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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As customary, K Street wrote the legislation, that’s why the Senators had to vote cloture to continue debate before the bill was even written.  The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a host of Wall Street multinationals actually wrote the bill and the UniParty politicians are now tasked with selling it.  That’s the way the process is designed.

President Trump notes the ridiculous nature of the $3.5 trillion spending package, which includes new regulatory mechanisms to track and tax vehicle mileage.  Yes, you will be paying the government for each mile you drive your car.  Republicans and Democrats want this; our opinion doesn’t matter.

DONALD TRUMP – “Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill is a disgrace. If Mitch McConnell was smart, which we’ve seen no evidence of, he would use the debt ceiling card to negotiate a good infrastructure package.

This is a 2,700 page bill that no one could have possibly read—they would have needed to take speed reading courses. It is a gift to the Democrat Party, compliments of Mitch McConnell and some RINOs, who have no idea what they are doing. There is very little on infrastructure in all of those pages. Instead, they track your driving so they can tax you. It is Joe Biden’s form of a gas tax but far bigger, far higher and, mark my words, far worse. They want to track you everywhere you go and watch everything you do!

Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill will be used against the Republican Party in the upcoming elections in 2022 and 2024. It will be very hard for me to endorse anyone foolish enough to vote in favor of this deal.

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Several people have written to CTH for an economic review of our current status.  Below this post are two primary precursor articles [Primary One and Primary Two] which outline the economic dynamic in play and how we can look forward with accuracy to what is likely to happen.  Despite the deflective talking points by the professional financial pundits this massive spike in inflation is entirely predictable due to Biden economic policy and Biden monetary policy.

Keep in mind the FED has already said in April they would “support inflation” but that’s because while they will not say it openly they know there’s no way to stop it.  The massive inflation is a direct result of the multinational agenda of the Biden administration; it’s a feature not a flaw, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with COVID. Also keep in mind the first group to admit what is to come are banks, specifically Bank of America, because the monetary policy is the cause.

There’s no way around this.  Despite the pundit and financial class selling a counter-narrative, home prices will crash and unemployment will go up.  I know this is directly against the current talking points, but the statistical reality is clear.  CTH was the first place who said two months ago that home sales will plummet, that is starting to happen right now.  There’s no way for it not to happen, the big picture tells us why.

You might remember when President Trump initiated tariffs against China (steel, aluminum and more), Southeast Asia (product specific), Europe (steel, aluminum and direct products), Canada (steel, aluminum, lumber and dairy specifics), the financial pundits screamed at the top of their lungs that consumer prices were going to skyrocket.  They didn’t.  CTH knew they wouldn’t because essentially those trading partners responded in the exact same way the U.S. did decades ago when the import/export dynamic was reversed.

Trump’s massive, and in some instances targeted, import tariffs against China, SE Asia, Canada and the EU not only did not increase prices, the prices of the goods in the U.S. actually dropped.  Trump’s policies led the largest deflation in consumer prices in decades.  At the same time Trump’s domestic economic policies drove employment and  wages higher than any time in the past forty years.  With Trump’s policies we were in an era where job growth was strong, wages were rising and consumer prices were falling… The net result was more disposable income for the middle class, more demand for stuff, and ultimately that’s why the U.S. economy was so strong.

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We noted last month the inflation issues were not going to get better and indeed they are getting worse.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has released the latest inflation data, and the rate of inflation continues to increase at an alarming rate; now at 5% year over year for all items.

With only six months of JoeBama economic policy hitting so far, the rate of inflation is now four times larger under Biden than it was under Trump policies.

Everything the Biden administration is doing is making things worse, and now we are seeing big drops in real wages as the inflation rate is far beyond wage growth.   Under Biden inflation is massive and wage growth is non-existent.  This is an exact reversal of the Trump-era outcome where inflation was low and wage growth rates were high.

Year-over-year price comparisons for regular unleaded gasoline are now +58.2%.  [Table 7] Stunning increases in fuel. Natural gas is up 13.5%.  The prices of durable goods like furniture are up 9.8% while the prices for washers/dryers have jumped up over 26%.  Used car prices are up 29.7%, while every durable good is showing massive increases (appliances, clothes, furniture, jewelry, etc).  Even televisions are up almost 5%, after years of continually lower prices.

The May increase in energy prices “was the largest 12-month increase since the period ending April 1980”, over forty years ago. Yes, with 28% increases in overall energy prices Biden is mirroring Jimmy Carter in the outcome of his economic policy (this is not accidental).

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The White House occupant appeared today to deliver remarks on some key issues that are catastrophic to the long-term goals of the leftist administration.

First, let’s be clear; there’s no-way the Chicago control agents would allow the installed occupant to speak on any issue, publicly, that was not a direct and measurable threat to their long-term goals.

The remarks today by Joe Biden are carefully scripted to diffuse political damage that is pending as a direct outcome of the executed policies.

The risks and remarks are in the following order:

(1)  Gas Prices – The JoeBama energy policy is “necessarily” making fuel prices at the pump jump dramatically.  The teleprompter is loaded with disinformation to place the blame for higher gas prices upon a pipeline hack, which JoeBama intentionally points out is a private sector issue – that now needs government intervention as part of his infrastructure program. This nuanced shift is clearly part of the Chicago maneuver toward socialist control of all levels of energy development and distribution.

The political risk is obvious.  Massive increases at the gas pump will hit the middle class extremely hard.  Democrats are to blame for these gas prices and they are worried about the political fallout.  Ergo, JoeBama is told to read his script.

(2) Mass Unemployment  and Terrible Jobs Numbers –  The COVID bailout has created massive incentives for people not to return to work.  It is only not a laziness and comfortable dependency issue, it is also an economic decision.  Low wage workers can make more sitting at home getting unemployment to combine with their COVID bailout money than they can returning to work.

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Katherine Tai was confirmed by a unanimous senate vote today to become the United States Trade Representative.  The vote was 98-0.  Ambassador Tai has family connections in both Taiwan and China and replaces former USTR Robert Lighthizer.

The doctrine of President Trump was to use trade and economics to achieve diplomatic results on foreign policy and national security issues. It will be interesting to watch what happens now as the Biden Administration returns to using ideological diplomacy as the baseline… then providing economic benefits to support leftist objectives.

The rustbelt was created, and China rose to economic influence, on the political outlook once again in power in the United States.  Ideology comes first, all other things changed, modified and or considered downstream in lesser importance than the ideology.  This was how the alignment of Wall Street, Globalists and Beijing exploited Bush, Clinton-Clinton, Bush-Bush and Obama-Obama terms.  The U.S. middle-class economy suffered greatly, while Wall Street multinationals thrived.

On the positive side there will be pressure from the Bernie Sanders wing to defend American jobs.  However, that faction’s political leadership, like Bernie Sanders himself and AOC, will compromise the long-term interests of the American worker when the opportunity surfaces for personal and familial wealth.  The Sanders types, just like the union leadership, can all be bought for the right price.

Ambassador Tai has not yet made statements about whether she will advocate for steel and aluminum tariff removal, but she is a big supporter of environmental justice as it pertains to trade and economic justice.  The climate and trade issue here specifically is the potential for carbon taxes to be part of JoeBama trade policy.  How?  Well, that might look like the U.S. re-entering the Trans Pacific Partnership with a carbon trading system in place.

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Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has rapidly become one of the most ardent supporters of MAGA policy and political perspectives in Washington DC.  She is opposed by all the correct enemies as to reflect how the UniParty politicians consider her a risk to the DC system.

Today MTG appeared on the Steve Bannon podcast to discuss her perspective and experience in Washington DC with Democrats and Republicans.  Ms. Greene notes her experience with the UniParty apparatus, a singular political outlook that surrounds all of the politicians occupying Washington DC.  The Conservative Treehouse has long discussed this exact issue.

MTG succinctly discusses how the Republicans failed to support the MAGA agenda after President Trump was elected; republicans controlled both the House and the Senate chambers yet they did nothing.   MTG is also one of the few voices who understands how DC is a business model, an economic system and industry that is supported by the politicians within it; and she is willing to call them out.  A very rare breed….  WATCH:

CTH often describes the background DC motives with the phrase: “There are Trillions at Stake.”  Expanding on MTG’s explanation of the DC economic business model, below we take another look at what that really means; and how DC politics is not quite based on the ideas that frame many reference points.

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