News & Analysis
Double Dip Done on Purpose?
Killer Combo of High Gas, Food Prices at Key Tipping Point. ... The combination of rising gasoline prices and the steepest increase in the cost of food in a generation is threatening to push the US economy into a recession, according to Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners. Johnson looks at the percentage of income consumers are spending on gasoline and food as a way of gauging how consumers will fare when energy prices spike. With gas prices now standing at about $3.90 a gallon, energy costs have now passed 6 percent of spending – a level that Johnson says is a "tipping point" for consumers. – CNBC
Dominant Social Theme: Trouble's a-coming. How'd it get to this? Who knows? But batten down the hatches!
Free-Market Analysis: Craig Johnson, as quoted by CNBC in this article posted last week, has a doleful tale to tell. He seems certain the US is headed for a double-dip recession. And his remarks are not so different than many being quoted in the mainstream today. The litany is always the same – higher this and higher that and a weaker dollar as well. It's a dominant social theme of the power elite: The economy is terrible, price inflation is moving up and there is nothing to be done.
While this litany of woes, presented this way, seems logical, we want to review in this article some of the underlying causes for what is going on in America and in the West. It's been our contention that the concatenation of economic woes (all coming at once as they are) are not an act of God as mainstream newscasters and economists present it, but something more calculated and deliberate. Craig Johnson makes our job easy because he has been tracking the trends and the direction in which they lead.
"Energy is not quite as essential as food and water, but is a necessity in today's economy, and when gasoline costs more than bottled water – like now – then it takes a huge bite out of disposable spending." And Johnson has some more damning factoids. Of the six US recessions since 1970, he informs CNBC, all but the 9-11 year/2001 recession have been linked to – if not triggered by – energy prices that crossed the 6 percent of personal consumption expenditures.
An aggravating factor, according to Johnson, is that food prices have moved up quickly as well. Previous recessions saw food costs around 7.5 percent to 8 percent of spending but in the last year alone, food has shot up some 6.5 percent. The damages of food and oil prices moving higher are certainly helping with the economy's "tipping point." Here's some more from the article:
Johnson estimates that food and energy eat up about 15 percent of consumer spending at today's prices, compared with about 12.7 percent two years ago. Of course, at lower income levels, these percentages are much higher. One sign of the stress some consumers are already feeling is that some AAA offices have already seen an increase in out-of-gas service calls, as motorists try to put off filling their tanks or drive around trying to seek out the gas station with the least expensive price.
Also some regions are being hit harder than others. Gas prices in Hawaii continue to set new highs, according to AAA data. The average price on Wednesday was $4.51, topping the prior record of $4.50 for a gallon of regular unleaded set in July 2008.
The point we would like to make about all the above gloomy talk is that analysts like Johnson seem (to us) to have a strange approach to the problems they discuss. One can see it in this CNBC report. Never once does Johnson discuss causes. Maybe he does it elsewhere (we doubt it) but in this article, obviously based on a research report, the troubles the American economy faces are treated as intrinsic, not extrinsic.
Of course, we beg to differ. The elements of another recession-in-the-making that Johnson recites are not merely faceless and implacable catastrophes. Each of them has its roots in human actions and taken all together in our view they represent a series of serious miscalculations. Take them one at a time to see what we mean.
Higher oil: This is undoubtedly the strangest of price movements. The US has been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade and now has begun destabilizing other countries in the region as well. The youth movements that the US and its allies have sponsored in countries such as Tunisia, Egypt and Syria have been a further destabilizing factor. These wars, whatever one thinks of them, are not acts of nature. And war is one guaranteed way to raise the price of commodities generally.
One can argue that the destabilization in the Middle East is not only calculated, it can be seen in other Western decisions as well. Chief among these decisions is the lack of aggression when it comes to chasing Somalia pirates that are making shipping around the Horn of Africa a great deal more expensive and difficult. One reads numerous articles about this scourge of piracy along with suggestions that nothing can be done about it.
We find this curious to say the least. The US, when it wishes to, will pursue its enemies to the veritable ends-of-the-earth and spare no expense in doing so. India has launched numerous attacks on the Somalia pirates – but not the US and its allies, who have often let pirates go rather than prosecute them. The impression is left behind that the powers-that-be are perfectly willing to continue to let the Somalia pirates destabilize shipping lanes in the area, which further contributes to supply and price instability.
Price swings in oil are also being laid at the feet of "speculators" that have by themselves driven up the price of oil. This same sort of speculation can be seen at work regarding the price of food, according to knowledgeable reports in the press.
The US dollar: From our point of view, the dollar has been under sustained attack for nearly a decade, but those who are doing the attacking are the Anglo-American elites themselves. The Bush administration was extremely effective at destabilizing the dollar. By not vetoing profligate spending bills and by pursuing two major wars for nearly eight years, Bush eventfully undermined the remaining pegs of support for the fiat dollar, sending it down hard. Obama's reckless spending continues to aggravate the problem further.
Food prices: This is absolutely baffling unless one accepts that a good deal of the current instability in food prices comes from speculation. Where the speculation comes from, and why, is another question entirely.
Price inflation: This is yet another outcome of the weakness of the US, a deliberately encouraged weakness in our opinion.
The world did not simply arrive at this place by accident. The central banking economies of the West – themselves deliberately put into place – caused the great economic meltdown of 2008, with which the world still struggles. But additional policies having to do with unnecessary warfare and irresponsible spending have aggravated the crisis and made it so much worse that whatever "recovery" was to be had has likely gone a glimmering.
Even the West's various reinflation programs – which one can argue have revived stock markets – are at fault when it comes to the larger employment malaise. By not allowing the banking and industrial sector to unwind itself through bankruptcy, the Westerns powers-that-be have made it impossible for many investors and entrepreneurs to know what companies are healthy and what companies are not. This has been a terrific drag on the economy.
Again, none of the economic issues that the West is suffering from have taken place in a vacuum. All of them, in fact are deliberate policies put in place deliberately. If there is a "double dip," there will surely be a clamor for blame, and yet we are certain that clamor shall just as surely be met by a chorus of voices from the power-elite-controlled mainstream media rejecting it.
The argument shall be that the choices were taken in good faith and the outcomes were unforeseeable. We find this a fairly indefensible position. The serial warring, ruinous central banking policies, endless Keynesian pump priming, these are deliberate policies with deliberate and known outcomes. One would either have to be a fool or incredibly reckless not to recognize that sooner or later such policies would combine into a kind of perfect economic storm. One thing is certain: Today's monetary and fiscal environment is no accident and as Henry Kissinger is fond of saying, "This moment of crisis is also one of great opportunity." To watch a video clip with Kissinger that promotes elite intentions to utilize the current manufactued crisis to advance plans for global governance, click here.
Conclusion: One can recite the litany of failures without laying blame, but to us that is a futile occupation. There is blame enough to go around and it ought to be apportioned. When it is, other factor and patterns emerge that make current events a great deal clearer. And with clarity, finally, can come comprehension and even enlightenment.
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Posted by Wayne on 05/08/11 07:18 PM
"Yea I can see it now we Canadians are going to be stuck paying off the American debt, yea, perpetual poverty.'
Why, you selfish greedy Canadians.
I thought Hillary Clinton made this clear to all of you.
It takes a Global Village to raise a child!
Surely there must be a need, somewhere in the Universe, that justifies sacrificing you to the needs of the many!
You don't want to be known as a child hater, do you?
Remember, the Mommies are watching!
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Posted by TeresaE on 05/06/11 11:23 AM
"Double-dip" cracks me up.
We, the non-connected, disposable, consumers, 'er citizens, never came OUT of the recession. My business is still down 50-60% from peak, car sales are still down from peak, housing is way the heck down.
Report yesterday showed that 41% of the jobs in the US are now "low-wage" jobs. FORTY-ONE PERCENT
There is no "recovery."
It IS that now is a convenient time to allow reality to shine through a little, right before the Fed has to make a call on continuing to finance Congress' addiction to spending, or to allow all hell to break lose.
Strange isn't it?
Puh-lease. The only shock is that our BLS released the completely pie-in-the-sky employment numbers today. Seems they missed the memo about having to show some weakness to keep the presses flying. Of course this "good news" is rallying stocks & shooting commodities, which means those in the know can pull a lot of profits before reality, once again, rears its ugly head.
It is only just starting to get interesting. Hang on folks, it is going to be a bumpy ride.
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Posted by TeresaE on 05/06/11 11:23 AM
"Double-dip" cracks me up.
We, the non-connected, disposable, consumers, 'er citizens, never came OUT of the recession. My business is still down 50-60% from peak, car sales are still down from peak, housing is way the heck down.
Report yesterday showed that 41% of the jobs in the US are now "low-wage" jobs. FORTY-ONE PERCENT
There is no "recovery."
It IS that now is a convenient time to allow reality to shine through a little, right before the Fed has to make a call on continuing to finance Congress' addiction to spending, or to allow all hell to break lose.
Strange isn't it?
Puh-lease. The only shock is that our BLS released the completely pie-in-the-sky employment numbers today. Seems they missed the memo about having to show some weakness to keep the presses flying. Of course this "good news" is rallying stocks & shooting commodities, which means those in the know can pull a lot of profits before reality, once again, rears its ugly head.
It is only just starting to get interesting. Hang on folks, it is going to be a bumpy ride.
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Posted by delbwato on 04/30/11 06:23 AM
Wah... Look-ee heah!
If I'm not mistaken we've traveled together in cyber caravans over many, many moons.
To cross paths again at The Daily Bell testifies to our itellectual (hate this co-opted word) progress, eh?
Howdy
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Posted by Himagain on 04/29/11 06:46 PM
Speaking of violence, this video is worth a look to hear the crowd reactions as much as the rhetoric.
Click to view link
Simple solutions are always best. Action, particularly emotional action, is built-in to humans and in the case of the USA, the cortisol is being produced at a fantastic rate in everyone with a functioning brain.
It cannot be an accident.
Ex US Presidents have often made the statement that nothing happens at the top by accident or error.
Here is an old, old statement: A new Order can only be imposed out of chaos.
The fuse for such an explosion is always the same: shout out that which the peasantry is thinking/knows .......
The old Order always aims to deflect attention by creating external phantoms. It never, ever did work, but they never see an alternative.
Fluoride(Prozac) anyone?
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Posted by FreeWolfe68 on 04/29/11 03:50 PM
I do not see anything in the post by Isalcordo that reflects a violent response. Perhaps the poster is just enunciating that he expects a conscious reformation to take root? Does that necessarily invoke a call to violence as a means of obtaining one's objectives? Maybe you're elves are being a little over-sensitive to the eyes and ears of elite operatives who may be monitoring your site?
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Posted by The Daily Bell on 04/28/11 06:43 AM
We do not advocate violence, but peaceful change through education.
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Posted by isalcordo on 04/27/11 08:55 PM
From all indications, the Federal government no longer works for the people but for the military-industrial complex and for the multi-national corporations. Is it the time now in America for a Middle-East-type revolution to shake up or break up the Union?
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Posted by kaydellc on 04/27/11 06:50 PM
Both political parties has promised the American people there would be a time when we would not be dependent upon Middle East oil. We have reserves but both parties are beholden to their constitutents. Hence no drilling, no refineries, no nothing. But the parties decided now to burn alcohol made from corn which made a lot of food products more costly. We now have inflation for food products as a result of the increase in price for corn. Supply vs demand. Burning food for energy because of politic and policies. Now we have problems in the Middle East and the gas price is rising. We have a do nothing President and a Congress that it still deciding what to do, They all talk generalities and hence nothing is done. God have mercy on us! If for some reason the corn crops fail and we are too stupid to drill and use the reserves the Creator provided for us to use then we deserve what comes.
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Posted by Adam on 04/27/11 04:15 PM
To stay in honor whilst avoiding consenting/contracting with them, how about...
I conditionally accept your offer to meet your demands upon proof of claim that I, First-name of the Second-name Family (i.e., not THE NAME), am obliged to do such a thing.
'Conditional Acceptance: A conditional acceptance, sometimes called a qualified acceptance, occurs when a person to whom an offer has been made tells the offeror that he or she is willing to agree to the offer provided that some changes are made in its terms or that some condition or event occurs. This type of acceptance operates as a counteroffer. A counteroffer must be accepted by the original offeror before a contract can be established between the parties.'
Click to view link
Also: Click to view link
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Posted by rossbcan on 04/27/11 03:43 PM
@Adam
The name is only part of it, they have redundant rationalizations, of which "THE NAME" (fictional, admiralty law person = property = slave) is just one. Refute one pretext/fraudulent assumption and, they will hit you with another. Refute them all and, they will shoot you.
Because of feedback, I added an exec summary at the beginning. Here's part of it:
a) On the matter of the receipts and tax returns demanded. I have done my research. Filing tax returns and associating with you, on your terms is VOLUNTARY, requiring my consent. By legal trickery and assumption, should I sign tax returns, this is claimed to be PROOF that I consented to your terms which I most definitely do NOT.
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Posted by Adam on 04/27/11 01:59 PM
RE: StandingGround
Who is liable for THE NAME (and thus the tax)?
Listen to Episode 15
Click to view link
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Posted by Adam on 04/27/11 01:39 PM
"...the so-called "power elite" lodged in the central banks are the tools of the political masses that favor statism, not their drivers. It is a conflict of ideas and values not the manipulation of a gang of conspirators."
I agree that both are infected by a false theory of morality, and so BOTH are enemies of freedom.
Humanity will only overcome the vertical master-on-slave attack when humanity can overcome the horizontal slave-on-slave attack. Free one slave at a time. There is no other way.
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Posted by rossbcan on 04/27/11 12:38 PM
@Jackson
You have not really made your point. You are in accord with DB regarding what is happening, disagreeing regarding the identity of the perps, which I consider irrelevant. A forcefully (using OUR guns) SYSTEM exists whose sole purpose is to forcefully alter the action / consequence relationship (decouple who profits by the action and who pays for the consequence and therefore allow those who control / participate in it to profit at the expense of others). If, in DB's elite paradigm, the perps are identified and dealt with, a thousand new opportunists will spring up to continue the predations. The concept of state, politics (forceful who gets what, independent of contribution) is FUBAR and, by the accelerating trends, we may actually see it end in our lifetimes. The timescale is highly dependent on those who REALLY push, one way or the other.
The problem is that the SYSTEM and the legions of parasites who infest it to prey have slipped the leash of the "rule of law":
Click to view link
And, adopting the position of "Please, Mr. Predator, can I have some more" (political whining, further empowering the a**holes) is just not gonna achieve anything except plunge us back to the dark ages and "war of all, against all".
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Posted by CJM on 04/27/11 12:24 PM
Why do some folks think that double dipping is something new? Its been around for years and we complained then (nothing was ever done about it). Of course it is a product of those in power, but it is no conspiracy. Johnson must be awfully young in years not to realize this. If he is an older person, why didn't he write about the price and wage freeze under another President (unfortunately, a democrat) where only the wages were frozen; little that did since all products dramatically incresed in pricing. The American public is gouged so much it has become a political tradition that no politician wants to be left out of. Johnson is going to have to do better investigating in his reports before I give him a thumbs up sign.
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Posted by Jackson on 04/27/11 12:00 PM
Following the DB only for something like a year, I have come to a conclusion that the DB has a mental hangup that disposes it to see everything that happens as a result of the conspiracy of a handful of power elites. I suspect that this monocular approach can blind the DB to what I see as the bigger picture.
A side effect of the benefits of modern technology is an increasing tendency to place societal reliance upon learned gurus be they technocrats or economic engineers with fancy alphabets following their names. It matters little whether the title imposed is "leader," "fuhrer," "tsar," "manager" or "chairman." It is an act of faith in the wisdom of those in control or in those who ought to be in control. Either way it is an implicit acceptance of the supreme value of control. But the economy that created the most prosperous society with the highest standard of living in the history of the world was not built upon a system of control.
The progress in the quality of life of humankind in the two hundred plus years since Adam Smith and Thomas Jefferson outstrips the advances made by all of mankind in the previous 5000 years. We have enjoyed a society built upon the novel concept of individual freedom and free enterprise. That is the antithesis of the statism inherent in control.
What we are witnessing today is simply the competition between freedom and statism in world order. In that sense, the so-called "power elite" lodged in the central banks are the tools of the political masses that favor statism, not their drivers. It is a conflict of ideas and values not the manipulation of a gang of conspirators.
The great disadvantage for those that favor statism is of course the remarkable success of free enterprise. Accordingly, there is a strategic need to cause its failure before there can be a successful implementation of a controlled statism. It is the vested advantage that capitalism be shown to fail.
The simplest way to accomplish a failure of capitalism is the destruction of its most successful exemplar, the U.S. The difficulty that confronted the statists was the vast resources and productive capacity of the U.S. To bring down the U.S., that capacity had to go and its demise was accomplished by way of environmental control. The loss of wealth production was hidden from the people of the U.S. through the medium of monetary inflation and that is where the central banks play their part. Today, confronted with the necessary collapse of the dollar which they have engineered, the statists place the blame upon capitalism and most folks cannot see what has happened.
One way or the other, I fear that we are in the end game of the free enterprise - statism competition and things are not looking good for freedom.
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Posted by rossbcan on 04/27/11 10:56 AM
These are just words and rationalizations. It is how predators profit, by misrepresenting the relationship between action and consequence (and therefore who profits by the action and a different who pays for the consequences) in our action precedes INEVITABLE consequence reality. These matters will be resolved by ACTION (or inaction), not words. THINK about it:
Click to view link
In the realm of economics (unseen hand of collective human choice, acting in pursuit of survival - self-interest), the grim reaper of "Mathematics of Rule" always has and always will determine INEVITABLE consequence to civilization of predators being in control:
Click to view link
As I stated, it is ACTION that will determine consequences and words and rationalizations are irrelevant. Here are some words to explain what ACTIONS I have CHOSEN to do. I ask to borrow (via private email, if desired) some of the substantial DB feedbacker intellectual horsepower via intelligent critical feedback:
Click to view link
Thanks in advance. DB, I requested via email yesterday to do this and received no reply. I therefore assumed silence as assent. Hope I assumed correctly. If not, just delete this.
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Posted by The Daily Bell on 04/27/11 10:33 AM
thanks to the internet he is able to mobilize a vast number of government dependence to focus on those who have worked to earn their wealth and present them as the reason the welfare system is failing...
You mean the culture of dependency does not pre-date the Internet?
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Posted by theodorej on 04/27/11 09:12 AM
Greetings ghendric..... We are past the blame game... It is the selfish,inconsiderate nature of the American people that allow this kind of nonsense to take place and let me add a measured amount of stupidity...This guy in the white house told the people what he intended to do and he is doing it...thanks to the internet he is able to mobilize a vast number of government dependence to focus on those who have worked to earn their wealth and present them as the reason the welfare system is failing...The unfortunate circumstance is we have public employees who agree with this tactic...This is where the stupidity comes in...they cannot see that the productive side of our economy is hurting and there is no money( look at Wisconsin)...There is not one good reason to impower the poor...with the vested power of the poor in conjunction with the greed of the public servant our republic cannot survive....my suggestion is return to God and pray he has mercy on this free nation...
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Posted by stephen on 04/27/11 07:54 AM
Classical Hegelian dialectics, thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Ad the IMF paving the road to austerity and you've got a sure fire way to bring down any nation no matter it's glory or history.
Click to view link
Click to view link
I can see it now Obama running to the IMF and WB for some petty cash. Just sign on the dotted line they'll say and that will be the end of north America as we know it and the official start of the North American Union (NAU). The frame work as already been settle within the Security Prosperity and Partnership (SPP) act signed by PM. Martin of Canada P. Bush of U.S.A and P. Fox of Mexico in Waco Texas back in 2005.
Click to view link
Yea I can see it now we Canadians are going to be stuck paying off the American debt, yea, perpetual poverty.
Welcome to Global Governance, welcome to the 4th Reich.
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