This article was written by Brandon Smith and originally published at Prepper All-Naturals
One of the more difficult aspects of working in economic analysis is the problem of rampant disinformation that you have to dig through in order to get to the truth of any particular issue. In this regard, economics is very similar to politics. The propaganda is endless and debunking it sometimes feels like moving a mountain with a teaspoon.
Establishment media sources lie incessantly about our financial conditions, and when they are finally cornered and forced to admit how bad things are, they then lie about the causes. That said, I find that these lies are usually designed to do one of two things: Over-complicate the problem so that people give up thinking about it, or, distract from the problem so that people blame a scapegoat.
As for inflation, here is the bottom line:
Central Banks And The Fiat Flood
Rising prices are caused by two main drivers. The first is money creation, or too many dollars chasing too few goods. Central banks around the world have been FLOODING the system with fiat currency ever since the debt crisis of 2008 and the Federal Reserve within the US is the worst violator by far. We are talking about tens of trillions (or more) in money creation, all supposedly as a means to stall or prevent a deflationary crash.
By the time the pandemic lockdowns were initiated and the Fed dropped $8 trillion+ onto the economy through stimulus measures like covid checks and PPP loans, the total US money supply was already at destructive levels. The covid stimulus was simply the straw that broke the camel’s back. So, if you want to know who is directly to blame for your daily expenses rising 30% or more in the span of three years, the first set of criminals are the central bankers.
Governments and certain corporate partners are also to blame, but the central banks are the root mechanism for all inflationary movements. It’s my belief (according to the evidence) that central banks have deliberately triggered a stagflationary crisis with the intent to forcefully replace cash based economies with a new digital and cashless global economy. However, that’s a discussion for another article…
Shortages And Core Resources
The other primary cause of rising prices is shortages or disruptions in key resources including oil and energy. Keep in mind that the war in Ukraine has led to the west being cut off from large portions of the resource rich Russian market. And, the war in Gaza has led to groups in the Middle East like the Houthis denying a multitude of cargo ships and oil tankers from traversing the Red Sea.
By themselves, each one of these events seems like a small threat to the global supply chain, but when they pile up together the effects become detrimental. For now, the biggest factor is rising energy prices because this is the key resource that allows all agriculture and manufacturing to function. Every time oil prices rise you’re going to see prices in everything else rise.
This is the exact reason why the Biden Administration continued to dump the US Strategic Oil Reserves on the market for the past couple years. This was their way of manipulating oil prices down in order to mitigate or hide the greater effects of inflation. Now that they’re being pressured to refill those reserves and start buying (at a much higher price) global oil prices and US prices in particular are spiking again.
Media Disinformation And Crushing Food Costs
Food costs have risen by 30% or more depending on the product since the beginning of 2020, and even though CPI reports several months ago showed a “slowdown” in overall inflation, this does not mean prices are going to go down anytime soon. In fact, they will only keep rising with each passing year.
CPI is a tool for measuring the AVERAGE price increases of over 80,000 products and services across a wide spectrum. Many of these items are not necessities and so they dilute the actual inflation we are seeing in everyday expenditures. If we were to look at an average of daily necessities like housing, energy, food, etc. then CPI would read far higher.
When the media touts a lower CPI print as a sign that the economy is improving, what they usually don’t mention is that the stat only represents how much higher prices are going to go. A lower CPI does not mean costs on the shelf are going to go down. Inflation is cumulative.
Meaning, that 30%+ increase in food that Americans have been dealing with – That’s not going away, it’s just not climbing as fast as it was. And, as we’ve seen in the past couple months, inflation has the ability to return just as quickly to add even more gasoline to the fire.
Not long ago I was reading through an article from CBS that claimed they could explain why there’s been no respite in food prices lately. In reality the entire piece was disinformation, blaming every possible scapegoat while ignoring the real causes.
Their main explanation is “Greedflation,” or the claim that companies are overcharging on food items. In other words, blame businesses, don’t blame the Federal Reserve and don’t blame the government. They’re “innocent” in all of this.
So far there’s no concrete evidence to support the Greedflation theory. Every business has unique expenses, unique overhead, unique industrial costs, unique quality control and unique resource costs. One cookie company’s bottom line will be different from another cookie company’s bottom line. That said, there are universal costs that directly correlate to higher prices regardless of the company, and that includes energy, labor, and core commodities.
For those that track the markets it’s obvious that commodities are climbing. The Industrial Commodity Index is far higher today than it was in 2020, along with oil and gas prices. Every base resource that companies use to make products is increasing in value and thus it costs them more to manufacture. Agriculture in particular is heavily affected by oil prices as well as prices in fertilizer and farming equipment, not to mention higher costs in labor.
From 2020 to 2023 the total costs paid by farmers to raise crops and care for livestock increased by more than $100 billion, or 28%, to an all-time high of $460 billion in 2023. Funny how that number tracks very close to the 30% increase in overall food prices since 2020. The establishment media wants you to believe that high food prices are going to go away soon, and in order to trick you they need to convince you that the cause is something that can be “controlled” or “regulated”.
There is no indication that agricultural costs are going to stop increasing in the near future, so, that means each year food is going to cost you more than the year before. It might even cost you MUCH more than the year before.
In conclusion, this is why people need to start looking at food as an investment similar to the way they might look at their 401K or any retirement plan. If you want to mitigate costs in the future in terms of food you will need to purchase foods with a long shelf life now. If you think that inflation is a passing phase and that things will go back to the way they were before 2020 then you probably won’t take this concern seriously. But, consider this:
Well before 2020 I was warning regularly about an impending stagflation crisis. The food storage I bought in 2020 now costs at least 30%-50% more to buy in 2024. Meanwhile, some of the top mainstream economists in the country were denying such a thing would ever happen. When it did happen, they claimed it was “transitory.” This was also proven false. Now they claim food will drop after companies are forced through regulation to cut prices.
Whether government intervenes or the market continues to react to poor fiscal policies, it is quickly becoming a necessity to invest in food security as soon as possible. Government enforced price controls have never actually proven effective in stopping inflation. Once you remove all profit incentives many businesses will close up shop. This causes the supply of goods to go down and prices then spike anyway due to shortages.
Do you want to bet your future on establishment economists being right for once, or, do you want to just store some food today in the knowledge that prices are only going exponentially higher?
One survival food company, Prepper All-Naturals, has proactively dropped prices to allow Americans to stock up ahead of projected hikes in beef prices. Their 25-year shelf life steaks currently come at a 25% discount with promo code “invest25”.
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”, Henry Kissinger.
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In general, for over 4 years, the cost of life has been getting more and more expensive in western countries. We’ve all noticed.
For the middle class(including upper middle-class), this is a “new reality” and the situation is set to get worse.
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P.S: as you wrote in a previous post:
“The worst thing is that central bankers know exactly what they’re doing.”(2015). CLEARLY!
“Crushing Food Costs… Food costs have risen by 30% or more… they will only keep rising with each passing year… There is no indication that agricultural costs are going to stop increasing… each year food is going to cost you more than the year before. It might even cost you MUCH more…”.
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When one’s openly-expressed position is that ‘There Are Too Many People!’ on the Earth… what better way is there to those perverts to assist the fast demise and erasure of the majority of the human race but to STARVE THEM into their graves?
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Make food extremely expensive. Restrict access to it. Take over farms and distribution systems. Poison the available food with pesticides and death vaccines and demonic forms of nano-technology. In short, turn ‘food’ into NOT FOOD. Into poison shaped like food used to look.
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As if anyone with open eyes needs to be told, We the People are savagely HATED by the Dark State Elitist Cult of Predators now running things on our Planet. They want us off ‘Their’ planet and pronto. Whether by starvation… or more plan-demics… or senseless World conflicts that ignite massive wars resulting in horrific death… ‘They’ the Dark State Elitist Cult of Predators is on board with all of these methods and no doubt even more vicious ones that We have not even contemplated. Why? Because a normal person cannot think in that sick a way.
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Our grandparents do not believe what the price of food and housing and medical care and everything else is today. And our great-grandparents would just laugh at this because costs today are so obscenely grotesque and beyond belief that they would think you are joking.
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And why is that? Again, the greed and the sickly demonic spirit now fully within and on display from the World’s Dark State Elitist Cult of Predators.
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The Devil is on the loose. Or better said, many Devils today are on the loose. You can see Them just about every place you look. They don’t even try to hide Their hideous appearance any more. Planet Earth has turned from a Garden of Eden into the full manifestation of Hell. And since we won’t have food to eat in this hellish Age… we’ll just have to chew on that painful fact.
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Let’s enjoy what food we can get for as long as we can get it. Because tomorrow is promised to no one… not even those faux gods called the Dark State Elitist Cult of Predators who have perverted an amazing Planet into something completely unrecognizable and inhuman.
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Just rest in the knowledge that these Dark State Cultists have a date Themselves at The Grand Table of Karma… a meal that for Them will be very, very tough to swallow.
Very, very well said! You are a true wordsmith. 👏👏👏
The reality of it all is that Psychopathic Control Freak PARASITES are in leadership positions the world over. It’s one big club. And you’re not in it. https://www.courageouslion.us/p/problem-psychopathic-control-freaks
Although it is quite clear to me that many corporations, particularly multi-nationals, within their specific industries do cooperate to leverage price increases based on greed, it is also quite clear to me that the current inflation is not being caused by so-called ‘greed flation’. It is a direct result of central bank activity, and government intervention in downturns/crashes they and the financial sector (under central banking) are responsible for creating.
The globalists’ playbook includes “Lie and keep lying until not even WE know what the truth is anymore.”
Have a look at this recent and very, very interesting interview with Bill Holter:
https://usawatchdog.com/driving-america-into-a-brick-wall-bill-holter/
Many of his comments and analyses are in line with yours on the economic situation.
Here’s a serious and intellectually honest expert, unlike that clown Paul Krugman.
Have we ever seen a serious clown?!
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When I hear people like Krugman and his fellow globalists, I sometimes think of this quote:
“We know they are lying, they know they are lying, they know we know they are lying, we know they know we know they are lying, but they are still lying.” – Attributed to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
Actually…The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them. ~Elena Gorokhova – “A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir 2010”
Terrific article Brandon – I will note, as a farmer, that our single biggest expense is interest costs on land/equipment etc and this has risen substantially in the past few years (I would suspect that means that many farmers have seen costs rise more than the 30% when this is factored in).
Yes that means farmers are earning even less (it was a pittance margin-wise to begin with)…and they are responding accordingly – by getting out of the business. I’ve lost count how many (ourselves included) have dramatically scaled back or stopped producing for markets altogether – especially on the smaller/local farming circuit, but bigger commodity producers are also doing the same out of necessity.
All part of the plan to consolidate the industry for better control I suppose….
I told my wife years ago when I saw the price of chicken at Walmart literally double from .49 cents a pound to .99 cents a pound that if I had a large freezer that buying chicken for future use made more sense than putting the money in the bank. I reload and have watched the price of primers, especially large rifle go from 3 cents each to 12 cents each. They are on the way back down, but I don’t expect them to get lower than 5 cents each any time soon. It is still a lot less expensive to load your own than to purchase factory loaded ammo. Thanks for your reason backed insight Brandon!
Dear fellow reloader: It is telling that the price of components eb and flow in this chaotic economy. I’ve been reloading for over 50 years and I see this going on. One thing I can tell you is that all the components are shelf stable for many years. I mean, like lifetime years. I have powder and primers that I used occasionally that were made back in the 1940s. Just keep them dry and they’ll keep forever. So, on the subject of prepping, powder and primers are an investment. I heavily stock 3 powders: Bullseye. Works with any of the smaller capacity pistol cartridges. Unique. Works with larger pistol cartridges and mid range loads for smaller rifle cartridges. Its also great for “plinking” loads in magnum pistol cartridges and large rifle cartridges. IMR3031 or H4895. Both can be used in mid to large rifle cartridges. I try to keep 3 pounds of each. …and primers. It seems that any bump of any kind in politics, economy, wars, etc, primers become scarce. Happy stuffing!
My dad started a backyard garden this year so we wouldn’t have to spend so much on vegetables and herbs. We’ve even done some experimenting with canning and pickling.
“So, if you want to know who is directly to blame for your daily expenses rising 30% or more in the span of three years, the first set of criminals are the central bankers.”
I am sorry, but Central bank are not the real source of price inflation.
The real source is government’s deficit. The equation reads like this:
Inflation = deficits – savings
Inflation is a hidden tax meant to fund the government.
” Keep in mind that the war in Ukraine has led to the west being cut off from large portions of the resource rich Russian market. And, the war in Gaza”
It all started with Covid. When Ukraine war came, it was already there. And, by the way, the reason is not directly the war, but the sanctions which are self-inflicted wounds and can be stopped immediatly.
Incorrect, central banks write their own policies without government input, and as Alan Greenspan openly admitted, government has no say in the economic actions central banks take. Deficits are a product of central bank printing, THEY decide how much the government can spend. Not only that, but central bankers control political outcomes, so many leaders will pander to them to get their approval.
Your Ukraine comment makes little sense in reference to my statement, so not sure what your point is on that. It almost sounds like an AI trying to argue with me.