|
|
Let’s be stupid. Let’s play politics. Let’s play American politics.
Look at the nation’s glorious track record.
Politicians from both parties started and lost scores of war across the planet over the past 75 years that cost trillions, killed millions and destroyed nations.
As far as education, America spends a lot to be stupid. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in 2018, the United States invested a total of $14,009 per student on primary to tertiary institutions compared to $10,454 on average across OECD countries.
Yet, OECD states that nearly 52 percent of the United States population 25 to 34 years old had earned a postsecondary degree—sinking America to 11th place among the 38 countries. In math and science it doesn’t even win, place or show: In 2018, when the test was last administered, the U.S. placed 11th out of 79 countries in science and ranked 30th in math.
On the infrastructure front it’s another sick joke… pothole cities, crumbling bridges and a rotted rail and subway system. A ride on the New York City subway system is a night in Calcutta.
Across the socioeconomic and geopolitical landscape the United States policies and dictates are quantitative and qualitative failures.
Yet, despite its monumental failures, by its latest deeds, the “exceptional” nation has now sowed exceptional economic pain across the planet with its war—economic warfare—against Russia.
And to double down on the suffering it will cause We the People, America’s allies that have teamed up with Washington to fight previous murderous wars of destruction… have joined the sanctions war against Russia.
Idiots Delight
To prove the idiocy, by the words of the Enforcer-in-Chief, President Joe Biden—the cowardly Vietnam War draft dodger who has fought with his mouth to champion every war the U.S. has launched since he began sucking off the public tit 50 years ago—admits the sanctions don’t work.
When asked by a CBS News reporter during his 24 March press conference at a NATO summit in Brussels, why his latest round of sanctions would force Russia to back down in their fight against Ukraine when previous sanctions failed to deter the invasion, Biden snapped, “Let’s get something straight, you’d remember if you’ve covered me from the beginning, I did not say that, in fact, the sanctions would deter him. Sanctions never deter. You keep talking about that. Sanctions never deter.”
“Never deter”?
Then why impose them?
In fact, Biden’s statement was, as is the American political way, an outright lie that he got away with.
To illustrate the arrogance and duplicity of the Moron Gang in charge of destruction, on 11 February, two weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said “the president believes that sanctions are intended to deter.”
And this was a 4 March New York Times headline: “With Sanctions, U.S. and Europe Aim to Punish Putin and Fuel Russian Unrest—The Biden administration and European officials are crushing the Russian economy and stirring mass anxiety to pressure President Vladimir V. Putin to end his war in Ukraine.”
TREND FORECAST: Before the Ukraine War began, Inflation cost the average U.S. household an additional $296 per month. To make a bad situation worse, the U.S./NATO sanctions against Russia will do nothing to stop the Ukraine war.
Instead, as we noted since the Ukraine war began, we have said repeatedly in articles such as “West Paralyzes Russia’s Economy and West’s Economy is Paying the Price” (8 Mar 2022) and “War Scrambles Europe’s Hopes for Economic Recovery” (15 Mar 2022) that sanctions will harm the West in the near and long term more that Russia.
TRENDPOST: Beyond the West, the sanctions are spiking inflation across the globe. For example, hitting the pocketbooks of the workers of the world, yesterday it was reported that yearly inflation in Turkey hit 61.14 percent… climbing to a new 20-year high.
Of course, as we have been reporting, Turkey’s inflation spike is also the result of a series of interest rate cuts late last year demanded by its President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who opposes high borrowing costs.
Today, thanks to the Russian sanctions, the Bank of Spain doubled its 2022 inflation forecast from 3.7 percent to 7.5 percent.
No Backlash for Sanction Stupidity
Again, the sanctions, as Biden clearly said, “do not deter” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the ongoing war, but despite their ineffectiveness their harmful implications are overlooked and accepted.
Today Bloomberg quoted the U.K.’s National Farmers Union Dairy Board Chair Michael Oakes who said. “Rapid inflation of input costs, with fertilizer prices rising fourfold, animal feed rising by 70% and fuel costs continuing to soar, means that for most dairy farmers the cost of production is much higher than the price they are currently receiving for their milk.”
German retailer Aldi Nord spokesperson Spokesman Florian Scholbeck told German press agency DPA.”Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we’re witnessing jumps in purchase prices that we have not experienced in this way before,” and consumers could expect a 20-50 percent price hike on a variety of products
And as a result of rising energy prices due to the sanctions and the Ukraine War, the German Retail Federation warned that price hikes will hit all the nation’s supermarkets.
Doubling down on the rough road ahead, “The war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia, at a minimum, will slow the global economy—and it could easily get worse,” JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon wrote in his annual letter to shareholders.
He noted that the Ukraine War presents a “completely different circumstances than what we’ve experienced in the past—and their confluence may dramatically increase the risks ahead.”
No kidding?
What we had forecast over several weeks ago when Russia invaded Ukraine and the implications of the sanctions the West imposed on Russia would have on pushing inflation much higher while dragging down economies was ignored, but now that Dimon sees it … he made it official.
TREND FORECAST: Yes, the economy will get worse. Dragflation: Economies will drag down as inflation spikes higher. Again, the facts are prevalent and cannot be denied. The sanctions placed on Russia have increased the already increasing inflation rates.
On a bullshit about face, as the Wall Street Journal noted, Jamie Dimon wrote in his shareholder letter last year at this time that he predicted “ a ‘Goldilocks moment’—fast, sustained growth alongside inflation and interest rates that drift slowly upward. Instead, growth was accompanied by inflation that well outpaced expectations.”
But in yesterday’s letter, referring to the massive amounts of cheap money pumped into the economic system and the low interest rates that let borrowers borrow cheaply, he wrote “In hindsight, the medicine… was probably too much and lasted too long.”
Now Dimon is warning that the Federal Reserve may move interest rates “significantly higher than the markets expect.”
The word on the Street is two, back-to-back .50 percent rate increases followed by .25 percent increases to bring the Fed rate to 3 percent by year’s end.
The higher rates go, the more it will cost to service debt for both the U.S. government—which has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 100 percent—and businesses and individuals.
Therefore, we maintain our forecast that should interest rates hit 3 percent this year, equity markets will sink deep into bear territory (down 20 percent and more) and the nation will sink into Dragflation: Negative economic growth and soaring inflation.
TREND FORECAST: Mortgage News Daily reported today that the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage hit 5.02 percent. Year-to-date, when the housing market was booming, it was at 3.38 percent.
As we had forecast, while home prices will rise in the near term, when the Fed rate hits 3 percent or more and mortgage rates climb to the 7 percent range, there will be a sharp slowdown in home sales and a drop in prices. Minus a wild card, such as expanding wars and wild inflation, we do not forecast a housing market crash.
However, we do forecast a sharp downturn in the commercial office building/mall sectors as property values fall and loan defaults rise.