An anonymous worker from the West Coast Port of Los Angeles came forward on “The Stew Peters Show” to discuss the claimed issues around the cargo ship backlogs. {Direct Rumble Link} As the port worker noted, based on his 18-years working there, there is no supply disruption on the unloading end of the supply chain; though they are a little backed-up, but the port is offloading at a high capacity.
The interview is interesting because the ground report contradicts the popular narrative about COVID impacts on the current supply chain. There are ample goods flowing into the supply chain from the ports, yet there are claims of shortages at the warehouse and distribution level. WATCH
Stew Peters accurately reminds his audience that no nation generates and exports as much raw material foodstuff as the United States. This is a key point seemingly overlooked by most media. The U.S. exports around $73 billion in food products annually. The next closest food export nation Germany isn’t even close at $34 billion.
In very general terms, about one-third of U.S. food exports are North/Central America (Canada, Mexico, etc) exports; approximately one-third go west (Asia) and about one-third go east (Europe). There have been no reported issues with those shipments departing the U.S.
However, one point worth noting, by the LA dock worker, is the influence of predictive orders or automated-purchases based on historic norms and patterns. I think that overheard note by the worker was somewhat misconstrued, and a correct interpretation could explain part of the backlog of container vessels offshore.
It is technically correct that large multinational importers use AI (artificial intelligence) to predict orders. However, it’s not something weird or as complex as it sounds. As supply chains have optimized computer assisted ordering has become the norm, you might have heard it referenced as ‘automated replenishment’.
Essentially, decades of manufacturer, retail or consumer scan data for all kinds of goods create a historic reference point for inventory needs. Large retailers use automated ordering to restock their warehouses with raw materials, interim assembly products (parts), and also finished goods. Prior sales data helps to determine or predict future ordering needs.
The advent of technology tracking has thinned the supply chain to a process of ‘just-in-time’ replenishment. This is JIT inventory management and now how most companies operate. The goal for Just In Time (JIT) inventory is for the new stuff to arrive just as the last of the old stuff is distributed or sold. This means you don’t have to carry excess inventory or tie up money in material waiting for consumer sales or manufacturing use.
AI automated purchasing is just a larger scale version of JIT. People involved in the supply chains and logistics simply facilitate and tweek the arrival/departure times by coordinating with suppliers and distribution on a frequency schedule. You watch the supply chain and make requests for slight modifications as you take daily use or sales information into account.
It’s not totally or fully automated; it’s more akin to computer assisted depending on the type of product being managed. However, it does become more automated every year, and there are less and less people who remember the olden ways of making predictive purchases/orders with human brain power instead of computer assistance.
That said….. Think about the economy suddenly grinding to a halt. Which, we will remind people, CTH said happened quietly at the end of May of this year.
April and May of this year was when the first batch of stunningly fast inflation prices on food, energy and gasoline hit the checkbook of working-class Americans like a thundershock. At the end of May and beginning of June the data was clear. We were seeing our first double digit inflation months in recent memory.
So, think about the impact of that massive first round of Biden inflation hitting the wages of 70% of American workers all at once. Spending priorities immediately change. Disposable income immediately shrinks. Consumer purchasing patterns immediately shift.
The consumer impact is sudden. However, the supply chain impact is more akin to slowing down a freight train with thousands of boxcars. It takes time.
What I would say, based on my experience in overlay with the conversation with the dock worker (Stew Peter interview), is that many of those off shore container vessels are full of goods that have already slowed at the consumption end. People have stopped buying some stuff, some types of goods, and those ships are carrying cargo that is no longer needed within the supply chain…. at least not at the rate within the automated replenishment system.
Part of the reason for the excessive container ships could simply be a reflection of a U.S. economy that has slowed so drastically that inbound durable goods are not needed by those on the destination side. As a consequence, there’s no rush for the importing corporation to take immediate control of the inventory.
This outlook would also explain why the worker was saying some of the delivery containers are just being stored full of goods without being distributed; and why the executives within the LA port were leasing additional storage space to house containers that were in no hurry to get picked up.
Back when import wholesalers were more important because they distributed to a larger population of smaller retailers, when this type of a scenario unfolded the importers then begin prioritizing durable good cargo that was needed more urgently, and they delayed the off-loading of durable good cargo that was less urgent. In modern days, there are less ‘wholesalers’ because small retailers have been replaced by massive multinational corporations and giant box stores. Those big corporations have their own in-house purchasing, supply chain and inventory management specialists.
[Note: Perishable cargo and fuel oil always get a priority offload regardless when they arrive in the port system.]
I can make a few calls and trace this down, but I suspect that’s essentially what is driving a significant portion of this backlog of cargo container ships that are not in a hurry to offload. Keep in mind, with Joe Biden inflation going bananas, that durable good inventory is going up in value even as it sits there idle. So unlike times when purchasing agents desperately need to turn the merchandise to get their profit, an increasing static inventory valuation simply becomes another reason for a multinational to be okay with any port delay.
If my suspicions are correct, that also means the U.S. economy is in much worse shape than financial media are reporting… another reason for the media to avoid telling the story of cargo vessels and instead deflect the story to imaginary COVID-19 supply chain disruptions. So there’s that.
I work in management at a very large national wholesale distributor. Let me attest that there are a number of shortages that continue relentlessly within our market segment. Heavy demand for these products, which are used as a major component in home building, is a factor. Import goods held up via the massive number of ships awaiting docking is a factor. Raw material shortages for the manufacturers (or component shortages that are part of the final product) are factors.
Significant problems come from the excessive rules and regs laid down for Covid infections. These range from total shutdown of a production line to locked out docking stations for ships or trucks until cleaning procedures are completed. Regulations are sometimes dictated by the state (California among the worst) or by internal company policy. Shutdowns range from a day to as much as a week.
Multiply these many incidents many times over, repeat them periodically at random week to week, and you get supply chain disruption at a grand scale. It is happening here in the US, in China and Vietnam, and globally. Couple this with the lack of transportation, shortages of shipping containers, the strain on overworked and under supplied LTL trucking companies who have their own shortages of drivers, and it exacerbates the mess.
Last but not least are the JIT procurement systems, which are not built to manage lurching supply shortages or lengthy transportation delays. We are arm wrestling with our planners to get adjustments made within our system, albeit far too late to overcome the hole already created.
It will take months tfor these supply chains to even out, if then. I don’t see a nefarious plot here…unless one considers how dastardly the bio weapon virus impacted our commerce. Yes, that part was all by design.
Excellent.
Silly me.
I simply assumed goods were sitting offshore waiting for even higher prices.
Never Let a Crisis Go To waste…
Indeed. If AI can manage a complex JIT supply chain … it can also fabricate a shortage by squeezing supply … and then provide the goods at an inflated price.
Call it JIT … for inflation
BTW … I better hurry and order one of those new CA gender neutral dolls for my grandson before Christmas shopping season! Right? Oops … I said grandson … before he’s made his “choice”
at the height of the lumber shortage, the mills on the Columbia river were stacked with logs, as well as stacks and stacks of cut lumber. With piles of logs sitting there, there were truckloads of logs being brought in, but the cut lumber wasn’t being sent out.
The same thing is happening with the beef (protein) industry. Plenty of cattle on the hoof but, the BIG slaughter houses are not operating at normal capacity (e.g. Smithfield in Iowa) and very few of the small ones are operating at all. COVID19 related personnel shortages (plused-up unemployment payments) and USG regs gumming up the works.
Try the small Amish houses… they are booked and busy.
This is the problem – we have centralized production of all goods. We have eliminated all the small producers in favor of ginormous, centralized slaughter houses, bottlers, etc. I remember when many town had a Coca Cola bottling plant. We have Big Beef who are trying to maintain total control of the beef market… here in Kentucky, farmers/ranchers are trying to fight back. We need more diversity of production.
EXACTLY. A real opportunity to push back against huge corporations in favor of smaller, regionalized producers.
And it’s “Green”!! Yeayyy!!! “Shop Local” … “locally sourced”!!!
Yeayy!!!! … oops … but the Amish don’t pay their worker “prevailing wage”
Ohhhhhhh mo’mmmaaaaa
If you live in a semi-rural area, you may have a processor or two who handle deer in season, cattle & hogs the rest of the time.
Buy Local,first,,,then Buy Regionally,,, if not available, go without, substitute, share…….
DO NOT BUY NATIONALLY, OR INTERNATIONALLY.
Break them,,,,then the Local Economies with have a chance.
Smithfield is majority owned by Chinese / Hong Kong named WH Group. Recent reports show that more than half of Smithfield’s packaged output goes to China, not the US. I’ll wager a tenderloin that those exports are movin’ right along, as the Chinese will not tolerate inefficiency caused by its American colonials.
Remarkably, even leftist Rolling Stone has noted this, and criticized it (probably because Chinese management results in high levels of pollutant discharges and worker mistreatment in Smithfield’s US facilities): https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/why-is-china-treating-north-carolina-like-the-developing-world-122892/
Slightly off topic but be sure not to buy cod or tapia from China. Dangerous pollutants in the waters those fish are bred and raised in. Roughly half of these fish sold here are from China. God knows the FDA isn’t doing anything about it.
As well, last summer’s fires in Oregon created a huge supply of logs. The timber companies were trying to salvage as much as possible.
What’s wrong with you Kenji !!! How dare you call” him” “he”.
Whatever ‘it’ may be, it has a d###!
I’ve changed and bathed him. Yes. God gave him a pennis … haven’t DNA tested him for chromosomes … but that pennis is a strong indicator of his boyness
That reminds me of wartime speculators who would buy up goods and hold them in warehouses until the prices went Sky High and the people were desperate. Scum.
I was thinking along the same lines. These port delivered goods that are trickling out have probably been purchased already on the futures market. Now with supply down prices can explode and whoever holds the futures contract will make a killing. Buy low, sell high.
The bio-weapon IS the nefarious plot?! It’s not the ‘virus’, it’s the JAB and the disruption. But, just imvho
TY for the info, though
Truth..the jab is the weapon…Death Shot
Thank You…Sir (?)….Well Stated.
My best friend worked in Logistics for 30 years, moved chemicals from Asia to Chemical plants, she knows there’s a shortage of truckers, they’re overworked and younger people don’t want the jobs. Thanks for your information.
The gov handouts drastically reduced the availability of workers up and down the supply chain.
For the love of God … please keep “younger” truckers off the road. They drive like total a-holios
It’s the logical merger of “Continuous Improvement” with “Lean Manufacturing”. Our corporate supply management systems have simply moved beyond “Just in Time” through the next level of “Not Quite in Time”, and into “Never, Ever on Time”, on the way to “We’ll be lucky if we ever get it”.
We paid consultants billions over the last 20 years to teach us how to do this!
The root problem for all of this is bean counters run amuck, CFO’s have been out of control since we started paying CEO’s with stock options. CEO’s went from being stewards of the corporation, balancing the needs of all stakeholders of which shareholders are just one, who’s goal was to maximize the value of the corporation for all it’s stakeholders to being stock speculators trying to fill their sack with cash as fast as they can. The former is a far harder task, requiring a long term vision that accounts for an imperfect world and imperfect knowledge of that world, than just running up stock prices in the short run.
All of these executive fads, JIT, lean manufacturing, continuous improvement, etc. tend reflect the short term, one dimensional financial thinking of CFO’s and CEO’s looking to get a short term run up in stock prices so they can cash out their options. They are incapable of handling a disruption or sea change of any sort because they eliminated contingency planning to save money. Original thinking and long term planning is not their strong suit.
Buy Local,first,,,then
Buy Regionally,,, not available, go without, substitute, share…….
DO NOT BUY— NATIONALLY– INTERNATIONALLY.
Break them,,,,then
the Local Economies have a chance.
Along those lines, a company I worked for set the president’s bonus goals based on the amount of revenue she brought in over a 2 or 3 year period. Lo and behold, she got those revenues up and at the end of the bonus period she promptly retired – with her big, fat, juicy bonus. Well, there’s a big difference between making a sale and counting that as “revenue”, and actual payment for that sale. She’d basically told the sales team to sell anything to anybody with a heartbeat – don’t worry about credit scores or customer income. I was in the credit department and we watched as days past due kept going up and up. Needless to say, after she left we ended up writing off millions in bad debt and she sat on the beach sipping a cocktail.
Agree.
And this problem did not start recently.
I’m in the industrial distribution space (End User and OEMs). We started seeing supply chain issues for real in FEB/MAR and get worse with each passing day.
Going to be an eye-opening holiday season for many.
My poor wife has been going nuts over this since March of ’20.
The global supply chains went bananas in February of ’20.
Thank you for this information. If the restrictions and regs were lifted, would help? Or would the trucker shortages remain an issue? And contrary to the article, I see shelves that are partially or empty…everywhere. From the grocery store to Walmart, to Lowe’s, to Home Depot. It is pretty much across the board. I live in Arkansas.
JIT is part of APICS or production inventory control systems. Manufacturing resourse planning systems. Which include CRPS, capacity requirements planning system, think shop floor control, JIT or Just in time which among other things helps reduce taxes. Because at the end of the fiscal year, (federal, business have to pay taxes on inventory.) JIT is supposed to put the immediate need inventory near to the customer, that is the component manufacture/supplier warehouses near by and its inventory is mananged in such a way as to: meet the near term needs of the customer, (for a preset period of time) and to reduce the warehousing burden on the supplier. Logistics. The next part of the MRPS, (Manufacturing Resource Planning System) is Business forecasting. Projecting devopment, growth and costing. It can be complicated and there are formulations involved.
The fact that we are in this situation with this system being in use for decades and being further refined and developed points to planning by some entity or some cabal of entities. This is coordinated and gamed out.
Well said Paca …
World’s largest ERP user? Boeing.
(this data point is a few years old so may no longer be true)
Just imagine when plane manufacturers can no longer game out their supply chain, reliably: parts delays, production delays, increased break/fix timeframes, flight delays, reduced available planes, reduced new plane deliveries, increased aircraft costs.
Hang onto your hat. It’s gonna be a bumpy ride.
I will break the motor of the world, said John Galt somewhere in time.
Who is John Galt now?
“…an increasing static inventory valuation simply becomes another reason for a multinational to be okay with any port delay.
If my suspicions are correct, that also means the U.S. economy is in much worse shape than financial media are reporting… “
One of these things is not like the other. How can you have inventory appreciation AND conditions that lead to depreciation (like reduced consumption) AT THE SAME TIME???
You drop the value of the dollar. That’s how.
Buy low, sell high. Item costs $10 and assume 50% profit margin when it leaves the country of origin. On the water, selling price goes up by $1. Sitting outside destination port prior to unloading and delivered to retailer, selling price goes up by $3.
Suddenly your 50% margin goes to 80%.
and asset prices/value drops rather quickly
The export food was burned in the fields.
Ah yes! Jimmy’s Stagflation.
Yuppers. Also known as monetizing the debt. MMT/Chartalism is bogus economics purposed feed the printing presses, increase taxes and redistribute wealth.
This train has already left the station. Prepare for purposely engineered inflation/hyperinflation…….followed by even worse deflation.
Deflation is the anti-dote…..it always happens, even as govs try to forestall it…..Economic Law is not repealable.
Except inflation and deflation are two different things, assuming all things are equal. If there’s reduced demand, deflation kicks in. If demand stays the same and supply dries up, inflation kicks in.
Although I guess you could have some kind of weird hybrid situation where demand drops but supply drops even more, sort of like what happened to housing when the covid shutdown started.
I guess we’ll see what happens. Aside from that, I love your work. You are without a doubt, one of the best journalists out there.
Stagflation. But what we have here is not ‘classic inflation’ rising wages chasing higher prices. What we have here is currency debasement. All the QE and federal spending. IMHO, the analogue is when the New Dealers unpegged the dollar from gold peg (every commercial contract had boiler plate language about performance in dollars or gold) but it had the effect of making every commercial contract unperformable do we demand dollars or gold? This froze the supply chain and seized the economy. The commercial sector went begging for FRD to put the peg back in – anywhere – to let the contracts clear – even if the supply chain had to eat the loss. So if you hold goods, and Congress is about to print (3, 4, 5, 6, 8? trillion) dollars, why would you sell the goods for dollars – when you don’t know what the value of the dollar (you know it’s going to be less, but how much less?) is going to be in the next couple of weeks?
I’m a simple soul. Agree with you that SD’s take is a little off. I’m not rich, no one I know is rich. Yet we have all commented on empty shelves. I/we would buy some of what is no longer available. Instead we settle for what is available. IMO, this AI first in last out explanation only explains partly what is going on.
As an aside, Texas has just BANNED all vax mandates for ANY entity in Texas. JUST IN. DeSantis leads, Abbott follows but superb news.. Let’s hope this starts a tsunami of Red State Governors doing the same.
So … Abbott just bailed out Southwest Airlines from their woke folly?
Works for me. The message is still sent of FJB.
Someone needs to bail out Biden on his mandates, too. Politically, he can’t really now say, “ooops, bad idea”.
We need some sort of graceful exit for him
There is nothing graceful to be had from this administration .. Seriously look at what /who would gracefully step in..
Turn the Office over to the rightful owner?
He will be gone when the $$$Ocracy wants him gone. Pay close attention to the cia.
Red States have to continue to push back against the feds.
At every point, EVERY DAY
And American Airlines!
It is not a Bailout,,,it is a demand that they manage properly. NO $$$$ exchanged hands.
I think the handle is that the airlines have some federal contracts….
Now Gov DeSantis lead the rest of the Republican Governors in making Ivermectin and HCQ available to all Covid-19 patients in Florida even those in major hospital systems! Stop all State medical and pharmaceutical boards from going after the licenses of Doctors and Pharmacists using Ivermectin and HCQ for Covid-19 treatment!
Exactly.
Now wouldn’t that be the cherry on the whipped cream.
Excellent Point!
Only thing better than that is having no mandates to begin with! South Dakota!
I think he’s half-referring to the idea of the Federal one the man in 1600 threatened, but good on SD just the same, Loki
But who can stand 20 below
Strong Advantage,,,the leftists hate the cold and won’t go there.
Keeps the riff-raff out.
We don’t have vaccine mandates of any kind here in South Carolina.
Not quite true – the hospitals are doing it; my husband recently worked for a contractor in a hospital and my MIL is a phlebotomist in another system. Both hospital systems are requiring the jab for all employees. I think hospitals are it, though.
Not true. Charleston County and city municipalities. Also any employees working for big corporations that have mandated the job.
“The South’s Gonna do it Again!”
In SC the governor made a no masks in school mandate and local districts completely disregarded it. Currently moving through the courts. Would love to see no jab but will see if local municipalities uphold.
I wonder if the auto chip shortage is the same scam. Nobody wants a useless electric car with a 50 mile range. For years wealthy have been buying teslas and using them as driveway ornaments.
The whole Biden disaster has been full of fakes…fake set, fake injections, fake mandates. It wouldn’t surprise me one tiny bit. But how to explain for example GM shutting down production for two weeks. And on the ground reports of low new car stock, low used car stock with the prices of the latter rising out of all recognition.
Shutting down production for 2 weeks is not uncommon in the auto industry, at all.
Yes, as I know. No telling how much is smoke and mirrors.
I’ll take “smoke and mirrors” for a 1000 in gold.
Let’s just say “no”. There is no scam. The entire electronics industry is out of capacity. Nothing to do with EVs.
Auto manufacturers are not the biggest kids on the block. They compete against others but the non-automotive customers are easier to do business with as well as paying more $.
As for adding semiconductor capacity, each factory is dedicated to a technology. It costs cost billions and 4 years to build a state of art wafer fabrication factory. It ain’t happening overnight. For older technologies, it doesn’t justify any new investment or expansion.
Automakers selling in the US have dropped most of their affordable entry level models.
I expect to see “offerings” in EV form slotting in at the bottom of the market to acclimate the plebs to the joys of limited range and rationed charging.
Part of the Great Defect.
Just seeing that my old stomping grounds in the UK is getting ready to pass a law that says home EV chargers must be shut down during peak energy use times.
Pretty sure those chargers are thin on the ground, but BoJo’s push (via his Soros connected wife) to force, or try to, every driving Brit to dump their cars for EVs and to do it be 2030 is enough to get him committed. These people never think things through. Their alternative universe does not include real life people or issues or potential problems with their vainglorious plans or rational thinking. None of it. I see some rocky roads ahead for the country I love but which has sunk into the cesspit of globalism and “climate change”.
It’s real. Chip makers are nearing the physical inter-angstrom distance limit for transistors on “conventional” silicon chips. New technologies around the corner require faster/greater processing power. New concepts are being developed – but they have not been industrialized. The chip shortage is going to continue for a while.
Amazing what people can accomplish by just not spending money for stuff they don’t really need or have to do. A married parent can even choose to stay home and take care of the children if the spouse has a reasonable job with healthcare benefits like how it was when people valued one another. The kids feel safer and are better cared for with homeschooling even an option. Focusing on affordable housing, having a dependable vehicle, having little to no debt, eating good food primarily prepared at home that may have been grown and canned by the family, participating in church and its programs, visiting parks, going fishing, going camping, taking walks, taking kids to playgrounds, going to a library or museum, and on and on. None of which involves a TV, smart phone, or spending money lavishly. May need low cost computer for the homeschooling.
Such things and ways to live were once appreciated and admired. imagine what would happen if they were again by the large majority of Americans. So my response is – let those container ships sit anchored. We really don’t need or want any junk from China. I’ll just hang around near home and visit local merchants and restaurants occasionally for the things we want and need. At some point we are all going to die anyway, so we won’t be needing gene therapy shots to “protect” us from the big bad COVID. For some reason, getting out into nature, eating well, taking vitamins/supplements and loving others seems to have run that little critter off anyway.
You are right.
… “let those container ships sit anchored. We really don’t need or want any junk from China.”
Amen
FYI, here in Phoenix:
Intel just started the work (literally ground-laying) on TWO new semi-conductor plants. One is a major upgrade of a facility already here, in Chandler (to triple capacity) and ANOTHER is being built out NW. ALSO…
!!!TAIWAN’S!!! biggest semiconductor company (MGSC I think, forget the name atm) just bought a HUGE swath of land in North Phoenix to build one here, too. They are scheduled to start laying conrete before 2022.
Taiwan wants to MOVE their money maker$ off$hore, fearing that China is about to move in.
It’s on. And jobs AND CHIPS are coming. Nope, it won’t be tomorrow. But, it IS real and has begun, already.
Just a heads up for the Treepers. <edited quickly for a typo- argh :/ hehe>
Yes, TSMC was planning to build a huge chip fab in the Phoenix area the last I heard.
Isn’t WATER needed to make semiconductors. I mean LOTS of water.
That was the reason for TMSC’s slowdown last year.
When I think of WATER, Arizona is not the first state that comes to mind.
Then you haven’t been here. Arizona has tons of lakes. PHOENIX- no, not so much.
But, then- it is not 1975, either. Or even 2000. It’s 2021.
Tempe and Mesa sit atop the Salt River basin that has lots of high-quality water, year-round. The municipal wells are quite shallow. Besides, water, leading-edge semiconductor fabs also need cheap land, seismic stability and the shared infrastructure of other fabs (ample electrical power, specialty gasses, lots of liquid nitrogen, nearby international air freight hub, etc.) Infrastructure has been in-place since Motorola and Honeywell built large facilities in the 1970’s and Intel throughout the 1980′ and 1990’s. Phoenix’s Palo Verde nuclear power facility is the largest power plant in the United States by generation power.
An fast becoming one of the few left.
Not only that (and GOOD points, Felipe, ty)-
Palo Verde is cooled by- our OWN wasterwater, here in Phoenix. The Army Corps of engineers built a long water-way down the side of several hills (like 17 miles long?) that slowly feeds our own sewage down to the plant, while ALSO filtering out the hard waste (the chunky, ugly stuff).
Our nuclear power plant, three towers EACH stronger than ANY other in the nation is cooled by our own waste.
How’s THAT for green energy? I love pointing that out to the Greenies.
/cheers Felipe
This is encouraging news.
They’ll dump those factories and employees like a hot rock. In the early 00’s I was working in my physics masters and aiming for positions at the huge Intel (or was it IBM) plant being built in Colorado Springs. Then, suddenly, the plant closed weeks after opening and all the jobs were outsourced overseas. I know guys who had just completed training. They got a severance check and git told to hit the bricks.
They’ll stay until the can move. No loyalty to the country or community.
I hear your grit, Hok- but… Taiwan is in a VERY precarious situation, right now. They want to be HERE, with some security the island doesn’t afford them in the 21st cent. And Intel is already here and hasn’t dumped their first plant- they’re expanding.
But, I heard you. However- it’s not the early 00’s. That was a SAD time, no doubt 🙁
So are they going to import their own workers with work Visas to man these plants…
Not if we stand up, literally stand up in front of these plants, and say NO.
Or- you could just be cynical and grumble in your oatmeal about it. :/
You miss the point.
Excellent. Good news for a change..
I’ve been watching the reports of these ships off the coast. It seems the world wide energy shortage that is predicted to happen this winter will be the real issue that will affect everyone not these supply ships.
I we really sure it is supply chain issues versus concerns about China’s rockets embedded within containers.
Look into the world energy crisis. Dr Chris Martenson has a lot of information about this. As soon as prices skyrocket and shortages begin for gas, propane, food, etc. The government will swear Covid is bad again and they need to lock areas down again. I feel that whatever happens with this energy crisis will be bad for everyone.
Last week, I had to visit three gas stations before I found one that was not out of diesel. I’ve seen gas pumps that were turned off over the past few months. This is in NE Texas.
Most diesel engines will run on vegetable oil.
Sundance- Your logic on the reasons behind this backlog are flawless!!!
I listened and read the whole article – so my question is:
How does an item sitting in a ship, become MORE valuable to a corporation?
I understand that prices are going up, and so a widget that the company paid 1.00 for, and previously sold for 2.00, they can now sell for 3.00 – but is that an extra dollar of profit?
I don’t think so, because inflation means that the corp is paying more for energy, and transportation…etc….so how does the floating merch become MORE valueable to the corp?
Do they just inflate the price and say it’s due to inflation when only SOME of the inflated price may be due to inflation, and the rest due to profiteering.
So I see that the more shortages there are, the more DEMAND increase so that people are WILLING to pay inflated prices.
Someone fill me in on this.
Purchase prices are established and set at the time of contracted purchase. The value on delivery is not attached to the purchase agreement.
If the product is worth more, the purchaser makes more. Simple process.
NEVER forget that there is only ONE person who pays for everythiong.
The Consumer.
Your questions are your answer.
“I don’t think so, because inflation means that the corp is paying more for energy, and transportation…etc….so how does the floating merch become MORE valueable to the corp?
Do they just inflate the price and say it’s due to inflation when only SOME of the inflated price may be due to inflation, and the rest due to profiteering. [yes]
So I see that the more shortages there are, the more DEMAND increase so that people are WILLING to pay inflated prices.[Remember Toilet paper]
No you the consumer is paying” paying more for energy, and transportation…etc”
(rings bell) We HAVE a winnah!!
Just start going to the grocery store and start mumbling under your breath FJB or any store for that matters PS look for the smiles
Don’t mumble, speak clearly and loudly. I do, and it is great feeling.
I wear my FJB clap,clap,clap,clap,clap shirt while grocery shopping.
And I wear no mask so they can see me smile when they read the shirt?
Red Voice Media . Com
@RealStewPeters
VAXXED Delta pilot dies IN FLIGHT — posted a few hours ago.
( An Army flight surgeon raised concerns last week , threatened to ground all MIL pilots , story suppressed )
Holy Batman – this is HUGE!! And needs to be spread everywhere ASAP!! Is there an actual link, because people are going to demand it as soon as we all start posting it! (Yes, I know that Dr. Jane Ruby “broke” the news during an interview with Stew Peters but we all know that will NOT be considered a reliable link.) Who are the “multiple sources” who can corroborate this information?
3 – 4 weeks ago were stories of 4 British Airways dying post-vaxx …… all dismissed as rubbish of course
Move along.
https://americasfrontlinedoctors.org/2/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/AFFIDAVIT_OF_LTC2_Long.pdf
It is the affidavit from the Army LTC flight surgeon as part of a whistleblower case.
Go to RUMBLE (Stew Peters) for the video/conversation regarding the Delta pilot. BTW, this pilot is not the only person who has experienced aftereffects from the “jab.”
Are there firm sources for this? I know someone who got vaccinated and was hospitalized for 6 weeks with blood clots on his lungs.
Stew’s twitter account is suspended.
Of course.
He’s on Gettr too.
That was her concern!
This is exactly what I, Lieutenant Colonel Theresa Long, MD, MPH, FS was saying about our military pilots flying after the shot.
1. I make this affidavit, as a whistle blower under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act, Title 10 U.S.C. § 1034, in support of the above referenced MOTION as expert testimony in support thereof.
Served as a Field Surgeon for ten years and went on to complete a residency in Aerospace and Occupational Medicine at the United States Army School of Aviation Medicine, Fort Rucker, AL. I hold a Master’s in Public Health, and I have been trained by the Combat Readiness Center at Ft. Rucker as an Aviation Safety Officer. Additionally, I have trained in the Medical Management of Chemical and Biological Causalities at Fort Detrick and USAMIIRD.
Well worth your time to read. https://www.deepcapture.com/2021/09/affidavit-of-ltc-theresa-long-m-d-in-support-of-a-motion-for-a-preliminary-injunction-order/
There is a slight wrinkle to this analysis in that there are significant costs and incentives on shipping lines and ports to clear cargo as quickly as possible as well as on shippers to get the cargo unloaded from containers.
Shipping lines and the ports both have incentive to off-load cargo as quickly as possible both to free up the vessel for exports and to be able to collect the storage fees both are due if shippers do not pick up their cargo within the agreed upon time limit. The penalty for such failure goes by the term “demurrage” and it constitutes a lein that must be paid in full before a port will allow a container to leave. Rates vary both by line and by port, but the fees start at hundreds of dollars per container per day, usually escalate the longer the cargo sits, and it has not been uncommon to see some containers rack up 5 figures worth of demurrage penalties this year. I know of at least one instance where a company has eaten 8 figures worth of such penalties cumulatively this year so far.
There are also penalties on the back end for detaining a container too long after getting it out of the port, and those fees also can run hundreds of dollars per day. Unlike demurrage, these fees are by default the responsibility of the trucker, who must pay the fees to retain port access privileges. That can be capital intensive while trying to recoup those costs from the shipper.
The bottlenecks are primarily the lack of truckers, the lack of chassis available to attach to trucks to pick up containers, and the decreased ability of the initial warehouses/distributors to unload cargo with Covid rules. The system is inefficient in that most truckers do not have their own chassis and must go to a pool to rent one in order to go to the port – and that waiting counts against the hours they can work in a day. It is not uncommon right now to have a trucker but no chassis available for them to use, or vice versa. Chassis availability is impacted by the slowdown in both drop & hook arrangements – where the chassis sits with the container while the warehouse gets around to unloading it and then waits for the trucker to return to swap a full container for an empty – and the inability of warehouses to fit in enough appointments to unload the goods when a live unload is requested. In the extreme cases some containers are sitting around a month or longer with their chassis waiting to be emptied and sent back (and this is a huge cost compared to simply hiring a warehouse to immediately empty the container, store the goods, and then return the empty).
Short version – most shippers have huge incentive to not let goods linger on the docks or in a container. In their own warehouse or somebody else’s warehouse is where it’s relatively inexpensive to let goods sit.
Thanks for your elaboration on chassis availability.
Helps in understanding the point that the whistleblower made at 5:40 of the video.
And the factories in China cannot continue to run and make products that have nowhere to go. The CCP is saying that factories are running on a limited schedule because of a lack of energy(oil, Gas and Coal) but that maybe a false narrative. If the USA is not buying your CRAP you can’t just continue to make the CRAP.
Interesting note on food shortages in my Middle TN area… Walmart is showing large sections of store shelves empty, imposing ridiculous “MAX” quantity of items and numeorus out of stock items when shopping on line. Two other local stores – Kroger and FoodCity – do not show any of those items in shortage. For kicks I entered the online order into all three stores’ websites and you guessed it. Walmart was the ONLY store with shortages.
You may think because Walmart is a larger chain and likely has different distribution sources. However, note that our Walmart Superstore has a huge fenced area behind the store with tarp covered pallets of food as well as having large quantities in the back of the store building that is an “Employees Only” area stocked to the ceiling with food. They even have portable freezers and coolers for dairy and frozen items.
It sure seems to me Walmart is playing shortage games…
I observed similar behavior with plywood at manureds a few months back. Local stores had enormous amounts in inventory, the yards had to be piled everywhere with product, but the prices were still jacked way up.
Same here Tulip.
Tulip, I saw the same thing at the Walmart in Cool Springs. The empty shelves are entirely random though. May be the cookie section. The areas I’d think where there would be shortages are the fresh vegetable and fruit section which were fine.
“As a consequence, there’s no rush for the importing corporation to take immediate control of the inventory.”
Because they have no place to put it.
If your purchasing system is JIT or with small inventory cushions, you maintain only a small amount of warehouse space to process it through. With a sudden drop of demand to zero, all the goods in transit to meet the suddenly nonexistent demand have no place to go because if you take delivery you don’t have any warehouse space to put it in. So you delay taking delivery and in effect temporarily warehouse those goods in the cargo ships outside the ports.
But what if those cargo ships, in addition to carrying containers full of sweat socks and trinkets Americans are no longer purchasing, also contain hundreds of containers filled with computer ships that American auto plants need to make cars? Those chips are now stuck on those warehouse container ships.
The short of it is there is not enough American warehouse space to store the goods that are suddenly not wanted. Those unwanted goods are clogging up the entire supply chain and preventing the goods that ARE wanted from getting where they need to go.
An afterthought. There are two concepts being mixed here, computerized purchasing and AI purchasing.
Computerized purchasing has been in place for what, almost 50 years? It is just having computers do the formerly manual work of purchasing agents in calculating re-order points and economic order quantities based upon past usage or sales, and then generating new orders. A computer does the math and spits out orders for a human to review before they are released.
I believe AI goes further and, instead of just managing orders for existing products, predicts that if the population ordered X, it is likely to order Y in the future. Not terribly different from a publisher predicting that the NEXT Harry Potter book will generate a demand for X million copies based upon previous demand and setting the size of the first printing accordingly. Or a brand new razor generating predicted future demand for its new blade refills.
there are massive warehouses sitting empty all over my area.
I don’t know, you are suggesting that demand for most goods have fallen off a cliff. I find that hard to believe.
Actually it’s the demand quotient that is driving the clogged and Covid slowed supply chains into a traffic jammed freeway.
Yes, there is not always enough space to bring in the huge overflow needed in an unbalanced supply situation. It’s not always about unwanted materials.
Anything out of the WH and China is doubtful. However Lebanon is in the dark. I’m not sure if that is a sign of a global energy (intentional) problem or a Lebanon political thing. That I don’t know.
It is my understanding that it is a global energy problem. I don’t know if it is production or transportation related, but it is probably the latter, except in those areas so stupid as to rely on solar and wind.
I’ve heard that it is because their currency has imploded and they cannot buy the fuel to run the power plants to keep the lights on consistently. Apparently, the lack of power is affecting crypto in that country too.
So, I can quit stocking up?
I never stock up and never run out of stock. I only buy what I need and not what I think I “want”. Every weekend there are yard sales all around the neighborhood. A testament of people buying what they thought they wanted.
You have nothing tucked away in case of a hurricane, blizzard, pandemic?
Reading Telegram forum this evening, an Austrailian commentor posted that Melbourne has UN troops visible throughout the city…I scoured the intl news outlets and did not find an article. The Commentor did mention they were in UN trucks being transported around.
Someone should break through with some blue helmet videos even with communication blackouts. Given what’s going on down there, wouldn’t surprise me.
Another transport chain worthy of discussion is rail. A lot of those shipping containers are moved out of port by rail medium/long distance. My instinct is there’s more going on than what normal supply chain/purchasing matrices usually explain. With nearly 50 years in heavy industry something smells ‘off’. We’ve been through tough times before, it was crazy in the late 70’s and early 80’s. This is different.
Sounds like fake bogus news to me……An anonymous hidden source lol. For all we no the guy works at Subway.
California just hit a record with 60 container ships waiting offshore that can’t get into port for offloading.
Reports I have been seeing is it is taking a month of sitting before the port will accept the ship.
I suspect it’s all do to port workers being purged for not getting the jab.
The Covid Nazis have caused shortages in truckers, ships, shipping containers, dock workers, and laborers in general.
The news coverage is out there you just have to look.
If there are substantial, or even modest, shortages of labor out there due to workers sitting it out/not working, that should be reflected in the BLS reports month to month, particularly the U6 and labor participation numbers. Since we’re now heading into two months since the end of pandemic UI/PUA/PUEC, there’s no more gravy train for the low end gang who were making more on UI than working. That’s gone.
If a lot of the labor force is sitting out, compared to historical, they’re all in the system, even the self-employed people now if they took part in PUA/PUEC and the numbers should reflect it in a substantial unemployment rate hike. Is it? The September jobs numbers were soft but nothing earth shattering? Where are all the workers? Disappeared, dead, what?
Myself, being self-employed for nearly 40 years and never being in ‘the system’, I was never counted as a body in the BLS numbers, but I am now since PUA. I might be on Social Security but I was, and would be, a worker if the system wasn’t so screwed up. I’m simply not going to play their game or buy their widgets. Or get their vaccine. Just say ‘no’.
Maybe you unwittingly hit on part of the answer: dead. The numbers of deceased or disabled by the jab are being suppressed. They’re no longer working.
BTW, my spouse is one of the disabled due to the jab.
I have been wondering about that…
For all we know the secret source is connected to Newsom and Pelosi.
I’m sure they know we are onto their California Port Scams.
There are two types of “Jabbers”; Those who are vaxxed and wear it as a badge and those who wish they hadn’t.
Here in North Texas I’m not seeing empty shelves exactly, But I do see less options everywhere. Limited choices. Definitely a change from normal.
Welcome to communism.
Anecdotal…
Talked to a rep from Walgreens a few days ago.
They were in town to manage a store “Space Reallocation”.
In a nut shell…
Reducing shelf space by increasing aisle widths in an attempt to hide reduced product.
I’ve noticed that. Lot’s of space inside stores. Large areas without shelves or anything.
I went out looking for an Item, normally you can find too many types and that makes it hard too choose. Well this time I had about 5 choices instead of what it’s usually endless choices.
So I bought something that wasn’t exactly what I wanted but will do. I’ve been shopping online more and more.
If I want something specific I shop online. The chances of finding it in stores are slim. And I live in the shopping Mecca of North Texas.
Mmmmm…….Could a lot of this be due to the fact that so many more people bought online during the Plandemic and that trend continues? Could it be that Walmart, Home Depot, and so many others are keeping their inventory stock and supplies mainly for the online orders instead of
in-store stock?
Bricks and Mortar
I watched this happen at K Mart as they slowly emptied their store for closure. I went there on their last day of business. It was startling to see just how huge the vacant space was. What a contrast from when they was in their heyday with those “blue light specials”.
Also, I’m sure most of the people ( especially those older than 60) who visited Sears’ stores as they wound down, felt nostalgia for how it used to be.
Correction – “ were in their heyday”
I’m not sure. At port of seattle, there are a few ships loaded sitting at anchor, and there are stacks of containers growing. That said, there are also regularly lines of trucks being loaded and unloaded (albeit a bit more slowly than normal). I’m not sure if the stacks are waiting to go out, or stacked waiting for some kind of distribution.
The Wa State Ferry workers also doing work actions against the vax mandates, and it is having a major impact on ferry service. Several routes are running on less service, over the weekend over 100 ferries were cancelled (that results at some terminals in hours of wait times).
Seattle area as well. Grocery shelves are truly bare in some sections, and very sparse in others, Safeway, QFC and now even Trader Joe’s (although mostly frozen foods shortage at TJ’s). At least there doesn’t seem to be a TP shortage currently!
Seattle has a specific issue right now because too many shippers attempted to get around the delays in LA/Long Beach by diverting to Seattle so the port got slammed with way too much traffic given its size. This is normally the tail end of the Christmas shipping season, but delays are expected through the end of next year.
You can dodge inflation by making Christmas about Jesus, church and family.
Who needs stuff?
AMEN
Oh, already planning it. And immediate family only. I do not want to hear about vaccines or hate directed at anyone. If that is the mantra, you are out!
Just curious, what items were they wrong about that they thought people would want, and didn’t?
Well, I guess with working from home, shoes, clothes?
That’s is the most enlightening analysis that I have seen on this. It makes sense.
Thank you!
I cut my teeth as a Manufacturing Engineer at about the time that JIT was becoming a thing. JIT works well and benefits everyone involved until someone lays a toothpick on a railroad track. When you totally shut down an economy, you get a massive pile-up that takes months to work through, followed by massive shortages that take more months to refill the supply line with what is needed.
I worked with “just in time” inventory also. All it meant to me was that most of warehousing was moved to
“someone else”, usually the manufacturer of the raw product or finished product instead of the seller.
Worked at Boeing. When they went to JIT it really cut into the manufacturing time.
Need a wire bundle? Gotta call to maker in Netherlands or one of the other countries that made them.
Really messed up schedules.
I read a great post 2 weeks ago on zerohedge.com that indicated Executive Order 14001 signed 2/24/2021 on supply chain is contributing to the mess… can anyone confirm?
I can’t find the article ~ do you have the link handy?
Here’s the EO: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2021/02/24/executive-order-on-americas-supply-chains/
does not appear to be any shortage of containers for sale on ebay, though it does appear they have gone up in price 20-30%
in the last 5 years.
I talked to management types at the docks and they said the workers are incentivized to stay home due Covid scam – based on incentives from Newsome and unions. if you look out at night there are so many ships you would think we are being invaded. So many that in anchoring one tore up an oil pipe, created a large oil spill which causes the beaches to close and are still closed.
And whom does this benefit? The large corporations? The feds? Follow the money. Although, one must
also follow the road to fascism that we are on. Mussolini stated that fascism was government + corporatism.
Are we there yet?
REMINDS ME OF THE DAYS OF FIRST IN LAST OUT OR LAST IN FIRST OUT.
The Port of Long Beach is not working 24/7. They have started a pilot program for truckers to be able to pick up during nightime hours.
Duh.
https://polb.com/port-info/news-and-press/pier-t-terminal-begins-pilot-program-for-24-hour-cargo-pickup-09-21-2021/
We know people that live on up and down the west coast, the Governors, Mayors in many cities have cut workers by 60/70 percent, stating covid reasons, thats why a lot of things aren’t getting in and about.
In the Fall of 2020 I was working at the Port of Boston, and one of the security guards mentioned that there was already a backup of containers because the ships weren’t taking back empty containers. They were collecting much more than usual. It seem this could be related to international supply chain disruptions starting before May.
Floating excess warehouses.
When does the supply chain problem become a national security emergency?
When will the US Navy / Merchant Marine / National Guard start offloading these ships and trucking them to destinations?
The military is 90% logistics, so why the f*$# aren’t they being employed to unblock the arteries of commerce?
If truck drivers aren’t needed then why have I read that a place in Texas was hiring truck drivers for $14,000 a week and another place saying they have even tried hiring truck drivers out of the country because there is a shortage of them. Also my Walmart is always out of stuff. They can’t leave the shelves stocked. I don’t think this is true.
See the post/comments by Tulip Moran in this thread (10:50 p.m. time stamp).
Anyone who said that the contrived result of the last election was really nothing to worry about, because we could right this ship in 2024, needs to rethink. The amount of damage that the Biden (and WEF) ‘build back better’ BS has done, in TEN months, is astounding. We are not even one quarter of the way into the Biden disaster….and it keeps getting worse.
If high inflation increases the value of durable goods, lower demand has the opposite effect. The purchase of most durable goods can be put off for a long, long time, partly by just repairing what one already has. Once (if) the economy rebounds, these high-priced items may not be so attractive.
Half of these ships are full of paper towels and toilet paper. Ouch.
It’s soooo hard to know if there is a “root cause”. In a complex system, when a few things break, everything breaks. In my pea brain, the BIGGEST problem, one that Trump was trying to solve, is so much crap comes from China and other countries. Everything we need must be manufactured HERE. That’s the solution. But, TPTB wouldn’t make millions and billions of dollars if everything went local.
I think there’s a large component of manufactured crisis – fear porn – going on.
my thought exactly
i also would like to know the financial winners and users – excluding deplorables
Why Shortages Are Permanent: Global Supply Shortages Make Fantastic Financial Sense
October 6, 2021
The era of abundance was only a short-lived artifact of the initial boost phase of globalization and financialization.
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogoct21/scarcity-permanent10-21.html
FJB
The original shortages at the beginning of the pandemic were engineered.
I started hearing from people in random locations around the US, that they went in a store and the toilet paper was missing.
That’s what started the stampede.
The same with the meat.
I don’t know who was behind it, or why, but it didn’t just happen.
To reprise: AI-automated purchasing reflects “just-in-time” (JIT) inventory control, extremely sensitive to demand-side fluctuations. By June 2021, “stunning rises” in basic foodstuffs, gasoline, and utility prices blindsided 70% of Covid-busted U.S. workers. As disposable income shrank, supply-chain pipelines flowed while FJB’s willfully crisis-riven economy reduced importers’ supply-side incentives.At root, slipping deliveries thus reflect neither inflation-induced production bottlenecks nor repressed demand, even Covid-mandate workforce stand-downs, but global corporations’ need to reduce JIT risk by increasing inventory. Warehousing products aboard container-ships, production managers and purchase-agents plot distribution at inflated margins while ensuring that adequate supplies remain available.
Like life, economics is a “dismal science” in Memento Mori’s tragic sense that “all things end.” But as Henry Clay’s efficient-market, mutual-benefit, self-sustaining American System proved, set-piece officialdom’s political-economic manipulation is a fell kiss-of-death.
For all Corporate Statists’ bleats-and-squeaks, laissez-faire with humane behavioral standards is an “unknown ideal”: From Cook and Gates to Twitface Jack, da Zuck, FAANG oligarchs might try it sometime. If this be (ledgered) treason, make the most of it.
I’m seeing large warehouses being built where I live. Distribution centers. They’re in the process of stocking up and those stocks then don’t get distributed until the warehouses are full. They’re preparing for something coming down the road and are making sure they have those goods and aren’t as concerned about you and me having it. At least while it’s still relatively cheap. They’ll wait for demand to increase so they can charge more for artificial scarcity, and when the only currency will depend on whether you have a vaccine passport. If you don’t they don’t want you to stock up on things. This is what’s happening. “A quart of wheat for a day’s pay or three quarts of barley for a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil and the wine.”
“They’ll wait for demand to increase so they can charge more for artificial scarcity”
A component of stagflation is profiteering. Increase prices beyond what is warranted, blame it on increasing costs.
Welcome to Utopian Democommunism. Just-in-time, all-the-time misery.
What an eff’ing mess this all is.
Debt to GDP greater than 100% by a large margin – and growing.
GDP growth below long-term trend since Bush years.
Congress passing humongous spending bills – much of which redirected to non-production endpoints or entitlements.
Fed Reserve mis-management of QE/QT while drowning the system in excessive liquidity.
Labor productivity declining since early 2000s.
Historically low labor force participation rates.
Increasing oligopoly presence in all major industrial segments.
Consumers (70% of GDP) increasing savings IRT inflation yet hoarding basic commodities they believe will soon disappear from store shelves (e.g., toilet paper).
Global supply chain issues discussed in this and other Treehouse posts.
Large tax increases around the corner.
COMPLETELY INCONSISTENT AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE PUBLIC/GOVERNMENT POLICY.
I won’t venture into foreign policy at this point. Folks won’t believe what is really going on behind the seven layers of vaulted doors.
This is not going to end well. The only question now is when the piper must be paid.
All those ships are perfect camouflage for container ships with weapons strategically placed. Capable of disquising something like this:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/space/library/policy/army/fm/44-85/Appb.htm
and ready to be deployed against interests on the US coast after the military! First responders and health care workers are “softened up” with the vaxes…..
We tried JIT in our facility years ago. A small foundry and machine shop. It didn’t take long to realize that “just in time” is just a fancy way to say “late”.
We travelled across New Mexico several times this year. On each occasion we would see miles-long trains, loaded with containers, sitting idle in the middle of nowhere… only to see the same train on the way back a week later, still sitting in the same place.
It’s not just the warehouses sitting on goods that are getting shipped.