Quote:Prices jumped one percent in January, far more than expected, data from the Department of Labor showed Tuesday.
The Producer Price Index, which measures what businesses are paid for goods and services, rose by one percent in January, twice what economists were expecting. Compared with January of 2021, the index is up 9.7 percent, down slightly from the 9.8 percent year-over-year gain recorded for December.
Excluding food, energy, and trade services, prices rose 0.4 percent from December. They were up 6.9 percent compared with January of 2021, matching the December gain.
Economists had expected prices to rise by 0.5 percent on a monthly basis and 9.2 percent annually.
December’s inflation was revised higher. Initially reported as a 0.2 percent gain on a monthly basis and 9.7 percent annually, the Department of Labor said on Tuesday that prices in December rose 0.4 percent compared with the prior month and 9.8 percent compared with 12-months earlier.

Quote:House prices saw their most significant increase in at least 34 years in 2021, rising a staggering 18.8%, according to data released Tuesday from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index.
Mass migration to the South, Southwest, and Mountain West drove some of the sharpest increases in home prices, the Daily Mail reported.
The biggest jump was in Phoenix, where house prices reached 32.5%. Tampa, Miami, San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver, and Los Angeles also saw large appreciations.

"The influx of new investment is pulling in new residents from the northeast, many of whom have sold homes at prices well above the median in Tampa and Miami, which allows them to bid aggressively for the paucity of homes that are on the market," according to Wells Fargo economist Mark Vitner.
Craig J. Lazzara, a managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, predicted higher lending rates by the Federal Reserve might cool the housing market.
"In the short term," he said, "we should soon begin to see the impact of increasing mortgage rates on home prices."
Lazzara also said the way economists are viewing the housing boom is changing.
"We have previously suggested that the strength in the U.S. housing market is being driven in part by a change in locational preferences as households react to the COVID pandemic," he said.
"More data will be required to understand whether this demand surge simply represents an acceleration of purchases that would have occurred over the next several years rather than a more permanent secular change."
The real estate market saw the most existing homes sold in 15 years in 2021, with sales topping six million while supply sunk to an all-time low, the Mail reported.



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Quote:Tuesday, 15 March 2022 08:41 AM

Wholesale inflation in the United States shot up 10% last month from a year earlier — another sign that inflationary pressures remain intense at all levels of the economy.
The Labor Department said Tuesday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — rose 0.8% from December. The increases were in line with economists' forecasts.
The report did not include price changes after Feb. 15, missing a spike in energy prices when Russia invaded Ukraine nine days later.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, wholesale inflation rose 0.2% from January and 8,4% from February 2021.
Last week, the government reported that surging gas, food and housing costs pushed consumer prices up 7.9% in February from a year earlier — sharpest spike since 1982.
Inflation, dormant for four decades, re-emerged last year as the United States rebounded with unexpected speed from 2020′s short but devastating coronavirus recession. Caught off guard, companies scrambled to find supplies and workers to meet an unexpected surge in orders from customers flush with government relief checks. Factories, ports and freight yards came under strain. Shipments were delayed and prices began to rise.
Tensions over Ukraine have only pushed commodity prices higher.

Quote:This past week during a conference discussing Biden’s “Build Back Better” scheme House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was confronted with questions on skyrocketing inflation. After referring to higher gas prices as the “Putin Tax”, she went on to offer perhaps the dumbest (or most insidious) denial on the causes of inflation that I have ever heard. She stated:
“When we’re having this discussion, it’s important to dispel some of those who say, well it’s the government spending. No, it isn’t. The government spending is doing the exact reverse, reducing the national debt. It is not inflationary.”
Anyone with a basic understanding of economics and how central banks operate must have felt their brains explode when they heard this, I know I did. But before I get into the numerous reasons why this claim is completely false in every way, 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.
All higher level representatives of the White House are briefed by economic experts (spin doctors) well before they answer any questions on inflation, and the things they say have been carefully scripted. It’s possible Pelosi mixed her lies up a little bit, but the narrative the establishment is trying to promote is well planned. Asserting that money creation is a counterbalance to inflation instead of the cause is not brilliant, but it’s not designed to convince many people, only create confusion.
Let’s not forget that only last year these same people were telling the public that inflation was purely “transitory” and that there was nothing to worry about. Now they are trying to cover their tracks and the culpability of the Federal Reserve. I believe the goal here is to simply stall for time until the stagflationary collapse unfolds. They have the perfect scapegoat as they launch an economic war with Russia (and likely China in the near term), and the effects of this war will hurt the US and Europe far more than many realize.
To quickly break down Pelosi’s bizarre statement I will make a couple of root observations:
First, paying down the national debt has NOTHING to do with reducing inflation. Even if you could somehow gather enough assets to pay off the national debt without creating new dollars from thin air the current inflationary problems would persist. There would still be the matter of the tens of trillions of dollars already fabricated and floating around the global economy. Inflation is directly related to money supply and money velocity. The national debt is secondary to the issue.
Second, we need to ask the most obvious question: If government spending “reduces the national debt” by paying it down, then why hasn’t the national debt gone down?
The Fed and the US government created over $6 trillion in fiat money in 2020 alone, and the national debt only went higher. In fact, the explosion of the national debt correlates DIRECTLY to the amount of dollars created by the Fed to supply various stimulus policies and bailouts over the years. The national debt in 2008 at the onset of the credit crash was around $10 trillion. It took hundreds of years to reach that level. In the span of only 14 years of Fed money creation the debt has now TRIPLED to over $30 trillion.
I’ll say it again – Government spending and Fed stimulus has tripled the size of our national debt in less than 14 years. And, of course, inflation has spiked as the amount of dollars injected into the global system causes the buying power of our currency to decline dramatically. More fiat dollars equals less buying power. This is reality.
Also, using Russia as a scapegoat just doesn’t hold up on the logic meter. The assertion by Pelosi, Biden and many establishment leftists has been that blocking Russian oil to the US is leading to inflation in multiple sectors of the economy, but it’s “necessary” to stop Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. One might assume that we use a lot of Russian oil. We don’t.
Russian crude oil only makes up 3% of US imports. Therefore, there is no way that sanctions on Russian oil are the cause of rising prices, nor do these sanctions have any effect on the Kremlin. Inflation was hitting 40 year highs back in December of last year, well before the war in Ukraine. In fact, news on the Fed’s interest rate hikes moves oil markets far more than news on Ukraine.
To summarize, I have a special message for Nancy Pelosi: Please so us a favor and shut up, you blood sucking crone. The American people are smarter than you, and your propaganda script is full of holes.
Onward to more important issues…
This narrative is not only about protecting the Biden Administration, it is also about protecting the Federal Reserve. As former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan once openly admitted, the central bank answers to no one, and that includes government officials. Many theorize that it is actually the central banks and international banks that make the majority of policy decisions for government, and politicians have very little say in matters. I’m inclined to agree given the number of banking elites and globalist Council on Foreign Relations members that seem to permeate every single presidential cabinet (this includes Trump’s cabinet as much as Biden’s).
Biden is an empty shell of a man barely able to maintain a semblance of sanity, who do you think really runs the country?
I have been writing a lot lately about how establishment elites and globalists actually benefit greatly from a stagflationary crisis, as long as they are able to divert blame to other sources and are not targeted for retribution by the public. One of these benefits includes a cover event for an agenda that the World Economic Forum calls the “Great Reset,” which is essentially just another name for “New World Order.”
Isn’t it marvelous that the government and media hailstorm of covid fear porn that was bombarding Americans only a few months ago has now suddenly vanished? What happened? Well, the establishment was defeated, that’s what happened. With conservatives and moderates in red states in the US and in nations around the world fighting back against the lockdowns and vaccine passports the globalists must have realized the battle in the long run was lost. Suddenly all talk of passports and medical tyranny is gone.
I realize there are some people out there that give the globalists too much credit and still argue the covid scheme was some kind of success. These people are wrong. If you want to see what success looks like go to China, where hundreds of millions are still suffering from lockdowns today and no one can do anything without an up-to-date vaccine passport and QR code. In China, the vax passports are also used for tracking of the population as well as an element of their social credit scores. This is what the globalists wanted for all nations including the US, and they didn’t get it. Therefore, it’s on to the next crisis.
The stagflation threat worries me more than any other for a number of reasons, and it’s not just because of the potential for extreme poverty. As we all know, the strategy of “order out of chaos” is about creating enough desperation within a target population that the people are willing to give up their freedoms in exchange for a semblance of safety and normalcy. But what specific controls would the establishment seek out?
Stagflation has the ability to trigger much higher prices in necessities, while it simultaneously drags GDP down along with wages, jobs, manufacturing, etc. There is also the very real threat of government price controls, which would suffocate production and reduce the supply of goods even further. We are not quite to this point yet, but the danger is approaching fast.
There are two initiatives within the WEF’s Great Reset agenda that parallel stagflation almost exactly and I predict we will be hearing about them often in the coming year.
The first initiative is the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI); we heard a lot about this a few years ago but the idea didn’t stick too well with the American public. The truth, however, is that we already had UBI for a time in the form of “covid stimulus checks.” This helicopter money was funded by over $6 trillion in central bank fiat created from nothing, and then directly injected into citizen accounts. It was barely enough for people to live on by itself, but in conjunction with other welfare programs and unemployment checks millions of people were living the easy life at home for well over a year. The money was so easy that the policy actually triggered a national labor shortage.
This small taste of UBI might have given people the wrong impression about such stimulus programs. After the covid programs the public might be led to believe that UBI would result in a carefree life with money to go around. By themselves without the benefit of other welfare programs, the covid checks would not have been enough to keep people housed and fed; the standard of living for the average person would have to fall dramatically for UBI to work at all. Enter stagflation…
With economic decline crushing our living standards it could be easier for the establishment to lure the public into UBI. Along with communist-style price controls across the board (and a reduced population due to starvation and poverty) the public would be able to survive, but barely. There would no longer be such a thing as “personal wealth,” only the scraps that governments and bankers are willing to throw people. On top of that, resistance to authoritarianism would be nearly impossible. Once the government takes on the role of mommy and daddy and the the only source of food and housing for the citizenry they are far less likely to stand against any abuse the establishment wants to dish out.
UBI is a candy coated trap which breeds dependency in a population. Free money is an addictive drug, and America just had a big taste during the pandemic.
This leads us into the second WEF Great Reset program, which is the concept of the “shared economy.” The globalists think that you should own nothing, have no privacy, and be happy about it. The initial danger here involves rationing. A government cannot institute UBI measures during a stagflationary crisis without also instituting price controls, because otherwise the fiat stimulus used to provide the UBI checks would only create MORE inflation in prices. If UBI is meant to offset inflation but it creates more inflation, then UBI becomes useless. This is another little fact that people like Pelosi will try to gloss over when they claim that money printing helps “fight inflation.”
When price controls are implemented manufacturing will implode further, because price controls mean producers of necessities will not be able to make much of a profit (or they will make no profit at all). There will be no incentive to produce among the people that actually know how to produce, and these people are not easy to replace. The supply of goods will not be able to meet demand. Naturally, the government will take the opportunity to limit the amount of goods any single person or family is allowed to purchase or stockpile through rationing cards.
These kinds of measures have been used in the past, usually during wartime or under communist regimes. But in this case the rationing will be digital and permanent, and it will be designed to further control food and other resources as a means to prevent rebellion by the public. If you can’t store more than a week’s worth of necessities at any given time, then your ability to defy the government is nonexistent unless you know how to live off the land or have access to black markets. All they have to do is cut off your monthly UBI checks and ration account and watch you starve.
I will cover solutions to these problems in an article coming soon. 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.

Quote:Fractional reserve banking and central banking began their reign of destruction upon our financial world a few centuries ago.
Politician’s greed and need for control over people have been ever present.
Their mutual interests created an unholy union from which were born two progeny. Call them Fire and Ice. Call them Inflation and Deflation.

This is their story – simplified and sanitized.

FRACTIONAL reserve banking allowed banks to loan out considerably more currency than was received from depositors – this increased the supply of currency in circulation. If demand for currency did not increase proportionally, then each currency unit was devalued and prices increased. The first child born of the unholy union – Fire – destroyed the purchasing power of the currencies in the world financial systems. (Inflation was created via fractional reserve banking instead of the usual debasing coinage or printing paper.)
Do you remember gasoline selling for $0.15 per gallon? Why does it cost 20 times as much now? The fires of inflation have destroyed most of the value of the currency unit – each dollar in circulation.
Because of government greed, its need for power over people, and every politician’s desire to meddle and spend, government granted bankers the power to create and control currency, monetize debt, fix interest rates, and so much more. Central Banking was born. In return, government could spend in excess, borrow from bankers, members of the legislature collected handsomely from the banking community, national debts expanded, and interest expense paid on those debts grew to outrageous levels. Politicians, their friends, favored industries, and bankers won, while most others lost.
For a personal perspective, how much interest have you earned on your savings since 2008? Does it seem like you lost and bankers won? Have your after-tax wages increased proportionally with your expenses since 2008, since 2000, since 1971? Probably not!
But it gets worse. After Fire – Inflation – has burned through the purchasing power of the currency units, then Ice – Deflation – the second child, destroys most of the remaining debt-based assets. Ice is cold; he contracts monetary systems. Ice – deflation – creates central banker nightmares and becomes the second phase of financial destruction for the people.
If you loan me $1,000,000, then you believe you have an asset – my debt to you. But if I can’t or won’t pay, what is that asset worth? Probably close to zero. The monetary system and your assets have deflated by approximately $1,000,000. Bankers inflated the quantity of currency in the system while Fire consumed much of its value; but, when the reckoning occurs, most of the remaining debt-based assets must be revalued down. Ice finished the destruction.

Fire and Ice: Inflation and Deflation!
If a government owes $17 Trillion to various people, other governments, agencies, pension plans, and corporations, and that government must borrow merely to pay the interest on the $17 Trillion, some might call that government insolvent. Ponzi finance will not continue forever.

Quote:From a brilliant essay by Jeff Nielson, titled When Deflation Becomes Hyperinflation: “As the debts go higher and higher (which can only end in a deflationary crash); we see the money-printing accelerating at least as quickly, if not faster (which can only end in hyperinflation).”

If the $17 Trillion in debt grows to say $50 Trillion in debt, is it still “all good”? What about $170 Trillion in debt? And while the debt is growing, Fire is consuming much of the purchasing power of the currency. Inflation grows until the forces of Ice overwhelm the system and the $17 Trillion or $170 Trillion in debt is revalued. Perhaps the inevitable deflation pushed the value down to a much lower value or perhaps to zero. How much are $17 Trillion in bonds and notes worth if interest rates triple? How much is it worth in real purchasing power if it can’t be repaid without “printing” the dollars for repayment?
Eventually we arrive at economic depression – when the economic sins of the past are realized, when debts are paid or defaulted, when the reckoning occurs. Central bankers, politicians, and owners of debt-based assets hope the reckoning will be delayed a little longer. But the day of reckoning does come. Enron, MFGlobal, Zimbabwe, Weimar Germany, Argentina, and 100 other collapses and hyperinflations are not exceptions.
Fire and Ice. Inflation and Deflation. Inflationary depression, deflationary depression, one before the other, or simultaneously?
Will we burn in the Fire of inflation or freeze in an Icy deflationary depression? Or will our politicians make it “all good” forever?

The Case for Fire – Inflationary Depression:

• Inflation is built into our financial system.
• Gasoline no longer costs $0.15 per gallon. One million other examples are available.
• The Fed has expanded their balance sheet by $3 Trillion and counting. Japan is “printing” even more rapidly.
• The Fed has created an additional $16 Trillion or so (per audit) in extra “deflation fighting” loans, gifts, swaps, repurchases, etc.
• The U. S. national debt exceeds $17 Trillion and is increasing exponentially.
• Central banks create more Dollars, Euros, Yuan, and Yen to stimulate inflation and “fight deflation.” More QE, helicopter drops, and checks to everyone are always possible. Central banks even tell us they are “printing” to create inflation and avoid the nightmare of deflation.
• It will continue until a crisis forces change.

Quote:Jeff Nielson: “…we have the hyperinflationary spiral, as exponential money-printing inevitably leads to the only mathematically possible outcome. Any item produced in infinite quantities, and at zero cost must be worthless, as an elementary proposition of logic/arithmetic.”

The Case for Ice – Deflationary Depression:
• If the governments of the world can’t repay their debts, how much is their debt truly worth?
• If the debt isn’t marked down substantially, then the value of the currency (think currency war – a race to debase) used to pay the debt must be drastically reduced. Either way the purchasing power of the repaid debt is likely to evaporate.
• There is always a day of reckoning. How much of the debt will survive the reckoning?

Quote:Jeff Nielson: “…hyperinflationary money-printing cannot prevent a debt-default implosion. If this was true; then we would have never seen any sovereign nation go bankrupt. Deadbeat nations would simply keep printing, and printing, and printing their worthless paper until they became ‘solvent.’”

Our monetary systems and our personal assets are besieged by both Fire and Ice.

Quote:Jeff Nielson: “The hyperinflationary depression first predicted by John Williams is not merely a plausible scenario. It is an absolutely inevitable fate.”

OR, DON’T PLAY THE GAME IN A WORLD OF FIRE AND ICE!
You decide what your future will include. Gold and silver have been a store of value for 5,000 years. Call them real money, or a store of value, or monetary energy, or safety, or insurance.
The Chinese, Indians, Russians, and many others are choosing gold and silver instead of paper. They fear both Fire and Ice. The western world depends upon paper assets as we pretend Fire and Ice are under control, while we ship massive quantities of western gold to the east where it is better understood and appreciated.
Fire and Ice have little impact upon gold and silver. Gold and silver were money long before the unholy union of fractional reserve banking and government unleashed Fire and Ice upon our world through inflating paper currencies and deflating debt. It is time to protect our financial future with gold and silver – Fire and Ice resistant assets.

Suggested Reading:
Jeff Nielson: When Deflation Becomes Hyperinflation
Gary North: Inflation: The Economics of Addiction
David Schectman: The Fed Has All the Markets in Lockdown
Darryl Robert Schoon: 2014 The End of the Beginning
The Deviant Investor: Created Currencies … Are NOT Gold!
About The Author: G.E. Christenson is the Editor of The Deviant Investor
JWR’s Comment: I’m still leaning toward what I posited back in February of 2008: Successive waves of deflation and inflation, and then simultaneous inflation and deflation.
It goes without saying that “Fire and Ice”, is a reference to the Robert Frost poem of the same name:
Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Quote:U.S. consumers boosted their expectations for inflation and household spending in the year ahead as the price of gas and food steepens, but tempered their view of inflation over the medium-term, according to a survey released on Monday by the New York Federal Reserve.
Expectations for where inflation will be in one year rose to 6.6% in March, the highest since the survey was launched in 2013 and up from 6.0% in February. Household spending was seen growing 7.7% in the year ahead, also a series high. Just 23% saw their household finances improving in the year ahead, the smallest share since the survey began.
Americans are experiencing the worst bout of inflation in decades, and it is getting worse. Economists polled by Reuters expect a report out on Tuesday will show consumer prices rose 8.4% in March, up from 7.9% in February, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine drives up food and energy prices.

A Wall Street Journal poll of economists found that they believe there is nearly a third, 28%, chance of a recession occuring in the next 12 months.

To combat 40-year-high inflation, the Federal Reserve last month raised interest rates for the first time in three years and is expected to accelerate the pace of rate hikes in coming months. The New York Fed survey suggests consumer see little short-term relief, as they anticipate the price of food, gas and medical care to rise 9.6%, and expect rent to jump 10.2%. Home prices were expected to rise 6% in the coming year, faster than the 5.7% expected last month.
But Fed policymakers are also closely tracking farther-ahead inflation expectations for signs that consumers see current price increases continuing. Monday's survey offered some comfort there: while near-term inflation expectations have soared, consumers' longer-term expectations have been less affected.
The New York Fed's monthly survey of consumer expectations is based on a rotating panel of 1,300 households.
Consumers expressed less optimism about the labor market than in February. The average perceived odds of losing one's job over the next year rose to 11.1% from 10.8%, though it was still well below its pre-pandemic reading of 13.8%.
Unemployment in March was 3.6%, a pandemic low and only a hair above the pre-pandemic rate of 3.5%.

Quote:Blaming record inflation on Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration is preparing for the Department of Labor to release its monthly consumer price index (CPI) data on Tuesday, The Hill reports.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said officials are expecting ''extraordinarily elevated'' numbers from the important inflation metric.
''Because of the actions we've taken to address the Putin price hike, we are in a better place than we were last month,'' Psaki said, referring to the release of more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and urging oil companies not to price gouge consumers.

''But we expect March CPI headline inflation to be extraordinarily elevated, due to Putin's price hike,'' Psaki continued, blaming soaring energy prices on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Increasing prices for food, housing, gasoline, and consumer goods have drained household finances across the U.S., and White House officials have largely attributed the increases to the war in Ukraine, which has shaken worldwide energy markets and disrupted food supply chains.
According to AAA, the national average price of a gallon of regular gas on Monday was $4.11. While down slightly to $4.43 from a month ago, the average price is up about 50 cents from the beginning of March.
''I will say that anytime there's heightened monthly data or inflation reporting numbers, it is a reminder to us, our allies on the Hill and hopefully to many of the American people that we need to do more to reduce costs for the American people,'' Psaki added.
She also called on Congress to advance the administration's proposals for prescription drug pricing, childcare, and other areas that would help cut costs for families and ease the sting of rising food and energy costs.



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Quote:By Bob D'Angelo, Cox Media Group National Content DeskMay 22, 2022 at 2:05 pm EDT
Consumers continue to feel the price pinch at the pump.
>> Read more trending news
A survey shows that the average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline has increased 33 cents over the past two weeks to $4.71 per gallon, The Associated Press reported.
The news is slightly better according to AAA’s number, which listed the average price at $4.59 for a gallon of regular gasoline.
In March, the national average for a gallon of gasoline topped $4 for the first time in 14 years.
Whatever numbers one uses, the latest figures represent a record high for gas prices, Fox Business reported.
Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey told the AP that the price jump was caused by higher prices for crude oil and tighter gasoline supplies.
>> ‘Out of control:’ Gas prices averaging $4 per gallon nationwide
The average price at the pump is $1.61 higher than it was one year ago.
Nationwide, the highest average price for regular is in the Napa Valley, north of the San Francisco Bay Area, at $6 30 per gallon, according to AAA. The San Francisco Bay area is right behind its northern neighbors at $6.29 for regular.
According to GasBuddy, a gas station near Fisherman’s Wharf was charging $6.55 for a gallon of regular.
The lowest average is in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where a gallon of regular averages $3.94 per gallon, according to AAA.
AAA noted on its website that the average price for a gallon of regular a year ago was $3.04.
According to the Lundberg Survey, the average price of diesel rose 9 cents over two weeks, to $5.66 a gallon.
Andrew Gross, the national spokesman for AAA Inc. said that drivers should expect higher prices during the summer, especially if the war in Ukraine continues.
“Demand is up,” Gross told Fox News Digital. “Typically this time of year we are in a little bit of a lull. There is often a demand lull between spring break and Memorial Day and we had a little bit of it about two weeks ago, but then last week, there was actually an increase, which is very unusual.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.”