This is not a surprise data-point for readers here.  However, it is good to see honest statements from corporate executives on what to expect with food inflation.

As noted by Kroger Chief Financial Officer Gary Millerchip in a call with financial media, we can expect to see even more rapid inflation in food prices overall in the next several months:

MSM – Cincinnati-based Kroger Co., which had $132 billion in sales last year, says inflation is running hotter than management previously anticipated and that expectations are now for prices to rise 2% to 3% over the second half of this year.

Kroger is “passing along higher cost to the customer where it makes sense to do so,” said CFO Gary Millerchip on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Friday. (read more)

The reason for more inflation is not too difficult to understand.  Fresh foods show fast price increases immediately because they have almost no pre-existing inventory.  Fresh foods go from field to fork the fastest, and price increases show up immediately.  The same applies to restaurants.

However, processed foods and shelf stable foods have a deeper inventory, the turns on that inventory take longer, and as a consequence, it takes longer for the price increases to show up.  Millerchip is simply saying the total supply chain price increases are going to hit, and they are going to hit even harder than the last few months, as the new processed inventory carries a higher cost.

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At the conclusion of a ceremony commemorating 9-11 and U.S. service members, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis took questions from the media.  One of the questions was about his reaction to Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for U.S. workers.  This is how Governor DeSantis responded. WATCH:

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This is mostly a repost by request.  CTH accurately predicted ten months ago that through Biden the control agents would use OSHA to force vaccination requirements.  It’s not prescience, it’s just a matter of knowing who is operating this and why.   As requested – here is the “who”, “what, “where” and “why” they are attempting this….

[December 2020] Why is COVID-19 being disproportionately hyped as such a dangerous threat, when the reality of the statistical danger is much less than the intense level of hype?… That is the key question.

The answer is… social changes under the guise of COVID-19 mitigation, are the entry point for the goals and aspirations of the political left on a national and global scale. COVID-19 is a virus, but also a very important political weapon, and we are discovering what the purpose of the hype is all about. What follows below will help understand; and when you encounter the fear it will help to reconcile/explain what people cannot figure out.

Joe Biden is an avatar; a political pawn; a cognitively declining guy who has no idea what is happening around him. The people behind Biden, those in real control of what this is about, have not hidden their goals and aspirations. These are not stupid people. They are scheming, conniving, ever-planning, ever-manipulating & Machiavellian types within the political system; lusting for power, influence and affluence.

What they are planning to doing is weaponizing COVID-19 to attain ideological objectives. This is why they hyped the fear within it for almost a year. Nothing within their plan requires the approval or consent of any representative body in Washington DC.

COVID is the tool to “fundamentally change” the way the United States exists.  Biden is disposable.

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As many have noted, the *entire* premise behind the Biden administration mandatory vaccine requirement for U.S. workers is political.  They are not even attempting to frame a legal or constitutionally valid basis for their unilateral proclamation.  Nothing about the policy is based on science, or even the possibility of executive authority.

The announcement on Thursday was a pure political ruse intended to stir support from the Democrat base, and distract from the mess they created in Afghanistan.  If the vaccine mandate wasn’t political theater, if they really believed in it, they would not be taking the visible approach seen today from the White House press secretary.

When questioned about American workers, being forced to take a vaccine under the auspices of public health – yet not requiring vaccines for illegal economic migrants, the administration shrugged and said: “that’s correct”.   Undermining their ’emergency health authorization’ premise would not be their approach if the White House really did believe they had a legal pathway to the mandate.   WATCH:

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Joe Biden is a disposable front-man for the Obama group organizing the objective.  He was installed as a disposable figurehead so they don’t have to worry about political damage. The Biden term was designed for a single set of four-year rapid advancements for the Democrat Socialist agenda. The Biden poll ratings and favorability, or lack therein, do not factor into the plan of action; those issues are irrelevant.

That said, they cannot leave him wandering around the Rose Garden muttering to himself and still keep up the pretense of a presidency.  So, Chief of Staff Ron Klain threw Biden out front to push a political position doomed to fail because they need some appearance of support after millions of Democrats recently abandoned their Potemkin candidate.

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The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the August review [DATA HERE] of producer prices for last month.  August rose 0.7% with cumulative results now showing an 8.3% increase in prices; the largest year-over-year jump in prices for final demand products in the history of tracking. The prior record was July with 7.8%.

Inflation is skyrocketing for consumer goods at all levels of production: Origination (commodity/raw material), Intermediate (Mfr/Wholesale) and Final products (retail).

In part, the extreme upward cost pressure from escalating fuel and energy costs are accumulating throughout the supply chain and surfacing in the prices of the finished products. We are all witnessing this in the prices at stores; especially in the quick turning products, like groceries (fast turn consumable goods), which reflect price increases the fastest.

Final demand prices moved up 0.7 percent in August, 1.0 percent in July and 1.0 percent in June. The year-over-year inflation rate on final demand products now stands at 8.3%.

MEDIA – […] “The data comes amid heightened inflation fears fed by supply chain issues, a shortage of various consumer and producer goods and heightened demand related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Federal Reserve officials expect inflationary pressures to ease through the year, but they have remained stubbornly persistent, with Friday’s numbers indicating that the trend likely will continue.

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The architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, famously said, “We relied upon the stupidity of the American voter“, when they lied about the changes to healthcare in order to get Obamacare passed into law.   Today the White House Chairman of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, pulled out the Gruber playbook and attempted the same level of nonsense to convince the media that food inflation wasn’t real.

The effort is to downplay the massive scale of food price increase.  Watch a few minutes of his presentation  as prompted below:

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Just about everything Brian Deese stated in that segment about the root cause of food price inflation is false.  He’s not mistaken, he is not getting it wrong, he is not looking at false assumptions, he is lying.  He knows what he is saying is false…. he also knows it is abjectly silly on its face.  The proteins are driven up by the skyrocketing feed prices underneath them.

If you take away the food products driving the highest price increases, the price increases don’t look quite as high.   What the heck kind of bizarro-world spin is that?   Yes, it is true, if I take the fork I stabbed you with out of your eye the headache might subside slightly.  Good grief.

Wheat, corn and soybeans are the foundation of the U.S. food supply. They are primarily used as ingredients in processed foods, oils, and are fed to the cattle, hogs, and poultry that supply meat and eggs for the American diet. When those grain harvests go up in price, the downstream increase in price is far reaching.  Additionally, the part about multinational corporations merging and profiteering is a little disingenuous considering Joe Biden recently increased the amount of food stamp assistance by 25% per recipient, and expanded the program.

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The New York Directorate of COVID Compliance have announced that the pandemic will pause in the Northeastern U.S. around the Thanksgiving Holiday allowing the Macy’s parade to continue.

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Yes, the world has gone that stupid if they cannot see through this nonsense by now.

New South Wales, Australia – Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that once the state achieves 70% double-vaccinated status, citizens within the region will be given some freedom from the lock-down situation. The details of the freedom will be announced later; however, only vaccinated people will be permitted to participate.

The announcement from NSW followed their release of the latest COVID stats showing eight people had died of “covid-related health issues” in the past 24 hours. Two men in their nineties, two people in their eighties and three people in their seventies, died in hospital. According to the Health Minister, all of them had “pre-existing medical issues and conditions.”

Following the nationwide standard, every citizen will be required to download their proof of vaccine into their personal “QR Code” on their phone. This digital identification will be scanned at the entrances of all businesses, offices, workplaces, and venues that require entry to participate in society. This process is called “check in”, and will be monitored by the national and state governing authority who will enforce protocols for tracking each individual citizen.

This ain’t a gag folks, this is the actual nuts-and-bolts of the new process that is being rolled-out right now throughout Australia. Premier Gladys Berejiklian held a press conference yesterday, where some of larger aspects to the programs were highlighted. If you are not paying attention, you had better perk up and start looking into what they are doing.  Once they implement this, we can expect to see these standards, rules and regulations imported into the U.S. during the Biden administration.   Australia & New Zealand look like the beta-test.

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Apparently the internet has been turned off for people in Australia.  That is the only reasonable explanation for how their political leadership can keep claiming that vaccinated people cannot contract the COVID virus.

{Press Conference Video}.

This claim is empirically refuted by every other nation who is seeing vaccinated people contracting COVID and “some” being hospitalized regardless of their vaccine status.

On a weirdly positive note, it appears they have abandoned the regional Australian plan of “COVID-ZERO,” which was a plan to lock-down the entire nation, on a state-by-state basis, until they never had a single case of COVID and then re-open society.

They have abandoned that plan because it was abject nonsense from the outset; and reality showed the virus spreading despite their complete lock-down and quarantine protocols.  However, the latest COVID plan within the regional states is to use the enforcement of total vaccinated status before they will allow freedom.

In a press conference yesterday from Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews proclaimed that vaccinated citizens in the state of Victoria will be allowed out of lockdown in the near future.  However, freedom as defined by access to medical treatment, the ability to work, shopping, attending events and engagement in the economy writ large, will not be permitted for any non-vaccinated citizen. Anyone who is not vaccinated will remain in locked-down isolation as enforced by the state.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the August jobs report [Data Link Here] showing only 235,000 jobs created in August.  Economists and financial analysts were predicting 750,000+.

While the financial punditry are jaw-agape with disappointment, these results are in line with the background data and should not have been a surprise.  Within the BLS data you will note the retail sector lost 29,000 jobs, and the leisure and hospitality sector remained unchanged.

Massive inflation and price increases in fuel, gasoline, energy costs and food pricing is slowing down retail purchasing of non-essential goods.  The working class are cutting back non-essential purchases and focusing on how to pay for groceries, electricity and gasoline.  Connected to this checkbook issue, the working class are not spending on leisure and hospitality.   Everyone is focused on making ends meet.  Spending decisions are prioritized.

The government COVID subsidies have also created a false bottom.  Service sector workers could make more money from COVID bailouts than they could by returning to work.  Some families made the decision to stay home, drop the daycare cost for their kids, and actually net a higher overall income position from government relief funds.  This dynamic is mostly noted in the lower tier of the income and wage earning employment category.

Government run education, local and state, also saw a drop in jobs of -26,000 simultaneous to kids returning to school.  Why did this happen?  Well, private sector education gained +40,000 jobs. This is in line with the cultural shift.  There is so much COVID propaganda, and manipulation of teaching outcomes as a result of unionized education dictates around COVID, many parents have had enough with the nonsense, mask mandates and indoctrination and are taking their kids out of public schools.

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