It’s all a ruse; an economic shell game being played for politics – nothing more.

Consider this quote from Fed Chair Jerome Powell today, “Inflation remains well above our longer-run goal of 2 percent. Over the 12 months ending in September, total PCE prices rose 6.2 percent. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories core PCE prices rose 5.1 percent. And the recent inflation data again have come in higher than expected. Price pressures remain evident across a broad range of goods and services. Russia’s war against Ukraine has boosted prices for energy and food and has created additional upward pressure on inflation.” (source)

You can argue Powell’s points of demand side inflation all day long, it matters not. It’s nonsense.  Take interest rates to 10%, or even eleventy percent, and that will not stop inflation because demand is not creating it.  Current inflation is a supply side issue, driven by a radical change in energy policy.  I have made this case for well over a year, sooner or later people are going to have to stop believing the demand side nonsense.

As Powell himself noted, “with today’s action, we’ve raised interest rates by 3 ¾ percentage points this year,” and yet inflation hasn’t flinched.  Why? Because there was no excess consumer demand to tame all year.  Demand for consumer goods has been in a freefall since the fall of 2021, while the prices of those goods have remained on an upward trajectory because costs associated with producing them continue rising.  That’s a supply side inflation issue, not demand – but Powell cannot admit it.

Powell […] “Even so, we still have some ways to go. And incoming data since our last meeting suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates will be higher than previously expected. Our decisions will depend on the totality of incoming data and their implications for the outlook for economic activity and inflation. We will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting and communicate our thinking as clearly as possible.

We’re taking forceful steps to moderate demand so that it comes into better alignment with supply. Our overarching focus is using our tools to bring inflation back down to our 2 percent goal and to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored.”

If you want to take the pretending out of the paragraph and make it truthful, insert the word energy:

“We’re taking forceful steps to moderate [energy] demand, so that it comes into better alignment with [policy driven energy] supply.” 

There.  THAT’S THE TRUTH !!

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Folks, we have all watched the North American economic moves with great interest ever since the first discussions about reforming NAFTA were triggered by Donald Trump. Well, things are about to get even more interesting, and we will have a front seat to see how this plays out.

Joe Biden and Canada’s Justin Trudeau are in ideological alignment, willing to destroy the entire North American economy as they construct the new climate change energy systems for the U.S and Canada.  However, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador (AMLO) has already indicated -including direct statements to Joe Biden at the White House– that he is not willing to put the Mexican economy into collapse and try to engineer an economic future on solar panels and windmills.

As a direct result of following an independent path, the Mexican currency has strengthened against the U.S. dollar providing AMLO with evidence his current strategy to stay away from the U.S. energy policy has benefit.  Factually, AMLO is a soft-socialist (immigration); however, he is also a strong economic nationalist who has previously expressed a strong dislike for the influence of multinational corporations in Mexico.  AMLO is not a World Economic Forum acolyte.  AMLO ideologically aligned toward team BRICS.

The U.S. and Canada are going to push every possible political pressure point in order to force Mexico to change energy policy.  The stakes are high. It is going to be remarkable to watch what happens as this battle takes place.  The Wall Street Journal starts to notice:

(Wall Street Journal) – A shake-up of Mexican trade officials has clouded prospects for a quick resolution of a dispute with the U.S. and Canada over what are seen as Mexico’s nationalist energy policies.

The changes at the Economy Ministry are part of an effort by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to put people who support his stance in charge of negotiations, according to people familiar with the situation.

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Joe Biden does not write his tweets, that is certain.  However, whoever is writing on his behalf sure has an odd way of promoting administration energy policy.

In a Tweet last night [link here] Joe Biden demands oil companies’ lower prices and increase production, or he will raise their taxes and increase regulation:

In essence, lower the prices and increase production or Joe Biden will increase the prices and lower production.  How does this make sense?

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Will big tech and social media remove Joe Biden for violations of misinformation, disinformation and malinformation?  Considering his remarks today, they should.

Reading from a teleprompter loaded with lies about the economy, Joe Biden stunningly states that gas prices are lower today than when he took office. Further claiming that gasoline was $5/gal.  {Direct Rumble Link} Nothing about any of his economic claims is true.  WATCH (1 min):

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Allowing people to return to work after the pandemic lockdowns is not “creating jobs.”  And gasoline was not $5/gal when Joe Biden took office.

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The extreme vitriol against the recent OPEC+ decision to cut oil output, specifically the extreme Biden anger toward Saudi Arabia, now takes on additional context as the New York Times writes about a secretly negotiated deal between the Kingdom and White House officials that was never executed.

As the Times reveals, over the summer the White House thought their team had negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia for increased oil production that would have lowered oil and gasoline costs in the U.S, strategically timed before the midterm election.

With that agreement in mind, Joe Biden went to Saudi Arabia a few months ago. However, as the western alliance began putting more pressure on Russia and increased the activity within Ukraine, the Saudi’s aligned with OPEC+ to support Russia via lowered oil outputs.  The White House felt double-crossed, hence the fury.

(New York Times) –  WASHINGTON — As President Biden was planning a politically risky trip to Saudi Arabia this summer, his top aides thought they had struck a secret deal to boost oil production through the end of the year — an arrangement that could have helped justify breaking a campaign pledge to shun the kingdom and its crown prince.  It didn’t work out that way.

Mr. Biden went through with the trip. But earlier this month, Saudi Arabia and Russia steered a group of oil-producing countries in voting to slash oil production by two million barrels per day, the opposite of the outcome the administration thought it had secured as the Democratic Party struggles to deal with inflation and high gas prices heading into the November elections.

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As inflation bites the working-class hard, U.S. household savings rates continue dropping fast.  When combined with drops in home values the loss in home equity compounds the issue.  American families are getting poorer much more quickly under Joe Biden’s economic policies.

According to the Wall Street Journal home values dropped in August at their highest monthly rate of decrease since 2011 {link}.  In part this is driven by higher mortgage rates which are pricing home buyers out of the market.  However, the regional impact is worse on the west coast than east or southeast.

[…] The housing market has slowed abruptly this year due to a rapid increase in mortgage rates, which has raised borrowing costs for home buyers and pushed many prospective buyers out of the market. Existing-home sales fell for eight straight months through September. (link)

As noted in The Daily Mail review of a similar analysis: “It’s Northern California that leads the way, with San Jose experiencing a drop of 10.8 percent since September, followed by San Francisco at 8.5 percent, then it’s Seattle at 8.2 percent, Denver at 5.8 percent, San Diego 5.2 percent, Portland 5.1 percent, Las Vegas 4.8 percent and Phoenix at 4.4 percent.” (link)

What we are seeing is a confluence of events, generally brought about by the outcomes of larger Biden administration policy.  Massive increases in energy costs are the result of energy policy; those increases are fueling inflation from the supply side on food, fuel, electricity, home heating etc.  Simultaneously, Fed monetary policy is driving consumer demand down.  The recession debate continues amid the economic think-tanks while Main Street outcomes show we have been in a recessionary period all year.

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The moves are so predictable… {See Here}… well, it would be funny if the consequences were not so severe.

With Prime Minister Liz Truss announcing her resignation there was considerable discussion of former PM Boris Johnson returning to run for the job.  However, as an outcome of his conversations with other “conservatives” in British politics, Johnson has withdrawn his name.  This sets up… wait for it…. the World Economic Forum’s groomed U.K. climate change “conservative” to take the job.  This stuff is so predictable, it’s beyond funny.

(Via CBS) – Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said in a statement Sunday that he would not seek the leadership of the Conservative Party, leaving former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak as the frontrunner to take over after Liz Truss hastily announced her exit last week, after just 45 days at the helm. (read more)

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak together with King Charles III….  What could possibly go wrong?  LOL

Sometimes people make fun of me for cementing my views in the reality of a big picture perspective.  I don’t care.  It’s not a conspiracy theory to see how the alignment of western leadership interests are shaped by the control of the people and institutions who manipulate the illusion of choice.

Liz Truss was dispatched because she dared, in the smallest way, to accept the reality of what created the ‘Build Back Better‘ U.K. economic crisis.  She was always going to be replaced by someone who was willing and able to retain their fullest devotion to the grand pretense.  That’s where Rishi Sunak steps in.  Please watch the video below, you’ll see:

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All around this western world of ours we find ourselves surrounded by economic pretenders and financial pundits, perhaps intentionally stuck, using old school economic theory to analyze a new era in government manipulation of the economy.  It’s maddening… but at least we do not need to pretend on these pages.

Milton Friedman was not wrong at the time he stated that inflation is driven by monetary policy.  Print money and the value of it diminishes; this is true.

However, we are in an era that Friedman never foresaw, nor could he fathom, where the structural policy of government is created to intentionally shrink economic activity.

Purposefully reducing energy resources and then purposefully reducing economic activity to match the diminished level of energy available, is the underlying purpose of what the western globalists call “Building Back Better.”   The claim of “climate change” is the justification for their action.  Too few people truly understand this, and as a result we see false arguments about the root of inflation being presented.

The ROOT CAUSE of modern western inflation is the intentional shortage of traditional energy resources (coal, oil, gas), which is driving up the price of the everything attached to the use of energy, everything.  It is a supply side causation with policymakers trying to forcibly shrink energy demand.   Quit making excuses in any other direction.

As energy products skyrocket, everything attached to the energy product rises in price – that is a supply side issue.  Yes, if you wish to be obtuse and support the justification from the policymakers, you can -if you chose to join the pretending- argue that demand for energy is the cause. However, demand for energy is far more consistent than the reductions in the supply that have been created.

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Last week we discussed the announcement of a $24.6 billion merger deal between Kroger and Albertsons supermarkets {Go Deep}.  The majority stockholders in both companies are institutional investment groups, Blackrock, Vanguard and Cerberus.

The merger would consolidate the second and third largest food retailers in the U.S. and would certainly dilute the competitive dynamic amid the supermarket industry.  Concern over price controls and decreased competition has now arrived on the desks of DC legislators who are reviewing the deal.

(Reuters) – […] U.S. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar and Republican Senator Mike Lee were quick to say that they would hold a hearing to discuss the merger. A European interloper could make deal plans even harder.

Frans Muller, Chief Executive of Stop & Shop owner Ahold Delhaize (AD.AS), has made no secret of his desire to consolidate U.S. grocers. The Netherlands-based firm is already the fourth largest grocery chain. If it managed to cobble together a better offer than Kroger’s bid for Albertsons, it would become the second largest supermarket. Plane spotters tracked two Albertsons jets next to Ahold Delhaize’s U.S. base in Massachusetts in early August. Ahold declined to comment.

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Elevate far enough and you return to that same place where the international finance and banking system is making decisions on politics.  The western alliance is ‘all-in‘ on the goal of using climate change as the entry point to the carbon trading system.  No one is going to be allowed to challenge this agenda.

British Prime Minister Liz Truss has resigned after only 44 days in office, driven mostly by the financial system reaction to her proposal that taxes should be lowered in order to stimulate the economy.  In the big picture, the years of slowly advancing progressive politics in the U.K. has culminated in a political system that is only manageable by a leader who retains a globalist financial outlook and a climate change policy framework.

Prime Minister Truss’s economic agenda, lower taxes – stimulate growth, in combination with an emergency effort to quickly develop oil, coal and natural gas exploitation (fracking etc.) in order to avoid the escalating European energy crisis, was just too much and too radical.  The financial markets responded negatively, the World Economic Forum (WEF)was unhappy, and western alliance leaders were critical, including Joe Biden:

Biden called Prime Minster Truss’s proposed tax cuts “a mistake” earlier this week. Biden said he “wasn’t the only one” who thought as much, indicating he had talked to other western alliance leaders who thought the same.

“I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake. I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super-wealthy at a time when … I disagree with the policy, but it’s up to Britain to make that judgment, not me,” Biden said.  With domestic opposition and international pressure, it became clear that Liz Truss was going to collapse.  She did.

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(Daily Mail) – British Prime Minister Liz Truss resigned today after just 44 days in office, sending the country’s parliament into chaos and making it the laughing stock of the world.

Truss only took over from former leader Boris Johnson on September 6 after winning an internal Conservative Party leadership contest. She quickly lost the faith of the party to such an extent that she was deemed unfit to lead last night in a wave of no confidence letters from colleagues.

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