During his opening segment today, Fox News host Tucker Carlson discussed the Canadian Freedom Convoy and the results they are achieving.  During a portion of the segment Carlson mentions the YouTube channel ZOT.   Tucker Carlson does a great job outlining the current status of events in/around Ottawa and contrasts the response from the government.  It’s a good segment. WATCH

CANADA – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office has indicated the government’s willingness to “respond with whatever it takes,” to bring the trucker convoy protests under control, confirming federal ministers and top Canadian officials are working with U.S. representatives to “resolve” the situation.

This comes as political pressure has been increasing across Canada and in the United States to see the anti-mandate and anti-government blockades end.

Trudeau held a series of late-night meetings on Thursday about the situation, including with key cabinet ministers and senior officials, and opposition party leaders, though no new measures were announced. (read more)

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The people constructing the policies of the Biden administration are the same people who installed him, community activists from Team Obama.  In essence, Joe Biden’s expressed policies unleashed, are Obama term 3 without care for the political fallout.

CNN reports on the results [POLL HERE] and show that exactly what has been discussed here for well over a year. Obama’s ideological crew have pushed disposable Joe Biden directly into the furnace of political consequence.  WATCH:

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UPDATE: GiveSendGo Responds:

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford has gone to court to freeze all of the GiveSendGo crowdfunding donations raised for the Freedom Convoy truckers.  The current GiveSendGo fundraiser sits at $8.4 million US.

There is a lot of legal complexity here, and it is not clear the Ontario court has any jurisdiction let alone a feasible way to determine or enforce how and where the funds are distributed.   However, in the bigger picture the government is trying to block the funding of the Freedom Convoy.

Premier Doug Ford is the leader of the “progressive conservative party,” the Canadian version of the DeceptiCons.

Apparently, the premier coordinated with Ontario Attorney General to file a restraint order under 490.8 of the Criminal Code, identifying the funds as “offense related property.”

CANADA – The Superior Court of Justice has granted a request from the Ontario government to freeze access to millions of dollars donated through online fundraising platform GiveSendGo to the truckers convoy protesting COVID-19 restrictions in Ottawa and at several border crossings.

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When the Biden administration loses MSNBC, you know the White House is realizing this is going to crush them.

In an unusual MSNBC discussion, the regime stenography panel admits that not only is inflation bad now, but it is likely to get much, much worse.  Just watch the first three minutes to recognize the scale of how the economic situation in the U.S. is being accepted by the water-carrying media.

“The problem we have here is a series of events that have led to higher prices,” says Liesman. “I am afraid this number is bad and could get worse.”

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Keep in mind, most Americans have no idea what 15% inflation and rising interest rates looks like.  The Gen-x generation saw everything as it was growing, and the millennial generation has no reference point for thrift prioritization, actual rationing and sustainability on a level where you have to make your own durable goods and foodstuffs. How many know how to cook, let alone sustain themselves financially.

Yes, things are bad now, but almost every person in the progressive, leftist, occupy, Antifa side of the political divide have no concept of what is about to happen.  It is going to be really interesting to watch how the 20- to 40-year-old age groups respond to a new era of economic scarcity and home gardening.

The ideological Obama crew have really pushed Joe Biden into the furnace.

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The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the January inflation data [DATA HERE] along with the yearly data from 2021.   The “first round” of retail grocery price increases starts to surface; but this is only the first round.  January inflation was actually much worse than the bad data inside the BLS analysis.

Additionally, the BLS readjusted the weighting for relative price importance, putting added weight to urban economic priorities (ie. food at restaurants), which indicates their intent to downplay the scale of inflation overall.  The topline statistic of 7.5% annual inflation (year over year) is bad; however, because of weighting that figure belies the bigger issue, it’s actually much worse.  In January alone inflation jumped 0.8% (unadjusted), primarily driven by the first-round of 2022 consumer inflation that preexisted since early December 2021.

To give an idea of how much prices have increased, we modified BLS Table 1 to take out some noise.  Look at the single month of January (red box).

Look at January “electricity” price increases.  A jump of 4.5% in one month alone, and keep in mind the BLS puts far less importance on electricity than “food away from home”.

In fact, the weighting for economic importance of restaurants is 5 times greater than the electricity to power your house.

Always keep in mind inflation data is backward looking.  So it is a capture of the price increase at a former moment. In this example the pricing survey was early January.

The timing part is important because gasoline has jumped again since this survey was completed.  The BLS data only has gas increasing at 0.1% in January; in reality it increased much more.

You can see the statistical smoothing to present the softest inflation data by looking at Food at Home, Meats, Poultry and Fish.  The actual rate of inflation in that category is 40%+ at retail.  The BLS deemphasizes the price increase by putting less economic importance on the category and they come up with a 12.2% increase, one third of the actual price we are feeling.

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With the U.S. White House announcing their intent to get involved in the Canadian Freedom Protest, the RCMB now announces their intent to begin an enforcement action at the Alberta truck blockade in/around the border crossing between Coutts, Alberta (CA) and Sweet Grass, Montana (USA).

Last night Alberta Premier Jason Kenney gave a weak sauce speech claiming he would begin to remove COVID mandates.  However, a closer review of the proposal showed it was a head fake.  The truckers then moved back into position to close the roads and the Coutts border crossing was blocked.

It is not yet known how the Canadian federal police (RCMP) plan to remove the blockade as the big rig towing companies have previously refused to participate.

CANADA – Enforcement will begin Wednesday afternoon to reopen traffic to the Canada-U.S. border at Coutts which is being blocked by an ongoing protest, according to RCMP.

The blockade has been ongoing for more than a week, in solidarity with the trucker protests in Ottawa and other parts of the country.

Lanes have been open in each direction, however traffic was shut down once again about 8 p.m. Tuesday, soon after Premier Jason Kenney announced the province was ending the Restrictions Exemption Program and lifting mask mandates for schools and children age 12 and under.

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Last week the White House did a weird proactive talking point seminar on Monday, preparing the media for official unemployment data which would follow four days later. {Go Deep} Everything about the new econ talking points, added to the press briefing book, indicates the White House knows it’s the economic policy that is the most politically damaging for them.

Today, the same proactive approach to head off negative economic consequences is evident, this time regarding inflation.  Tomorrow, the official Bureau of Labor and Statistics inflation numbers will be released for January and for 2021 in total.  The White House has been again tipped-off.

Watch how Jen Psaki attempts to proactively establish the talking point about the month-over-month rate of inflation change as the important element to focus on.  If you’ve read the previous post, you can clearly see what they are doing now.  Also, this is entirely scripted and coordinated with the press pool to ask a very specific question.  WATCH, prompted:

You only need to watch for a minute or two to see the strings on the marionettes.

It’s also worth noting, the people behind Joe Biden were meeting with energy executives today to work out the terms and conditions for their bribes from the White House to trigger the Green New Deal.  The energy company bribe amounts, known as direct subsidies in the talking points, were being negotiated as Psaki was talking to the press pool.

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Whenever we discuss inflation, it is absolutely critical for people to understand that inflation itself is the measure of the percentage increase in a price over a period of time.

It is entirely possible, I would say absolutely guaranteed, that prices will increase even more this year as inflation begins to drop. This will be the economic story on the backside of the inflation hurricane as the Fed starts to increase interest rates. Example:

♦ 2021: A loaf of bread increases in price 50¢ from $1.00 to $1.50, a rate of inflation of 50%.

♦ 2022: That same loaf of bread increases in price by 60¢, from $1.50 to $2.10, a rate of inflation at 40%.

The price of the bread increased more in 2022 than 2021, but the rate of inflation dropped from 50% to 40%.

The White House and Federal Reserve state, correctly, that inflation is likely to drop.  However, the actual prices of the products are rising at a greater rate. This is the critical component of the inflation story that will remain with us throughout 2022.  Inflation is not measuring the increase in the price of an item.  Inflation is measuring the rate of the price increase as a percentage.

This is the context for the Federal Reserve to state today, they “hope” inflation slows down, because they are going to raise interest rates regardless of what is happening with the price of goods and services:

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Liberal MP Joël Lightbound lightly criticized some of the stances of Canadian Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Tuesday.  Within hours, the peer and party pressure upon him led to his removal from his position as Chairman of the Quebec caucus.

Lightbound encouraged the Trudeau government to provide targets to lifting restrictions; he was not implying that public health measures should be lifted immediately. He also committed the cardinal sin against COVID by asking for epidemiological data behind restrictions to be published, so people can see the information determining what measures need to be in place.

Transparency is against the interests of those within the government who weaponize covid fear.  The Liberal MP also spoke about the ongoing anti-mandate protests that started as a response to cross-border vaccine mandates, saying that messaging amid the demonstrations is dividing Canadians.  WATCH:

“I fear that this politicization of the pandemic risks undermining the public’s trust in our public health institutions. This is not a risk we ought to be taking lightly.  I have enough respect for my fellow Canadians not to engage in these easy and absurd labels.”

The response was immediate and severe.  There can be no dissent from leftist orthodoxy.

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People are starting to catch on.  First, how it is surfacing:

(Zero Hedge) ...”traders are paying bumper premiums for immediate supply” … “Commodities are severely undersupplied” … “The shortage of, well, everything has translated into record price of virtually all commodities: the Bloomberg Commodity Spot Index, which tracks 23 energy, metals and crop futures, has touched a record this year. That has been driven in part by surging oil prices, which have hit their highest level since 2014.” (read more)

CTH readers are specifically well positioned to understand what is happening in the background we have discussed two specific issues:

(1) In any era of hyper-inflation, we always see the advanced purchasing of inventory for profit.  Meaning, when prices are quickly rising multinationals use their size and power over commodity goods to store, physically or through contracted future purchases, goods that are held until a specific target price is reached and then sold for a bigger profit.  In 2022 the “supply chain disruption” is being used as a cover.

(2) In the modern era, the major multinationals control the supply of originating products.  There’s no such thing as a free market. In the modern era it is a controlled market.

Long before the word “inflation” hit the 2021 headlines, April/May of last year, CTH specifically identified where we are right now.

In the background right now, the multinationals are exploiting the two issues above.  The Zero Hedge article “Shortages of Everything” is discussing the surfacing symptom, i.e. goods traders willing to pay premium prices to secure inventories, not necessarily the root cause.

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