illegal to sell this supply-chain directly to consumers. 
On your standard buffet of any size, do you really think they boil eggs and peel them? They come in a bag, boiled and diced; those nice uniform slices of boiled egg you see on your salad, a lot of them come in tubes boiled and extruded at the same time, just unwrap and slice. Your scrambled eggs come in a homogenized bag on most buffets.
Another example of Main Street being gutted and “improved by wall street” NO local egg processors available or many small egg producers either, all corporate and huge, contracted to sell to the corporate masters.
This is a warning the same problems exist in all supply chains.
The supply chain is farked.”
~ David Osterloh, Dairy Farmer 
Potato farmers and fresh food suppliers were also told to dump, blade or plough over their crops due to lack of commercial side demand.  These issues have longer term consequences than many would understand.  These are fresh crops, replenishment crops, which require time before harvest and production.
The retail consumer supply chain for manufactured and processed food products includes bulk storage to compensate for seasonality. As Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue noted in 2020, “There are over 800 commercial and public warehouses in the continental 48 states that store frozen products.”
Here is a snapshot of the food we had in storage at the end of February 2020: over 302 million pounds of frozen butter; 1.36 billion pounds of frozen cheese; 925 million pounds of frozen chicken; over 1 billion pounds of frozen fruit; nearly 2.04 billion pounds of frozen vegetables; 491 million pounds of frozen beef; and nearly 662 million pounds of frozen pork.
This bulk food storage is how the total U.S. consumer food supply ensures consistent availability even with weather impacts.  As a nation, we essentially stay one harvest ahead of demand by storing it and smoothing out any peak/valley shortfalls. There are a total of 175,642 commercial facilities involved in this supply chain across the country
The stored food supply is the originating resource for food manufacturers who process the ingredients into a variety of branded food products and distribute to your local supermarket. That bulk stored food, and the subsequent supply chain, is entirely separate from the fresh food supply chain used by restaurants, hotels, cafeterias etc.

Look carefully at the graphic.  See the fork in the supply chain that separates “food at home (40%)” from “food away from home (60%)”?
Food ‘outside the home’ includes restaurants, fast food locales, schools, corporate cafeterias, university lunchrooms, manufacturing cafeterias, hotels, food trucks, park and amusement food sellers and many more. Many of those venues are not thought about when people evaluate the overall U.S. food delivery system; however, this network was approximately 60 percent of all food consumption on a daily basis.
The ‘food away from home‘ sector has its own supply chain. Very few restaurants and venues (cited above) purchase food products from retail grocery outlets. As a result of the coronavirus mitigation effort, the ‘food away from home’ sector was reduced by 75% of daily food delivery operations. However, people still needed to eat. That meant retail food outlets, grocers, saw sales increases of 25 to 50 percent, depending on the area.
Covid regulations and lockdowns destroyed this complex supply chain in 2020.
It takes time to recover, because the replenishment is based on harvest cycles.  This stuff must be grown.
When the food at home sector was forced to take on the majority of food delivery, they immediately hit processing constraints.  The processing side of the supply chain to funnel food into suppliers for the grocery store has “x” amount of capacity.  That system cannot (not feasible) / did not expand to meet the 20 to 50% increase in demand.
Think about potatoes.  A potato farmer sells into one of the two paths “food at home” (retail stores, or a processing supplier) or “food away from home” (commercial food or commercial food processors).   Other than bulk raw potatoes, the harvest goes into: (1) processing or (2) storage.
(1a) processing for retail sales (40%), ex. Ore Ida frozen potatoes, canning, or any of the other thousand retail products that use potatoes, whole or mashed.
(1b) processing for commercial sales (60%), ex. McDonalds french fries, or any of the thousand restaurant, lunchroom and cafeteria needs that use potatoes, whole or mashed.
♦ Processing – When 1b was shut down in 2020, 1a quickly reached maximum retail processing capacity.  Massive multi-million machines and food processing systems have a capacity. The supplies they use also have a capacity: plastic bags, cardboard, trays, bowls, etc.  The 1a processing system can only generate “X” amount of retail product at maximum capacity.
The remaining 1b commercial product was shut down.  A massive percentage of 1b (commercial) potatoes have nowhere to go, except waste.
♦ Storage – Each processor in 1a stores product (deep cold or frozen storage) for 365-day processing and distribution.   Those storage facilities have a limited amount of capacity.   The 1b customers need fresh product for the majority of their outlets. Ergo, storing for 1b customers who might eventually be allowed to open later only works for a short period of time.  The fresh potato sales missed by 1b outlets = the 1b discard by potato farmers.
When you restart 1b suddenly the 1b short term (fresh) storage product is quickly depleted.  Refilling that 2020 storage is dependent on a new 2021 harvest, which simultaneously has a greater immediate demand because the supply chain on the processing side was boxcar’d (over capacity) and then reset to a higher capacity playing catchup.
The amount missing from 2021 storage, because it was used instead of saved, is essentially equal to the amount that was wasted in 2020.
Now you end 2021 with less reserves because storage is depleted, because a greater percentage of the current harvest was immediately used.  You enter into the beginning of 2022 (winter) in a race to try and spread out the stored potatoes as you cross your fingers and race against the clock for the next harvest before running out.
You probably noticed – but attached to this issue is yet another motive to keep people (employees) away from large industrial cafeterias and even students from school lunchrooms.   The total food supply chain needs time, and harvests, to catch up.
In the example above you can replace *potato* with just about any row crop or retail/commercial food commodity like milk.
The reason I list the shortage of potatoes as the #1 precursor is because every food outlet sells a potato in some form.  Every supermarket and every single restaurant (fancy, sit down or fast food) sells some form of potato.   Potatoes are demanded by every single food outlet; therefore, a shortage of potatoes is the first noticeable issue.
The 2020 demand disruption problem now becomes a 2021/2022 supply chain problem on both the fresh and processing side (depleted inventories), with each vector now competing for the same raw material: wheat, soybeans, grains, beans and stored row crops.
Making matters worse, the protein suppliers also need grain as feed for cattle, pigs, cows, chickens, etc.
[Note: who gets the short straw? The pet food manufacturers]
That’s the nub of the background supply chain issue in the food sector.   Additionally, recovery is not a single-issue problem.
The recovery price and shortages relate to everything from current oil and gas prices to diesel engine oil prices, to fertilizer and weed killer costs, to plastic costs and petroleum packing shortages (Styrofoam especially), to cardboard and sustainable packaging costs, to energy costs and transportation/delivery costs.   All along this complex supply chain there’s also workers and higher payroll costs.
Thus, we get the double-edged sword of higher prices (inflation) and simultaneous shortages.
Here’s what you can do to offset grocery store shortages (while possible):
(1) Buy the generic or store brand equivalent (sub-set inside retail supply chain)
(2) Purchase the organic version (another sub-set inside retail supply chain)
(3) Purchase the powered/dehydrated version (potatoes, milk, etc) and experiment (jazz it up).
Each retail operation, or chain of stores, will show varying degrees of the supply chain stress according to their size, purchasing power, and/or private manufacturing, transportation and distribution capacity.
This is where field to fork supplier relationships can make a big difference.  However, every outlet regardless of their operational excellence, is going to have significant shortages in their inventory.   It’s an unavoidable outcome of the previous chaos.
On average, the retail shortages will last for about as long as one full harvest schedule (4 to 6 months) depending on the commodity.  By September of 2022, the various sector should be relatively recovered.
However, government intervention could make the issues worse, or the recovery time take longer, depending on how they respond when people get seriously stressed in a few weeks.  The densely populated urban areas are going to be making a lot of noise and demanding the government fix the crisis.
Final note on INFLATION – The short term prices will go up again.  Another 10, 20 up to 50% should be expected depending on the item.  Those prices will eventually level off, but it’s doubtful they will be able to come back down until supply and demand find some equilibrium again, if ever.  Right now, predicting future retail prices is too far off to even fathom.
I hope this outline provides you with information to help you make decisions for your family.

Posted in Big Government, Big Stupid Government, Coronavirus, Economy, media bias, Predictions, Prepper, propaganda, Typical Prog Behavior, Uncategorized, US dept of agriculture, USA, USMCA

Quote:The empty shelf problems in/around DC last weekend were mostly due to regional weather and employment issues.  However, the snapshot represents an example of how people react to their first encounter.  The conditions in the video represent a worst case scenario for those who have been watching the supply chain issue coming over the horizon. {Go Deep}
I doubt our average 2022 result will be this bad overall, however, there are areas where this might be the status.  For most people outside urban areas, this severity of a food store shortage is unlikely, unless the federal government gets involved.  If the federal government intervenes, this will be more common.

We know from prior examples, if these types of conditions were to last for just 72 hours across every store in a metropolitan region, you would see a level of panic begin.  Civic stability remains relatively stable for 72 hours (3 days).  However, if these conditions are persistent for more than 3 days, the general mindset of the population changes quickly.  Things rapidly deteriorate.  After three days, all reference points for civic norms are gone.
Those who remember Miami-Dade, specifically the Homestead region, in the aftermath of hurricane Andrew have a solid reference for what happens.  New Orleans after hurricane Katrina was a lesser, albeit more public version.   Hunger, fear and desperation are not a good combination.

{Background on Larger Issues HERE}

 
Posted in Big Government, Big Stupid Government, Deep State, Economy, Fabian Socialists - Modern Progressives, Infectious Disease, Prepper, propaganda, Typical Prog Behavior, Uncategorized, US dept of agriculture, USA

Quote:

The absence of food will change things….. Quickly.

The issues will fluctuate region by region and chain by chain as we enter the destabilization phase.  In this phase the impacts in some operators will be small, and in others will be more noticeable.  The difference will be the overall operational excellence in the proprietary business system they operate.
However, once the internal merit is exhausted, the manufacturing issues will impact all food retailers regardless of their warehouse and distribution excellence, or lack thereof.  Ironically, small independent stores might be in the best position to withstand fresh supply pressure as they are closer to the field.
The further away the retail business operation is from the farmer, the greater the impact.  The more people, systems and bureaucracy there are between the retailer and the farmer, the greater the operational impact.  The longer the supply chain, the greater the impact.  It is an unusual dynamic, but the local farmers’ markets are going to be the best source of consistent local supply.  That reality is why the urban areas are going to be hit the hardest.
In this media report from Philadelphia, the local NBC affiliate blames the food supply issues exclusively on Omicron.
This claim is patently false [SEE HERE].

.
The final straw, to collapse the remaining supply, will likely be the cross-border truck driver vaccine mandate which kicks in on January 15th.
After that, things start to get sketchy.


 
Posted in Big Government, Big Stupid Government, Economy, Fabian Socialists - Modern Progressives, media bias, Notorious Liars, propaganda

Quote:The Biden Administration is rolling out a revolutionary solution to diminishing supplied chain food stuff by releasing the Word Salad Program. The Biden Administration's Word Salad Program is a healthier meal choice than deep fried Chicken Tenders with adobo spiced ranch dipping sauce on the side with fries and an extra large Dr. Pepper.

"My daughter loves Word Salad meals", Jenn Psaki announced at the White House Press briefing.

Every Biden Administration cabinet member is pledged to offer more word salad when briefing the Press and The Collective. The Biden Administration Word Salad Initiative offers low caloric value for every comrade's consideration for their survival.

The Biden Administration's Word Salad Initiative will now provide all the mental protein necessary as we move into the second year of the Biden Plan to Build Back Better.