Neel Kashkari is head of the Minneapolis Federal Reserve. If you know the financial lingo, you can see the dire forecast behind the opaque language.  In plain-speak, Kashari is saying when it comes to prices and inflation, “we’re screwed“…

In this interview with CBS talking head Margaret Brennan, Kashkari admits inflation is still going up, and it will get worse. Keep in mind, the lingo of the inflation conversation is discussing “percentages of change.” Kashkari claims the percentages of change will start to slow in a few years, but the prices will never return to their former level.

The percentage of inflationary change (this year vs last year) will continue going up, as prices continue to skyrocket over almost every sector. CTH points out this issue, because as the Fed continues printing current money, the value of future money drops and the price of goods continues to climb. The fast-turn goods rise in price quickest (now recorded at 6.2%), and the inflation on slow-turn durable goods lags but hits even harder.

Current real inflation inside the ‘total’ economy, the cumulative snowball that is coming down the mountain, is over 20% and still growing. This situation puts the forecast prices of 2022 goods at an alarming level. WATCH:

The fed has no tools to slow the rate of current inflation, as interest rates are disconnected {Revisit The New Dimension in Modern Economics} from the cost of goods produced. The only thing the Fed can do is to stop purchasing debt (Quantitative Easing), stop purchasing our own bonds, at a slower rate.

Despite being a progressive himself, even Neel Kashkari is telling congress to stop spending money.

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The bad news is this is an NBC poll conducted by Mark Murray and Hart Research and Associates.  They are notorious for manipulative media polling [Use Site Search Function for More].  The good news is this is an NBC/Mark Murray poll, meaning if this is the best Murray and Hart Research can come up with, the reality of the situation is exponentially worse.  [Polling pdf Here]

The data within the poll, which is skewed to try and assist the left, shows the nation overall has abandoned Joe Biden and the Democrat Party in a big way.

71 percent of Americans now say they believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, up 8 points since August. That includes 93 percent of Republicans, 70 of independents and even 48 percent of Democrats.  Beyond his catastrophic approval numbers, 50% of Americans polled say Joe Biden is incompetent / 37% view him as competent.

Chuck Todd sounds the alarm.  WATCH:

Additionally, not highlighted by any media review, the polling shows a collapse for the COVID fear and vaccination narrative.   The majority of the country now says they do not support mandatory vaccinations. [Page 17].   50% oppose mandates / 47% support mandates.

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At 1:00am on August 25th, Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats came to an agreement on a massive spending proposal. The Senate previously passed a $1.5 trillion “infrastructure” bill, and a group of 9 House moderates -led by Josh Gottheimer- wanted to see it pass. However, the far-left progressive caucus wanted their $3.5 trillion social spending package which includes Green New Deal spending passed as part of the total budget agenda. {Go Deep}  For the past two months, the House Democrats have been working with Senate Democrats on the scale of the social spending package.

The ultra far-left communists and Democrat socialists have been negotiating on the social spending part.  They agreed to settle for 1.75 trillion in fundamental change and there’s approximately 10 House republicans that will also support it, but the AOC wing wants more.   The previously passed $1.5 trillion sits on Nancy Pelosi’s desk until it can be paired with the $1.75+ trillion social spending component.

The House Rules Committee is putting the legislative language together for the latest 1,600 page social spending part [you can see here], but the issue of constructing a bill that will pass the Senate is still problematic.  Pelosi was hoping for a vote today, and Joe Biden begged Democrats earlier to get it passed because his polling numbers continue to collapse.   The communists (AOC/Bernie Sanders caucus) and socialists (ordinary Democrats) are at loggerheads.

WASHINGTON – […] Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team were ultimately unable to win over dozens of dug-in liberals in time for a Thursday evening vote. House liberals said they want to review the legislative text of $1.75 trillion social spending legislation the White House outlined Thursday and get a commitment of support from centrist Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) — something the two have not outright given.

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Taxing “unrealized capital gains” sounds like a catchy and obscure way to make wealthy people pay more in taxes, but it doesn’t work.  A government that moves in this direction ignores the reality that people are not static.  The process also involves “taxing wealth” which then becomes an arbitrary definition.

Unrealized capital gains are not income, they are simply increases in value.

If your home was worth $200,000 last year and $300,000 this year, you have an unrealized capital gain of $100k.   A 15% tax bill on that value increase means the homeowner would have to pay $15,000 to the IRS.

Joe Biden is proposing to pay for his multi-trillion expansion in debt through this type of tax upon billionaires.   Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen admitted this was part of their thinking to help pay for the Biden budget last Sunday.  WATCH:

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Proposing a tax on money that does not exist is the peak of government.   Sure the proposal applies only to billionaires who have massive gains in their stock portfolios, but billionaires are not esoteric titles.  Billionaires are people who can, if needed, move their physical location and avoid any U.S. tax on their wealth.

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For those who have been following politics for a while, you might have remembered something about $600 and IRS reporting from a decade ago when Obamacare was passed.

Within the 2010 Obamacare mess, “It was added that payments for goods more than $600 in a 12 month period needed to be reported as well as services. Obamacare further provided that, beginning in 2012, payments to non-tax-exempt corporations—which had previously been exempt from the reporting requirement—would be subject to information reporting.” (link)

The 2010 tax law was actually enacted, briefly, and was scheduled to take effect in the 2012 tax year.

I well remember at the time everyone was like WTF, I’ve got to fill out a 1099 any time I give $600 to a service provider or business?

Yes, the embedded law inside the Obamacare law meant that anyone who paid any person or business $600 or more for a good or service was supposed to fill out a 1099 tax filing reporting the transaction to the IRS.

The political premise of the law was so obvious, stupid and cumbersome in 2011, after Obama’s 2010 mid term election “shellacking“, one of the first acts of a new republican congress was to repeal that ridiculous segment of the law.  As it was noted at the time:

[…] “Essentially, with President Obama, signing into law H.R. 4 [2011], the reporting rules now revert back to what they were before the 2010 legislation (Obamacare and Small Business Jobs Act) was passed.  We are now back to where we were before the government started monkeying around with things in the first place.” (read more)

So, for those of you paying attention; and for those of you who realize Joe Biden is just a false front for Obama’s third term; indeed the current 2021 effort by the Treasury Department to require banking notifications to the IRS for $600 transactions looks exactly like what Obama’s team previously tried in 2010.

♦ The difference this time is they are switching the reporting requirement from the individual taxpayer to the financial institution.  THE GOAL IS THE SAME.

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I do not expect White House Spokesperson Jennifer Psaki to understand how her bosses policies are driving massive price increases; nor do I expect Psaki to understand economics and inflationary impacts.  However, the scale of her false statements surrounding inflation are not just false, they are now dangerous.

Following the release of the consumer price index [SEE table 2], in her press briefing today, Jen Psaki outlined the White House perspective on inflation, and specifically the Fed claims surrounding “transitory inflation.”

In her statements today, Psaki referenced people comparing the prices of 2021 consumable goods to 2020 and 2019.  [Video prompted below] Within the statements, the scale of falsity is off the charts.  WATCH [Video at 19:00 to 22:42, prompted]

There is not one single thing about that three minute verbal exchange that is accurate.  Fast turn consumable goods, groceries etc., did not drop in 2020 during the first year of the pandemic.  Factually, all goods but especially consumable goods increased in price throughout the pandemic, because demand actually increased and the supply chains were unable to keep up.

Example.  A loaf of bread at $2.50 in 2019, climbed to $3.00 in 2020.  That price jumped again to $3.75 this year (2021) and will likely continue rising as monetary policy driven inflation continues devaluing our currency.

Even if, as Psaki claims, inflation slows down  (not likely) – “decelerating inflation” does not mean declining prices; it means a slower rate of price increase.   Stuff still costs more, it just costs more at a slower rate.  Consumable goods will cost more in 2022 than they do this year.  The 2022 loaf of bread likely to climb to $4.00; it will never return to the 2019 price of $2.50 because the dollar is worth less.

♦ Ask the White House: Why did Joe Biden increase food assistance benefits by 25% if inflation was transitory?

[The Consumer Price Index was released today.  The producer price index for Sept will be released tomorrow]

This massive inflation is a direct result of the multinational agenda of the Biden administration in combination with the spending spree.  Inflation is a feature not a flaw, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with COVID. The first group to admit what was obvious were banks, specifically Bank of America, because the monetary policy is the primary cause.

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Raw material foodstuff price contracts are expiring, and the new purchasing prices will be significantly higher than current.  As these contracts refresh, the new higher prices immediately enter the food supply chain.  CTH has been warning readers to stock up on non-perishable items as this next wave of food price increases is going to be much bigger than even the prior 8%/avg jumps; and there is absolutely no end in sight.

Also, as more large municipal regions (megalopolis metropolitan areas like New York City and Los Angeles) begin enforcing a vaccine passport to eat in restaurants, the demand for meals at home will remain high.  Supermarkets again will fill the void in the diet of consumers who choose to remain at home instead of eating out.

The current demand on retail food products is likely visible to you in the form of bare shelves and minimal inventory.

Grocery retailers operate on paper thin gross profit margins and rely on fast turns of multiple penny profit items to add up to net profit income.  Technology has helped modern grocery supply chains to be very thin.

An inventory shortage arises when demand on the retail grocery industry spikes – which is what we have seen with COVID impacts as alternative food options were forcibly closed or pressured to reduced capacity.

Conagra is one of the large food conglomerates with control over products from field to fork.  Recently, Conagra executives announced they expect food prices to climb even higher due to all of the aforementioned impacts, along with large price increases in fuel and energy.

Wall Street Journal […] Conagra said Thursday it expects gross inflation—which doesn’t take into account hedging—to be about 11% for fiscal 2022, versus its earlier estimate of 9%. The company plans to continue adjusting prices and cutting costs, and said its prices likely will rise 4% or more during the current fiscal year.

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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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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (GA – CD14) appears on Steve Bannon’s War Room to outline the issues with the Senate infrastructure bill.  MTG is the first House republican who has directly confronted Mitch McConnell’s 19 DeceptiCon members.

As MTG notes, she will personally campaign to primary any House republican who votes to support the infrastructure bill.  {Direct Rumble link} First segment Video:

SASSPAC.COM Link

Segment #2 is below:

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During our previous discussion on historic, predictable and purposeful food inflation, on August 13th CTH noted “BigAg has likely already made deals for increases in government welfare payments (EBT and Foodstamps, WIC etc.). BigAg lobbies congress for higher reimbursement rates so they can raise the prices of food and export domestic product to other nations. Food assistance payments increase, and BigAg benefits. In essence, BigAg takes the fed food subsidies and fattens their profit margin. Then, they payback the politicians. It’s a circle of money.“….

If you know how the game is rigged, it’s actually easy to predict the background.  Today, exactly on cue, several media outlets are now reporting that Joe Biden is going to increase the amount of food stamp assistance by 25% per recipient, and expand the program.

New York Times – WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has revised the nutrition standards of the food stamp program and prompted the largest permanent increase to benefits in the program’s history, a move that will give poor people more power to fill their grocery carts but add billions of dollars to the cost of a program that feeds one in eight Americans.

Under rules to be announced on Monday and put in place in October, average benefits will rise more than 25 percent from prepandemic levels. All 42 million people in the program will receive additional aid. The move does not require congressional approval, and unlike the large pandemic-era expansions, which are starting to expire, the changes are intended to last. (read more)

This announcement is actually revealing in more ways than just the predictability of it.

♦ First, the 25% permanent increase is an admission by the Biden administration that food price inflation is here to stay.  The massive scale of the increase also highlights the actual reality of how much food prices are rising.   This massive and permanent increase directly undercuts the previous White House and Biden claims that inflation was “temporary”, “transitional” and likely to end soon.

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