Let’s say you are an average household with an income around $100,000/yr who has an increase in electricity rates from $300 to $500 due to Joe Biden’s new national energy policy known as the Green New Deal.  That’s $200 more per month for this initial economic/energy “transition” moment.

That extra $200/month equates to $2,400 per year.

That $2,400 per year is static economic activity.  Meaning nothing additional was created, and nothing additional was generated.  The captured $2,400 is simply an increase in the price of a preexisting expense.

Take that expense and expand it to your community of 100 friends and family households.  The $2,400 now becomes $240,000 in cost that doesn’t generate anything.  $240,000 is removed from the community economy.  $240,000 is no longer available for purchasing other goods or services within this community of 100 households.

The economic purchasing power of the 100-household community is reduced by $240,000 per year.

Take that expense and expand it to your county of 10,000 households.  Now you are reducing the county economic activity by $24 million.  In this county of 10,000 households, $24 million in economic transactions have been wiped out.  Meals at restaurants, purchases of goods and services, or any other spending of the $24 million within the county of 10,000 households (approximately 25,000 residents) has been lost.

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During his opening monologue tonight, Tucker Carlson becomes the first mainstream pundit to point out the lies in the central bank argument.

The federal reserve and EU central banks claim they are raising interest rates to stop inflation by slowing demand.  A demand side approach.  However, it isn’t demand driving inflation; it’s the cost of energy driving inflation. That’s a supply side issue.

The central banks cannot admit what they are doing, or people would catch on.  They are intentionally reducing economic activity in order to support having scarce energy production. WATCH:

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The financial pundits are slowly starting to drop the pretending and discuss the bigger economic picture. However, as they tread very carefully, they are being very cautious about admitting too much.

A Reuters discussion of the comments by Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, starts to dip the media toe in the painful pool; yet they will not admit the Biden energy program is the source of the inflation Powell is targeting with his policy moves to shrink energy demand. Thus, the pretending continues.

If you take the written words and extract the parseltongue, you can see a more fulsome picture of what is being outlined.

JACKSON HOLE, Wyo., Aug 29 (Reuters) – The message from the world’s top finance chiefs is loud and clear: rampant inflation is here to stay and taming it will take an extraordinary effort, most likely a recession with job losses and shockwaves through emerging markets.

That price is still worth paying, however. Central banks spent decades building their credibility on inflation fighting skills and losing this battle could shake the foundations of modern monetary policy.

In other words, the U.S. economy is based on core U.S. energy systems and moving that construct to alternative energy, windmills, electric vehicles and solar panels; along with getting Americans to accept a lowered standard of living; is an “extraordinary effort.”

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As the global cleaving begins taking shape based on the new western energy system, the Build Back Better agenda, Russian energy exports are worth a lot more money.  As a result, the Russian economy has gained more wealth than before the western sanctions regime was triggered.  As noted by the Wall Street Journal:

(Via WSJ) – […] Demand from some of the world’s largest economies has given Russian President Vladimir Putin the upper hand in the energy battle that shadows the war in Ukraine, and has confounded the West’s bid to cripple Russia’s economy with sanctions.

Sales are booming in Russia’s export market, the world’s largest in crude and refined fuels. And new trade arrangements have given Mr. Putin cover to use natural gas exports as an economic weapon against Ukraine’s European allies. Before the war, Russia supplied Europe with 40% of its gas. It has since throttled flows through the Nord Stream pipeline to Germany and other conduits, driving prices higher and putting pressure on European households and businesses.

Oil revenue more than makes up the difference. “Russia is swimming in cash,” said Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance. Moscow earned $97 billion from oil and gas sales through July this year, about $74 billion of that from oil, she said.

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When Chairman Powell says things are really, really going to suck as monetary policy tries to support Biden’s goals to reduce energy supplies, will people believe him?

The agenda of the federal reserve was clearly outlined today in the remarks from Chairman Powell in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  The Fed chair is trying to manage the economic policy transition by reducing economic activity to match intentionally diminished energy supplies.  Lowering economic activity drops demand for energy. Unfortunately, as admitted by Powell today, this means a period of “some pain” for Americans as the central banks join together in an effort to lower consumption.  WATCH:

What does “some pain” mean?  It means lower incomes, higher prices, lowered standards of living and more scarce resources.   During this transition to owning nothing and being happy about it, the pain is your wealth being stripped as the economy is intentionally diminished.

We will not be able to afford much; we won’t be able to afford the foods we want; we will not be able to purchase anything except the essentials, and those essentials will cost much more; we won’t be able to vacation, travel, or enjoy recreational activities; we won’t be able to afford any indulgences; but at the end of the process, we will learn to live more meager existences based on lowered expectations needed for sustaining the planet.   Pay no attention to the elites who don’t have those concerns, comrade.

[Transcript] – POWELL: “At past Jackson Hole conferences, I have discussed broad topics such as the ever-changing structure of the economy and the challenges of conducting monetary policy under high uncertainty. Today, my remarks will be shorter, my focus narrower, and my message more direct.”

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A solid dive by Law.Com and Daily Business Review into the background of who is financing Donald Trump versus who is financing Ron DeSantis should help to clarify the nature of the difference between them.

President Trump is funded primarily from massive amounts of small contributions from small donors, the MAGA base.

Governor Ron DeSantis is funded primarily by a small group of exclusive Wall Street corporations, billionaires and hedge fund managers, and almost no small donors.

Essentially, if you are thinking about MAGA populism -vs- corporate republicanism; well, there’s the issue in easiest to understand data form.

Additionally, the new managers of DeSantis have recently noticed the vulnerability and hired firms to try and stimulate small donor amounts in an effort to avoid the jaw dropping difference in average donation.  A strategy deployed by Jeb Bush in 2015.    Pay attention to the names giving large donations to DeSantis and you will see: (a) where the economic policy distinction comes from; and (b) where the RDS branding and consulting image is coming from.

Business Daily Review – Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has raised more money than Donald Trump since the former president left office, relying on deep-pocketed donors rather than the small-dollar contributors he’ll need if he seeks the White House in 2024.

DeSantis … has amassed $142 million from the start of 2021 through Aug. 5 this year from donors such as the hedge fund billionaires Ken Griffin and Paul Tudor Jones.  That tops the $136 million Trump collected over a slightly shorter period.

Unlike Trump, who relies largely on a network of small-dollar donors to fund his postpresidential political operations, DeSantis has raised the bulk of his money from a small number of wealthy donors writing him giant checks. That gives him plenty of money for his reelection effort in Florida, where laws allow unlimited contributions.

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Long-term CTH readers might remember in 2014 when President Obama claimed U.S. families had been paying too little for electricity for too long.  As soon as Joe Biden took office, he began implementing the Green New Deal energy policy that, (a) directly forces higher costs for energy; and (b) is now creating massive problems.

In July I noted my own electricity bill had jumped 28% in a single month.  That bill was followed by another almost identical increase this month.  A review of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for July [Data Here] shows that nationally the same thing is happening.  The year-over-year electricity price has increased 15.2%. However, worse still, the July increase alone was 1.9%, which figures to an annualized rate of 22.8%.

When the growth rate of monthly increase is exceeding the year-over-year result, that means future higher prices are coming.  This is a serious problem that cannot be overstated. Already struggling with a doubling of gas prices, massive food price increases at the grocery store and the pain of all costs for goods far outpacing any rate of wage increase, this type of uncontrollable increase in price of electricity is going to hit the middle class hard.

Steve Cortes calls this the backside of the Biden created inflation hurricane.  The backside of a hurricane is the worst because it hits from the opposite direction upon already weakened infrastructure.

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If you have been following along, you might remember the note we made in July about not every country willing to go along with the western agenda on energy reduction, climate change, and raising interest rates to shrink their economy down to the scale of diminished energy development {Go Deep}.

In addition to Russia, China, Iran, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina and India vociferously retaining their own economic and monetary independence, Mexican President AMLO literally blasted the program while visiting the White House and the Bank of Japan refused to join the mantra to raise interest rates.   Essentially, all of the aforementioned nations see the collective Build Back Better program for what it is, a path to poverty.

As a result of their non-compliance with the global bankers, which, not coincidentally I would point out, coincided with the assassination of Shinzo Abe, the government of Japan has been getting blasted by the proverbial ‘west’ (U.S, Canada, U.K, Europe and Australia).

Japan is attempting to deal with inflation by focusing on increasing energy production and security (the supply side); while the rest of the western group have been chasing the false promise of decreased inflation by lowering the demand side, ie. pretending not to know their energy policy is creating the increases in costs.

As a result of the distinctly different monetary approaches, the financial system has been trying to punish Japan and the financial media have been trying to point out every flaw in the Japanese economy as a result of their noncompliance.   However, as you will see in this Reuters article, the July inflation within Japan is moderating.  Inflation in Japan is 2.4% for July (year over year).

TOKYO, Aug 19 (Reuters) – Japan’s core consumer inflation accelerated in July to its fastest in seven-and-a-half years, driven by fuel and raw material prices and adding to the costs of living for households yet to see significant wage gains.

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As a result of western governments’ taking collective action under the auspices of a ‘climate change’ agenda, we are on the cusp of something happening with ramifications that no one has ever seen before.

Western governments’, specifically western Europe, North America (U.S-Canada) and Australia/New Zealand, are intentionally trying to lower economic activity to meet the intentional drop in energy production.

This is the core consequence of the Build Back Better agenda as promoted by the World Economic Forum.

Anyone who says there is a reference point to determine both the short-term and long-term consequences is lying. There is no precedent for nations’ collectively and intentionally trying to reduce economic activity.

Hiding behind the false justification that current inflation is driven by too much demand, central banks in Europe, the Bank of England, Bank of Canada and U.S. federal reserve are raising interest rates.  The outcome we are currently feeling is an intentional economic contraction and global recession.

The Build Back Better monetary policy is successfully shrinking western economic activity; however, the impacted nations that produce goods for markets in North America and Europe, specifically southeast Asia, Japan and China, are not raising interest rates in an effort to try and offset the drop in demand.  China has announced they are dropping their central bank rates in a desperate effort to lower costs and keep their export dependent economy working.

Underneath all of this, is a drop in energy production in the same nations trying to lower economic activity.  The political policymakers are attempting to manage this process without informing the citizens of the unspoken goal.   Shortages of oil, coal and natural gas are self-inflicted problems, all part of the BBB agenda.

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In the second quarter of 2021 Target earned $1.82 billion in profit.  In the second quarter this year, target earned $183 million. That’s the result of inflation hitting the middle-class consumer.

Few people are buying electronics, home goods, durables or clothing.  Any retailer that specializes in the sale of non-essential items is going to feel the financial results of working-class families reprioritizing their spending.  Checkbook economics is the economics that matters.

Hopefully, CTH readers are well prepared for this phase of the Joe Biden economy. It will almost certainly get worse.

(Daily Mail) – Target reported on Wednesday that its profits plunged nearly 90 percent last quarter after it was forced to slash prices to clear unwanted inventories of clothing, home goods and electronics.

In early June, Target warned that it was canceling orders from suppliers and aggressively cutting prices because of a pronounced spending shift by Americans as inflation cuts into spending on non-essential items.

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