Month: July 2021

Authored by Nouriel Roubini via Project Syndicate,

Years of ultra-loose fiscal and monetary policies have put the global economy on track for a slow-motion train wreck in the coming years. When the crash comes, the stagflation of the 1970s will be combined with the spiraling debt crises of the post-2008 era, leaving major central banks in an impossible position.

In April, I warned that today’s extremely loose monetary and fiscal policies, when combined with a number of negative supply shocks, could result in 1970s-style stagflation (high inflation alongside a recession). In fact, the risk today is even bigger than it was then.

After all, debt ratios in advanced economies and most emerging markets were much lower in the 1970s, which is why stagflation has not been associated with debt crises historically. If anything, unexpected inflation in the 1970s wiped out the real value of nominal debts at fixed rates, thus reducing many advanced economies’ public-debt burdens. 

Conversely, during the 2007-08 financial crisis, high debt ratios (private and public) caused a severe debt crisis – as housing bubbles burst – but the ensuing recession led to low inflation, if not outright deflation. Owing to the credit crunch, there was a macro shock to aggregate demand, whereas the risks today are on the supply side.

We are thus left with the worst of both the stagflationary 1970s and the 2007-10 period. Debt ratios are much higher than in the 1970s, and a mix of loose economic policies and negative supply shocks threatens to fuel inflation rather than deflation, setting the stage for the mother of stagflationary debt crises over the next few years.

For now, loose monetary and fiscal policies will continue to fuel asset and credit bubbles, propelling a slow-motion train wreck. The warning signs are already apparent in today’s high price-to-earnings ratios, low equity risk premia, inflated housing and tech assets, and the irrational exuberance surrounding special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs), the crypto sector, high-yield corporate debt, collateralized loan obligations, private equity, meme stocks, and runaway retail day trading. At some point, this boom will culminate in a Minsky moment (a sudden loss of confidence), and tighter monetary policies will trigger a bust and crash.

But in the meantime, the same loose policies that are feeding asset bubbles will continue to drive consumer price inflation, creating the conditions for stagflation whenever the next negative supply shocks arrive. Such shocks could follow from renewed protectionism; demographic aging in advanced and emerging economies; immigration restrictions in advanced economies; the reshoring of manufacturing to high-cost regions; or the balkanization of global supply chains.

More broadly, the Sino-American decoupling threatens to fragment the global economy at a time when climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic are pushing national governments toward deeper self-reliance. Add to this the impact on production of increasingly frequent cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure and the social and political backlash against inequality, and the recipe for macroeconomic disruption is complete.

Making matters worse, central banks have effectively lost their independence, because they have been given little choice but to monetize massive fiscal deficits to forestall a debt crisis. With both public and private debts having soared, they are in a debt trap. As inflation rises over the next few years, central banks will face a dilemma. If they start phasing out unconventional policies and raising policy rates to fight inflation, they will risk triggering a massive debt crisis and severe recession; but if they maintain a loose monetary policy, they will risk double-digit inflation – and deep stagflation when the next negative supply shocks emerge.

But even in the second scenario, policymakers would not be able to prevent a debt crisis. While nominal government fixed-rate debt in advanced economies can be partly wiped out by unexpected inflation (as happened in the 1970s), emerging-market debts denominated in foreign currency would not be. Many of these governments would need to default and restructure their debts.

At the same time, private debts in advanced economies would become unsustainable (as they did after the global financial crisis), and their spreads relative to safer government bonds would spike, triggering a chain reaction of defaults. Highly leveraged corporations and their reckless shadow-bank creditors would be the first to fall, soon followed by indebted households and the banks that financed them.

To be sure, real long-term borrowing costs may initially fall if inflation rises unexpectedly and central banks are still behind the curve. But, over time, these costs will be pushed up by three factors. First, higher public and private debts will widen sovereign and private interest-rate spreads. Second, rising inflation and deepening uncertainty will drive up inflation risk premia. And, third, a rising misery index – the sum of the inflation and unemployment rate – eventually will demand a “Volcker Moment.”

When former Fed Chair Paul Volcker hiked rates to tackle inflation in 1980-82, the result was a severe double-dip recession in the United States and a debt crisis and lost decade for Latin America. But now that global debt ratios are almost three times higher than in the early 1970s, any anti-inflationary policy would lead to a depression, rather than a severe recession.

Under these conditions, central banks will be damned if they do and damned if they don’t, and many governments will be semi-insolvent and thus unable to bail out banks, corporations, and households. The doom loop of sovereigns and banks in the eurozone after the global financial crisis will be repeated worldwide, sucking in households, corporations, and shadow banks as well.

As matters stand, this slow-motion train wreck looks unavoidable. The Fed’s recent pivot from an ultra-dovish to a mostly dovish stance changes nothing. The Fed has been in a debt trap at least since December 2018, when a stock- and credit-market crash forced it to reverse its policy tightening a full year before COVID-19 struck. With inflation rising and stagflationary shocks looming, it is now even more ensnared.

So, too, are the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, and the Bank of England. The stagflation of the 1970s will soon meet the debt crises of the post-2008 period. The question is not if but when.

Whether you’re in the mood for hotdogs, burgers, grilled chicken, or corn on the cob this Fourth of July, the cost of grilling this year is skyrocketing due to soaring propane prices, according to WSJ. 

Prices at Mont Belvieu, Texas, a major hub for NGL fractionation and trading, located on the U.S. Gulf Coast outside of Houston, were around 97 cents per gallon at the time of writing. These prices have nearly tripled since the virus pandemic lows.

The forward curve of Mont Belvieu propane futures is in slight backwardation through the end of the year into January, then the curve slopes more downward into March when winter subsides. 

Some factors that have resulted in increasingly propane demand are health officials’ policies during the pandemic that forced restaurant patrons to eat outside last fall. Restaurant owners scrambled to purchase portable propane heaters to keep guests warm. Then February’s deep freeze increased demand even further, leading to lower inventories ahead of summer. 

Further, there’s been a significant drawdown on domestic inventories, which are down 17% versus a year ago and approximately 15% below the five-year average.

JPMorgan analysts told clients in a commodity note this week that prices might have to climb higher to discourage foreign buyers. The analysts wrote, “extremely tight balance, particularly with increased domestic demand from weather, is likely to elicit some reduction in U.S. propane exports through price.” 

Raymond James’ commodity desk estimates prices could remain above $1 for the second half of the year. “As these dynamics continue, the U.S. market would project to hit dangerously low propane inventories,” they said. 

Outbound cargoes for propane have been steadily increasing over the last decade. Energy Information Administration data show exports rose 13% last year. 

Compound rising propane costs with soaring food costs, such as cereals, oilseeds, dairy products, meat, and sugar, and this Fourth of July BBQ could be a whole lot more expensive than ever before. 

Authored by Jason Ditz via AntiWar.com,

A major Taliban offensive has been raging in Afghanistan, particularly in the north, for weeks on end. The latest figures from Afghanistan’s TOLOnews puts June at a troubling height of the war, the deadliest single month in 20 years.

Violence was staggeringly high throughout this period, though exact death tolls for individual days are often in dispute, making the totals, while undoubtedly huge, somewhat in doubt.

The news, culled from government reports, had 638 people who were either military or civilians killed in the fighting, and over 6,000 Taliban also killed in just a single month.

This centers on Afghanistan’s government always reporting many more Taliban killed than their own soldiers, but the trend on the ground was opposite, with the Taliban making massive gains over the government.

National English-language newspaper TOLOnews writes:

In the latest development, the Taliban has captured the center of Tagab district in the northern province of Kapisa….

“The main reason for the collapse of the districts is poor leadership at the leadership level of the security and defense forces,” said MP Khan Agha Rezayee.

Based on the figures, although the number of targeted attacks and explosions decreased during this period, the level of casualties among the security personnel and civilians continued to rise.

As America withdraws from Afghanistan, we will he able to assess the impact of 20 years of US-led “reform of the Greater Middle East” https://t.co/ldyUdFP7rH

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) July 2, 2021

120 districts have been evacuated in the face of the Taliban offensive, and they’ve reached provincial capitals in at least three provinces, contested cities big and small across the region. The Afghan security forces are losing ground consistently.

The city of North Miami Beach ordered the evacuation of Crestview Towers Condominium on Friday evening after a building inspection report found structural and electrical issues, according to Miami Herald. 

Two days after the collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South beachfront condominium in Surfside, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava ordered all buildings over 40 years old to undergo an “immediate” audit on their structural well-being. As a result, the city of North Miami Beach ordered more than 300 residents of the 10-story Crestview Towers complex with 156 units, located at 2025 NE 164th St., to evacuate Friday evening after receiving a Jan. 11 engineering field study deemed the building structurally unsafe.

“In an abundance of caution, the City ordered the building closed immediately and the residents evacuated for their protection, while a full structural assessment is conducted and next steps are determined,” City Manager Arthur H. Sorey III said in a news release.

Crestview Towers is the first major residential structure to be closed after the June 24 Surfside tragedy. So far 22 people have been confirmed dead with 126 people still missing. 

Steven Davis, 37, a resident of Crestview Towers for more than two decades, was not surprised by Friday’s evacuation: “You just knew that something was going to happen,” Davis said, adding that walls and ceilings needed repair. 

Last week fears spread up and down Miami by residents who own condos in aging buildings because engineering audits could bring to light millions of dollars in repairs that would jack up homeowners association fees. The audits could also spark an evacuation of their building, and spark a liquidation firesale as owners of older condos seek to sell ahead of regulatory action.

Germany is slated to mark one million electric cars on the road this month – a target the country is hitting 6 months later than it wanted. 

However, making it to a million still marks a milestone, Economy Minister Peter Altmaier told Tagesspiegel daily this week.

“We will reach our target of 1 million electric cars by 2020, which everyone thought was unattainable, this July, just six months late,” he said, according to U.S. News and World Report’s coverage of the story. 

“More bonuses have been taken up in the first half of 2021 than in the whole of last year,” he said of subsidies in the country, which have increased since the pandemic. 

Altmaier was also hopeful that the country would “exceed its longer-term goal of having 7-10 million EVs on its streets”. 

Sales of EVs tripled in the country in 2020, it was reported earlier this year by Automotive News Europe. 

Sales of EVs in 2020 were 194,163 units, according to the KBA motor vehicle authority, which was up about three fold from 2019. The adoption was a result of “the appeal of a more diversified product offering and of more reliable technology,” the report said. 

EVs with full or partial electric propulsion had a market share of 22% by the fourth quarter of 2020 and fully electric vehicles made up 1.2% of all registered passenger cars in Germany at the end of 2020, up from 0.5 percent a year earlier, the KBA said.

Authored by Stephen Karganovic via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

The assault on language is an integral component of the unrelenting warfare being waged for the conquest and control of the mind…

Little wonder that here and there sanity nostalgia is gripping the Western world, at least those isolated portions of it that are not internalising the sinister “new normal.” But it is seemingly to no avail. All commanding positions are firmly in the hands of lunatics, who are determined to turn a once great and exemplary civilisation into an asylum.

As George Orwell has taught us, language manipulation is at the frontline (yes, I have just broken one of the cardinal rules of his “Politics and the English Language,” but not his final injunction to “break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous”) of politicised mind-bending. The sort of language we are permitted to use circumscribes the thinking that we shall be allowed to engage in. The assault on language is, therefore, an integral component of the unrelenting warfare being waged for the conquest and control of the mind. Word elimination and reassignment of meaning, as Orwell also presciently noted, are essential elements of the campaign to reformat the mind and eventually to subjugate it.

A breath-taking example of how this process works was recently unveiled by the thoroughly brain-washed students of the once prestigious Brandeis University who, this time without prompting from their faculty elders and betters, voted to ban from their campus such odious words and phrases as “picnic” and “you guys,” for being “oppressive”. “Picnic” is prohibited because it allegedly evokes the lynching of Blacks.

The precocious young intellectuals took pains to produce an entire list of objectionable words and phrases, shocking award-winning novelist Joyce Carol Oates who tweeted in bewilderment: “What sort of punishment is doled out for a faculty member who utters the word ‘picnic’ at Brandeis? Or the phrase [also proscribed – S.K.] ‘trigger warning’? Loss of tenure, public flogging, self-flagellation?”

All three punishments will probably be applied to reactionary professors who go afoul of the list’s rigorous linguistic requirements.

Not to be outdone by the progressive kids on the East Coast, avant-garde California legislators have passed a law to remove the pronoun “he” from state legal texts. The momentous reform was initiated by California’s new attorney general, Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, who after looking up the job requirements made the shocking discovery that the law assumed that the attorney general would be a man.

Upon review, it turned out that the state code and other legal documents were enabling unacceptable concepts by using pronouns “he,” “him” and “his” when referring to the attorney general and other state-wide elected officials. Appalled, Ms. Bauer-Kahan denounced these linguistic lapses for not representing “where California is and where California is going.” She inarguably was right on that score at least, which has perhaps also something to do with the massive exodus of California residents to less complicated parts of the country.

When lawmakers of a state which is rapidly turning into a North American Calcutta have no concerns more pressing than to revise the use of pronouns in official documents, that sends a clear message where that state is going, exactly as the smart and thoroughly up-to-date woman said.

But as a Pakistani immigrant father in Seattle, state of Washington, discovered to his chagrin, the linguistic clowning can have very serious personal and political consequences. After checking in his 16-year-old autistic son for treatment in what he thought was a medical facility, Ahmed was shocked to receive a telephone call where a social worker explained to him that the child he had originally entrusted to the medical authorities as a son was actually transgender and must henceforth, under legal penalty of removal, be referred to and treated as a “daughter.”

Coming from a traditional society still governed by tyrannical precepts of common sense and not accustomed to the ways of the asylum where in search of a better life he and his family inadvertently ended up, the father (a title that like mother, now officially “number one parent,” is also on the way out) was able to conceive his tragic predicament only by weaving a complex conspiracy theory:

“They were trying to create a customer for their gender clinic . . . and they seemed to absolutely want to push us in that direction. We had calls with counsellors and therapists in the establishment, telling us how important it is for him to change his gender, because that’s the only way he’s going to be better out of this suicidal depressive state.”

Since in the equally looney state of Washington the age when minors can request a gender-change surgery without parental consent is 13, the Pakistani parents saw clearly the writing on the wall and, bless them, they came up with a clever stratagem to outwit their callous ideological tormentors. Ahmed “assured Seattle Children’s Hospital that he would take his son to a gender clinic and commence his son’s transition. Instead, he collected his son, quit his job, and moved his family of four out of Washington.”

Perhaps feeling the heat from the linguistic Gestapo even in his celebrity kitchen, iconic chef Jamie Oliver has come on board. Absurdly, Jamie vowed fealty to the ascendant normal by dropping the term “Kaffir lime leaves” from his recipes, in fear that the alleged “historically racist slur” would offend South Africans. No evidence at all has been furnished or demanded of complaints from South Africa in that regard. But it speaks volumes that someone of Jamie’s influence and visibility should nevertheless deem it prudent to anticipate such criticism even though, should it have materialised, it of course would not originate from South Africa but from white Western political correctness commissars.

Jamie is now busy, but not just cooking. He is going over his previously published recipes in order to expunge all offensive references to kefir leaves. Orwell aficionados will recall this precious passage from 1984: “Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered.” And now every recipe as well. The dystopia fits, does it not, to a tee even something as seemingly trivial as a cooking show?

But it is not just recipes. Children’s fairy tales are also fair game for 1984 revision. Hollywood actress Natalie Portman (Star Wars, The Professional, Thor), inspired apparently by the new cultural normal, has taken it upon herself not to write, but to re-write, several classic fairy tales to make them “gender-neutral,” so “children can defy gender stereotypes.” Predictably, pronouns were again a major target:

“I found myself changing the pronouns in many of their books because so many of them had overwhelmingly male characters, disproportionate to reality,” quoth Natalie as she put her linguistic scalpel to such old favourites as The Tortoise and the Hare, Country Mouse and City Mouse and The Three Little Pigs.

Need we go on, or does the sharp reader already get the general drift? How about State University of New York student Owen Stevens, who was suspended and censured for pointing out on his Instagram the ascertainable biological fact that “A man is a man, a woman is a woman. A man is not a woman and a woman is not a man.” (Owen was snitched on by fellow students, readers from the former Eastern bloc will be amused to learn.) Or the Nebraska university basketball coach who was suspended for using in a motivational speech the mysteriously offensive word “plantation”? Or the hip $57,000-a-year NYC school that banned students from saying “mom” and “dad”, from asking where classmates went on vacation or wishing anyone “Merry Christmas” or even “Happy Holidays”? Or female university student Lisa Keogh in Scotland who said in class “women have vaginas” (who would be better informed than she on that subject?) and are “not as strong as men”, who is facing disciplinary action by the university after fellow classmates complained about her “offensive and discriminatory” comments? Or Spanish politician Francisco José Contreras whose Twitter account was blocked as a warning for 12 hours after he tweeted what some would regard as the self-evident truth that “men cannot get pregnant” because they have “no uterus or eggs”?

As Peter Hitchens noted recently “the most bitterly funny story of the week is that a defector from North Korea thinks that even her homeland is ‘not as nuts’ as the indoctrination now forced on Western students.”

One of Yeonmi Park’s initial shocks upon starting classes at Colombia University was to be met with a frown after revealing to a staff member that she enjoyed reading Jane Austen. “Did you know,” Ms. Park was sternly admonished, “that those writers had a colonial mind-set? They were racists and bigots and are subconsciously brainwashing you.”

But after encountering the new requirement for the use of gender-neutral pronouns, Yeonmi concluded: “Even North Korea is not this nuts… North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.” Devastatingly honest, but not exactly a compliment to what once might have been the land of her dreams.

Sadly, Hitchens reports that her previous experience served Yeonmi well to adapt to her new situation: “She came to fear that making a fuss would affect her grades and her degree. Eventually, she learned to keep quiet, as people do when they try to live under intolerant regimes, and let the drivel wash over her.”

Eastern European readers will unfailingly understand what it is that Hitchens meant to say.

The government of France has opened an investigation into several fashion giants suspected of profiting off of Muslim Uyghur labor in China’s Xinjiang region, including specific efforts of concealing “crimes against humanity.”

French prosecutors are probing four companies, identified by French media website Mediapart as Uniqlo France, a unit of Japan’s Fast Retailing, Zara owner Inditex, France’s SMCP and Skechers.

The investigation will examine allegations the fashion retailers profited off of forced labor, which has been for years documented as part of Chinese communist authorities’ network of ‘re-education camps’. “An investigation has been opened by the crimes against humanity unit within the antiterrorism prosecutor’s office following the filing of a complaint,” a source privy to the probe was cited in AFP as saying. 

Among the French NGO’s who initiated the lawsuit take up by the prosecutor’s office further said, “Multinationals must not profit, with impunity, from the forced labour of Uyghurs.”

While Beijing officials have in the past admitted to running ‘rehabilitation’ camps to “combat extremism” and what they alternately call job training sites, the US has long condemned the Uyghurs prisons, which are also widely believed to be massive forced labor camps. China has long denied these charges, instead accusing the West of meddling in its affairs and fabricating allegations. 

So far the companies issuing public statement have strongly rejected the accusations, also vowing to fully cooperate with any investigation while noting “rigorous” traceability and sourcing controls in place:

Fast Retailing said in a statement from Tokyo that it had not been contacted by French authorities and that none of its production partners are located in Xinjiang.

“If and when notified, we will cooperate fully with the investigation to reaffirm there is no forced labour in our supply chains,” it said.

“French prosecutors have opened an investigation into four fashion retailers suspected of concealing ‘crimes against humanity’ in China’s Xinjiang region” — a reference to the Chinese government’s pervasive use of Uyghur Muslim forced labor. https://t.co/SPvMWEdNFa pic.twitter.com/FCWbBgMvUt

— Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) July 2, 2021

Meanwhile there remains the likelihood of significant negative repercussions for French companies in China on the mere basis of the government opening the probe.

As Reuters notes, “Several Western brands including H&M, Burberry and Nike have been hit by consumer boycotts in China after raising concerns about reports of forced labour in Xinjiang.”

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

Sometimes it’s important to step away from a problem in order to better understand it. I recently went on a trip across the Pacific Northwest to revisit some old stomping grounds and to take a break from the often disconcerting developments of today’s world, at least for a little while. We all need a vacation from the information war at times, and though I was happy for the rest, I am also happy to be back. After traveling on the road across four states I was able to gauge the general condition of the US in terms of the social and economic effects of the pandemic mandates and covid propaganda.

I have some good news, and some bad news…

The good news is that the propaganda has not been all that effective in most places.

The overall picture looks something like this:

In the majority of rural and semi-rural areas, as well as cities in red counties regardless of the state, the majority of people were NOT wearing masks and the majority of businesses were not demanding that people wear them. The vaccine ads and propaganda were also at a minimum. This includes Washington State and Oregon, which have been notorious lately for their draconian restrictions. While Washington has technically lifted mandates (starting only a couple days ago), the pressure to vaccinate is ever present there. Oregon was the worst state I passed through in terms of business pressure and mob pressure, but even in most towns I visited the ratio of masked cultists to normal unmasked people was around 50/50.

The majority of businesses I entered said nothing to me about not wearing a mask. And, so far there doesn’t seem to be any major push for vaccine passports, though, I suspect this will come soon enough.

It was only in or near major progressive run cities like Portland and Seattle that covid controls were clearly present and oppressive. Near Portland, I saw numerous people wearing their masks outside and even in their own cars. It was truly bizarre, considering that it is almost impossible to catch a virus outside in open air and in sunlight (which is scientifically proven to kill microorganisms). Clearly, the leftists in these places are operating within their own little bubbles of ignorance and collectivism. Needless to say, I kept my time in Oregon to a bare minimum.

The strangest aspect of the whole mess is that WA and OR have relatively high rates of “vaccination”. The people religiously wearing masks have no doubt been vaccinated by now, so, either they must not actually believe in the effectiveness of the vaccines, or, they are wearing their masks anyway as a tool for virtue signaling. Luckily, this insane mentality has not spread much beyond the boundaries of metropolitan areas.

After all, covid infections and fatality rates have been plunging. They were plunging in red states which struck down mandates well before vaccines were released to the public. Why continue the charade?

My trip confirmed some of my biggest suspicions – For one, it proved to me that the mainstream media vision of public submission to the covid mandates was in fact false. The only places where the mandates are obeyed are in or near major cities. I also noted that Indian Reservations were decidedly aggressive in mandate enforcement. These were actually the few places where people tried to demand I wear a mask (though it was usually some white lady working for minimum wage); and frankly I find it odd that Native American communities would be so quick to enforce federal government recommendations or trust federal medical analysis. It’s sad to say but they seem to be drinking the Kool-Aid by the gallons.

The internet is in many ways a fake world. Propagandists use manufactured consensus on the web to make it seem as if the majority of people are onboard with medical tyranny, but it is simple not so. From my observations, people are tired of the restrictions. They are fed up. Whenever I walked into a hotel or at most retailers the people at the front desk or the register would usually notice that I was not wearing a mask, and their eyes would light up and they would pull their mask down to talk to me. They were just happy to be acting like humans again.

I relate my experiences here because I realize that many in the liberty movement are apt to assume the worst possible scenarios for every event. I know because I do it myself on occasion. Three major LIES that some liberty activists believe when it comes to the pandemic are:

1) Most people have been conned into taking the experimental vaccines.

2) The majority of the US is submitting to the mandates.

3) Leftists are relocating in droves to swarm red states and red counties and they are bringing their covid politics with them. (For some reason conservatives are still clinging to fears of liberal relocation even though that mostly died out after the 2006 housing crash, and today all the data shows that when leftists move, they move from their favorite city to the suburbs right outside their favorite city).

Sorry, but I can say with authority that none of these three looming threats is happening. It is nonsense. In fact, it’s the opposite in every case. The people who claim otherwise are frightened, and they are factually wrong. And I derive this position not just from my travels, but also from hundreds of thousands of my readers across the country that I deal with regularly. The propagandists want conservatives to live in fear just as much as they want leftists to live in fear, and they know which lies affect conservatives the most. Dispelling disinformation allows us to then deal with the real threats at hand.

Okay, now that the good news is out of the way, I have to get to the bad news: Economically, the US has been gutted by the government pandemic response, and I am certain now more than ever that there is not much time left to rectify the situation. At this point, fixing things might be impossible. Our only chance is to prepare to survive the fallout.

Here’s what I have noticed so far – Almost every place I have traveled through was desperate for working staff. The heat wave that hit the area this past week was brutal, but it should have been manageable. I’ve lived through worse heat waves and I can’t remember a time when half of the businesses shut down in an area because they couldn’t handle the customer volume. But this was the case in every single town. Finding access to services was incredibly difficult because most places were closed.

The problem was that the heat wave was incidental. The real obstacle was that many businesses have been without a full crew of employees for a year now and this is taking a toll on their operations. The heat wave gave them an excuse to close because they don’t have the people to stay open.

We can thank the federal government and multiple state governments for this situation, because right now it is actually MORE profitable for workers to stay at home and collect covid boosted unemployment than it is to actually work. This is not hurting the major retailers and corporate big box stores that much, but it is destroying small businesses that simply cannot raise wages high enough to compete with government juiced unemployment checks and stimulus.

McDonalds can hike their wages up to $15+ an hour and give new workers a $500 signing bonus, but the mom-and-pop restaurants down the street can’t. What this system is doing is quietly eliminating the small business sector, the same sector that employs around half of all Americans.

On top of this, corporations have been given an endless windfall of stimulus dollars while small businesses have received almost nothing. I have been saying for some time now that this is actually part of the plan; that the GOAL is to erase small businesses from the economy leaving only the corporate behemoths behind. The ongoing government rewards given to people for refusing to work only supports my theory.

And, even though the vaccination agenda in the US has mostly failed, do not expect that elites like Anthony Fauci are going to give up on their dreams of conquest. Fauci has recently asserted that there are now “two Americas”: The vaccinated and the unvaccinated. He must be blind because that is not what I see.

I see the people who blindly follow government demands in vaccination and the people who actually “listen to the science”. I see idiots vs. skeptics. I see cultism vs. logic. I see people who want to control others vs. people who just want to be free to live their lives as they see fit. I see agenda vs. truth. This is not about people being vaccinated, and it’s not about public health or saving lives. Rather, covid is a tool for subjugation of the public. That is all it is and that is all it ever will be.

If America is divided, it is because there are people who want to enslave, there are people who enjoy their enslavement, and, there are people who want nothing to do with enslavement.

Fauci is also notorious for being a terrible scientist, but he is a loyal technocrat. He has a habit of dismissing any science that does not support his preconceived conclusions. The science that shows that people who have already had covid are unlikely to be reinfected. In fact, there is no evidence that covid reinfection is a concern for the vast majority of people. Yet, Fauci does not count people who have had covid and have built up immunity as safe.

Fauci’s position is that if you are not vaccinated with the experimental mRNA cocktails, then you are a risk to others. Yet, if this is the case then that means the vaccines are useless. If unvaccinated people are a threat to vaccinated people, then what use are the vaccines in the first place?

The US Surgeon General (the same guy that originally claimed that Americans should not bother buying masks because the masks would be useless for them) is echoing Fauci’s propaganda, adding that the new “Delta Variant” will strike unvaccinated people the hardest.

There is still no evidence that the supposed “delta variant” is any more of a threat than the original iteration of covid, but this is not stopping governments from rolling out the fear campaign once again. With assertions that the delta variant may still infect vaccinated people, governments are suggesting that lockdowns, masks and social distancing stay in place for the foreseeable future. One has to ask that burning question: Why become a guinea pig for an untested mRNA vaccine when it is no guarantee of freedom, nor a guarantee of health safety?

Hell, why take an untested vaccine when the death rate of covid is so small it effects less than 0.26% of the population outside of nursing homes?

I also have to say that I called this outcome well in advance.

The globalists are becoming incredibly predictable as they scramble to salvage their flailing Reset agenda in the US. As I have noted for the past year, the covid restrictions are never meant to end. There will always be another “mutation” of covid, and so the mandates will be perpetual. They are meant to continue for all eternity, or at least until the entire population submits to government control of every micro-aspect of their daily lives.

That said, I don’t think the covid cult needs to keep mandates in place in the US for much longer, because if they can’t con the majority of the population into compliance, they will instead use the confusion of the pandemic to undermine the economy.

Consider this for a moment – The instant response of many businesses in the Northwest during the heat wave was to shut down or cut hours in half, rather than adapt and overcome. Would this have ever happened before the covid lockdowns? I think not. The go-to solution to any real or perceived crisis in America is now to close down and hide. The response is to reduce standards and give up, or, it is to print money and throw it at the system without any real strategy to use that stimulus effectively. The stimulus itself is doing more damage than covid ever could.

This is a poisonous philosophy that could destabilize the very foundations of the nation, and it is happening right in front of our eyes. I saw it on the road this past week. It is everywhere. Conservative states are working to counter these developments, and I hope it is not too late. The covid cult has been feeding like termites on the pillars of our economy for many months now and though the mandates are being rightfully abandoned the consequences of collapse are far reaching. We may not know the true extent of the damage for many months to come.

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