Mohamed El-Erian, the chief economic adviser for Allianz, got the inflation problem correct; states a forecast in line with CTH Main Street review, but then falls short on his political outlook for the solution.

Within the interview, El-Erian predicts inflation at the current CPI measure will increase from current 7.9% to over 10% this year.  That aspect is in alignment with CTH review at ground level.

Current real inflation is more than 15% across the board, if you use the CPI methodology we were using in the 70’s and 80’s.  Both the scale and the speed of the current price increases are historic.  That is why you are seeing prices on retail items jumping so high, so fast.  The price increases on highly consumable goods are in the 15 to 20% range.  WATCH:

An increase to over 10%, using current CPI measures, equals an increase of 25 to 30% in actual price (using historic measures).  Keep in mind, we have already passed through a wave of backward-looking inflation in the 25 to 30% range.  El-Erian is predicting a duplication of that scale into the remainder of 2022, I agree.  The 2020 $3 item became the 2021 $4 item, which will now become the 2022 $5.50 item.  That is our reality. It will not get better.

Where we differ from El-Erian is on the wage side and the political analysis.  Any political intervention to create govt subsidy with the goal to generate a higher workforce will backfire – bigly.  Recent historic employment statistics have not yet reflected the demand side decline in goods.  The employment data is skewed and useless because of the COVID mitigation impact on jobs.

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The propaganda out of the Ukraine/Hollywood association is continuing unabated.   In a Twitter video today, pushed by Buzzfeed Journalist Christopher Miller {SEE HERE}, the claim is, “President Zelensky walked to a hospital today to visit wounded Ukrainian soldiers and award them with state honors for their sacrifices.”

However, alert researchers noted {SEE HERE} the woman to Zelenskyy’s left, in the video, is a physician named Inna Derusova. She was reported to have died on February 26th.

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Neil Oliver takes the opportunity of his weekend monologue to put the context of recent government events into a framework of history.  Oliver eloquently reflects on our current condition, yet far too few people can see it.

As he looks from where he is, Oliver can see we are in a new world order kind of place.  A place where government, big tech social discussion platforms, and the mindful authorities in charge of directing our focus,  have decided in their unilateral magnanimity, to dust off the moral relativism tools, use the fine-tuning mechanism, and target our attention so that we hate the Russians.

Like most of us, Neil Oliver refuses to give the powers that be access to that place in his mind where he determines right from wrong.  Instead, knowing how these same moral relativists have just used COVID to create harm, that has yet to be appropriately quantified, Oliver stands firm with the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and says, “fuck off.”  But he says it in a nice way for television.  WATCH:

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The bad news is the propaganda from the global media and intelligence apparatus is astronomical surrounding the Ukraine narrative.  The good news is that most Americans can sense the background manipulation, even if they cannot quite put a finger on it.

You can see the general sense of distrust across the broad spectrum of discussions online and in almost all social media platforms.  The majority of people sense something just doesn’t add up. While the people who follow political events closely are the ones who can see the more specific details of the manipulation.   Those who were paying closest attention, in the 2014 Ukraine story line, are the ones who see the same methods deployed.

To get a sense of where the close political following group are, I asked the question last night.  The results are not surprising to the high-info crowd, but the responses have stunned the moderate observers:

The roughly 3:1 ratio is remaining consistent [updated results here].  What this shows us is the diminished power of the Mainstream Media, despite almost every outlet parroting the exact same talking points.   The drumbeat of U.S. and global media propaganda is falling upon increasingly deaf ears.

Perhaps this outcome should not be surprising, given the nature of the institutional deployment of the same Ukranian propaganda playbook by western government and media, and yet it is.  The psychological bombardment by every aligned public-private corporate, multinational and government entity, is extreme.  Yet people can see through it.  That says something very positive about the current outlook of people toward government.

Unfortunately, amid the echo chamber that is globalist government, and amid the detachment of national politicians to the perspectives of the citizens they claim to represent, the disconnect between the people and the ruling self-described ‘elites’ is a recipe for either massive change or a more overt totalitarian effort by government officials who will never concede to the will of the majority.  That is our current status.

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If you remember this very important quote from two weeks ago, what follows will make a lot more sense:

…”Strategic success in the 21st century is not about a physical land grab of territory; that’s what Putin has done.  In this century, strategic power is increasingly measured and exercised by economic strength, by technological sophistication and your story – who you are, what your values are; can you attract ideas and talent and goodwill? And on each of those measures, this will be a failure for Russia.”

~ Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh

White House Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh boiled down geopolitical power to a cultural issue of social likeability.  This is genuinely what the people running the Biden administration believe.

Everyone in the Biden administration is, after all, spawned in the petri-dish of community activism. When they successfully installed Barack Obama, the premise of their strategy proved accurate.   Within this political and cultural strategy, pop icons are used as influencers and policy ambassadors.

This report today from the Washington Post is directly aligned:

(Washington Post) – On Thursday afternoon, 30 top TikTok stars gathered on a Zoom call to receive key information about the war unfolding in Ukraine. National Security Council staffers and White House press secretary Jen Psaki briefed the influencers about the United States’ strategic goals in the region and answered questions on distributing aid to Ukrainians, working with NATO and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons.  (read more)

It is very easy to snark or ridicule this approach from the position of being an intelligent adult in a world of childishness.  However, we dismiss it at our own peril.

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Mark Twain was reported to have said, “History may not always repeat, but it rhymes.”  With the Obama foreign policy team back together again in the White House, we are watching Twain’s truism play out in real time.

Yesterday, the Biden administration specifically designated Qatar as a major non-NATO ally {LINK}.

The purpose of this designation is brutally obvious. The United States is putting Qatar back into the business of brokering arms sales from the U.S. government into Ukraine.  Following the geopolitical intervention models previously used in Egypt, Libya and Syria by President Obama and Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Antony Blinken are now repeating the process toward Ukraine.

In many ways this should not be a surprise.  Qatar is the financial hub and support network for the Muslim Brotherhood.  Qatar is also the arms broker for covert military operations when the U.S. does not want visible fingerprints.

By making this designation now, the Biden administration is setting up the groundwork for a long-term proxy war between the U.S/NATO and Russia in Ukraine.

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Kamala Harris held a bilateral meeting with Romanian President Klaus Iohannis in Bucharest, one day after talks between Ukraine and Russia’s foreign ministers failed to bring any pause in the conflict.

At the end of their meeting, Kamala Harris and President Klaus Iohannis held a press availability.  The level of intellectual incompetence displayed by Harris is off the charts. WATCH:

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Polish President Andrzej Duda used the opportunity of a joint press availability with Kamala Harris to correct the record and diplomatically push back against Secretary of State Anthony Blinken for making up the “green light” story {Background Here}.

During the Q&A, Harris was asked about what alternatives there were for the Polish fighter jets that have now been taken off the table in the material support discussions for Ukraine.  When it came time for his reply, President Duda stated:

Duda: “Let me say something more.  We accept that [Ukraine] have the right to demand this assistance from the international community.  They can demand this support from NATO.  We are providing them humanitarian assistance and material assistance the best we can.  We are trying to do our best. 
 
Some expectations were addressed in a very strong and unequivocal way, also towards us — towards Poland.  However, we are members of the North Atlantic Alliance.  And as far as security-related issues are concerned, we have to look at these not only through our own lens — through the prism of the security of Poland — but we also have to adopt the perspective of the security of NATO as a whole. 
 
So, in a nutshell, we have to be a responsible member of the North Atlantic Alliance.  That is why there were requests addressed to us.  Those requests were addressed to us by the Ukrainian side and also, to a certain extent, by the media. 

Notice those last three words, “by the media.”  The calls from media were an outcome of U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken saying Poland has a “green light” to send fighter jets to Ukraine – without ever discussing the issue with Ukraine in advance.  Poland was blindsided.

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President Donald Trump sits down for an extensive interview on current events with the Nelk boys on Full Send Podcast.

https://youtu.be/WRbRoQcO9os

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Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby held a press briefing today (full video below) to underscore the U.S. military does not support the sending of any NATO planes into Ukraine.  “The intelligence community has assessed that the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine may be mistaken as escalatory and could result in significant Russian reaction that might increase the prospects of a military escalation with NATO,” Kirby said. “Therefore, we also assess that the transfer of MiG-29s to Ukraine to be high risk,” he continued.

Now ask yourself this question:

How could the transfer of MiG-29’s evolve from a “green light” position by the U.S. State Department Sunday, into a “high risk” assessment by the Pentagon today? 

This is the question that no U.S. media will touch, because the answer is almost too jaw-dropping to contemplate.  However, this answer must be outlined in order to fully grasp what took place.

The events of the past 96 hours, on this issue, are perhaps the most critical moments in modern U.S. history, that must be fully understood to fathom what has just happened and what dangers exist from within the current White House administration.

When we were discussing the Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco, we noted two competing factions within the U.S. national security apparatus.  One group is the Pentagon, the other is a completely rogue operation coming from the State Department.  In the Afghanistan example, the issues surfaced within the blame casting for the crisis upon exit.  In this current example, things are far more serious.

Last weekend, the US Department of State, Secretary Anthony Blinken, made the unilateral claim that Poland -a NATO ally- was approved by the State Department to send fighter jets into Ukraine.   Blinken was located in Moldova when he made the statement to three U.S. media outlets. Poland was caught completely off guard by Blinken’s statements, and only learned about them from the media reporting.

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