Four out of every 10 British families with children under the age of 12 have been replacing meat in their diet with carbohydrates such as pasta and bread to bulk out their meals and get more out of their money. 18% of Brits are buying fewer vegetables and fruits, and almost a third are purchasing less meat, according to Red Tractor.
The cost of food continues to rise in the UK, and the country’s food retailers have warned that price inflation will continue into the foreseeable future. The latest figures show grocery prices are now increasing at their fastest rate on record.
Figures provided by retail analyst Kantar found that grocery price inflation in the country reached a new record high of 16.7% in the four weeks that ended on January 22. This amounts to a nearly £ 800-pound increase on a typical yearly shopping bill. This is a notable increase from the 14.4% recorded in December and the highest level since figures were first tracked in 2008.
Some categories of food that have noted particularly sharp rises recently include eggs, milk and dog food. However, fruit, vegetables, sugar and alcohol have also noticed steep rises in the past month. According to Kantar, the price of basics such as cheese, milk, butter and bread is up 16.7% on a year-over-year basis. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reports that olive oil has risen by nearly 40% in the last year, while low-fat milk is up 46% and sugar is up 38.5%.
People are turning to store-label products, cheap carbs and expired food to feed their families
In response to record-setting inflation, some supermarkets are expanding their store label ranges to provide customers with more value. In January, sales of store-label products climbed by 9.3%; sales of branded alternatives only rose by 1%.
Four out of every 10 British families with children under the age of 12 have been replacing meat in their diet with carbohydrates such as pasta and bread to bulk out their meals and get more out of their money. 18% of Brits are buying fewer vegetables and fruits, and almost a third are purchasing less meat, according to Red Tractor.
Another way some people are making ends meet is by eating food that is well past its use-by date. According to the ONS, almost one in five adults say they have eaten food that was beyond its use-by date, which indicates when perishable food can safely be consumed. This is despite the Food Standards Agency warning that individuals should never eat food after this date – even if it smells or looks acceptable – because it could result in serious illness.
The ONS also found that 15% of adults are somewhat or very worried that they will run out of food before they can afford to purchase more. It also revealed that Brits are struggling to stay warm amid the higher costs of energy, with nearly a quarter of those polled saying that they struggled to stay comfortably warm during the previous two weeks.
Discount grocery chains like ALDI and Lidl have noted rising sales. For the fourth month in a row, ALDI was the country’s fastest-growing grocer, noting sales that were 26.9% higher year on year and taking a 9.2% share of the market. Sales at Lidl climbed by 24.1%; they took a market share of 7.1%. Meanwhile, the sales at bigger rivals like Sainsbury’s, Asda and Tesco only saw increases of 6%; sales at Morrisons dropped by 1.9%.
It’s bad news for Brits who are already struggling with inflation across the board. The Bank of England recently raised interest rates for the 10th time in a row, which is pushing monthly mortgage payments higher; its 0.5 percent rise places rates at 4%, which is the highest level seen since the financial crisis of 2008. A further rise to 4.25% is widely expected next month.
Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has forecasted that the British economy will shrink this year and experience the poorest performance out of all developed countries, including Russia. The news isn’t much better in the U.S., where the prices of many foods have risen exponentially as well.
It should be noted that it was Trudeau’s oppressive (and long-running) pandemic restrictions that directly aided in triggering declining economic conditions in Canada, including supply chain disruptions and higher inflation. While Trudeau tries to blame the war in Ukraine for the terrible conditions (the inflation crisis started long before the Ukraine conflict), it cannot be denied that his authoritarian policies are at least partly responsible for the financial troubles of millions of Canadian citizens.
Poverty-stricken Canadians are going to food banks not just for help in feeding themselves and their families, but also to ask about government-assisted suicide as a potential solution to their struggles. Canada’s cost of living crisis is growing (as is America’s crisis), with inflation ongoing and spiking interest rates crushing lower and middle-class workers with increased debt burdens. The average monthly food cost for a family of four in Ottawa is around $1000 and the average monthly rent is $2000.
Canada’s euthanasia laws are becoming alluring to those people that cannot afford rising expenses and see no other way out.
The nation’s revised medical assistance in dying (MAID) came into force on March 17, 2021. The new law includes changes to eligibility, procedural safeguards, and the framework for the federal government’s data collection and reporting regime.
On March 17, 2021, Parliament passed legislation that makes important changes to who may be eligible to obtain medical assistance in dying and the process of assessment. These changes took effect immediately. Under the current laws, a patient must have a grievous and irremediable medical condition in order to receive assisted suicide, but apparently many Canadians believe they should have access even when they are healthy.
Justin Trudeau was confronted by Global News with a video interview of a food bank CEO relating her story of multiple recipients asking about government-supported suicide. His response is politically typical, with a show of general concern and assertions that his resolve is deepened to “step up” and help impoverished families (discussion begins at 13:30).
Immediately after this interview, Trudeau is set to enjoy a scheduled family vacation to Jamaica. In 2019, Trudeau’s vacation to Costa Rica leeched Canadian taxpayers nearly $200,000 in flight costs, and this does not include the added costs of extended protection in a foreign province by Royal Canadian Mounted Police. That’s a lot of money that could go to helping hundreds of families in need.
It should be noted that it was Trudeau’s oppressive (and long-running) pandemic restrictions that directly aided in triggering declining economic conditions in Canada, including supply chain disruptions and higher inflation. While Trudeau tries to blame the war in Ukraine for the terrible conditions (the inflation crisis started long before the Ukraine conflict), it cannot be denied that his authoritarian policies are at least partly responsible for the financial troubles of millions of Canadian citizens.
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” Kissinger
The latest report from the United Nations (UN) Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicates that the global aggregate of food import costs has reached nearly $2 trillion in 2022 due to runaway inflation.
The FAO’s “Food Outlook” explains that the cost of importing wheat, rice, maize, vegetable oils, and pretty much all other farm goods will soon reach an all-time high, topping the previous record high that was reached in 2021 by at least 10 percent.
As food prices increase and other currencies besides the United States dollar depreciate, the FAO does expect some degree of demand destruction. Still, the poorest countries could face mass starvation as food prices soar out of reach. (Related: Even “First World” countries like the United Kingdom are crumbling under the pressure of inflation.)
Developing countries that heavily rely on food imports will be hit the hardest, especially as they face insurmountable and ever-rising debt. Many such nations are rapidly burning through their dollar stockpiles – faster than in the past two decades, we are told.
The money changers that control the U.S economy and its Federal Reserve Note currency Ponzi scheme have ensured that other currencies can no longer compete against it, which is impoverishing other countries lower on the totem pole at an astounding rate.
“Falling emerging market currencies means the purchasing power of importing has declined,” reports Zero Hedge. “It comes as global food prices remain at lofty levels.”
Is a day of reckoning coming for the United States once the collapse hits our shores?
In the report, the FAO’s Markets and Trade Division warns that “[t]hese are alarming signs from a food security perspective, indicating importers are finding it difficult to finance rising international costs, potentially heralding an end to their resilience to higher international prices.”
Perhaps the most known example of this is Sri Lanka, which has been in an economic free-fall ever since it outlawed the use of crop fertilizer a few years back. Earlier this year, Sri Lanka ran out of reserves while at the same time defaulting on its overseas bonds, leaving it with no money to import basic necessities like food and fuel.
This sparked widespread rioting and social upheaval, a phenomenon that has since spread like a contagion – you might even say like a virus – to other countries that are similarly very low on the food chain.
The more things unravel, the worse things are going to get for the world’s poorest countries. However, after those are decimated, richer countries will follow suit in ways many cannot even fathom.
The Titanic itself, the United States corporation, will finally and justifiably inherit the consequences of the mess its leaders have made by raping and pillaging not only the world but its own citizens, all so the “elite” could capture limitless power and financial gain.
For the time being, the U.S. and other top-dog nations are still siphoning the cream of the crop. The best of what the world has to offer continues to be imported while the developing world is lucky to even just get staples – but it will not stay like this forever.
Keep in mind that fertilizer costs continue to skyrocket, up 48 percent this year compared to last. This will, once again, hit poorer countries the hardest, at least at first. Eventually, though, it will catch up with everyone, including Mystery Babylon herself.
“Global unrest, inflation flood of illegal immigration, soaring energy costs … no wonder the market is soaring,” joked one commenter about how fake and ridiculous the U.S. financial system is.
Another quoted Henry Kissinger who once said:
“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.”
Want to learn more about the ongoing collapse of the global economic order? Visit Collapse.news.
Canada’s top three grocers all posted higher profits this year compared with their average performances over the last five years, new research from Dalhousie University has found.
Critics have accused grocers of so-called greedflation, suggesting they are profiteering at a time when food prices are rising at the fastest rate in more than 40 years, and researchers say a lack of transparency in their financial results isn’t helping.
“These companies are massive and quite diversified from a retail perspective so we recommend dividing food sales from other sales,” said Sylvain Charlebois, co-author of the report by the Agri-Food Analytics Lab and Dalhousie professor.
Loblaw Companies Ltd. was particularly notable, the report found, as it has outperformed not only its five-year average performance but did better than any of those years individually.
The US Govt killed 20+ million people in 37 victim nations since WW2, funded gain of function research (Covid-19) causing millions of deaths, spies on everyone, started a proxy war with Russia risking nuclear war, created global inflation with endless reserve currency printing, commits global terrorism with drone strikes and pipeline sabotage, sends Europe into an economic slaughterhouse and floods it with refugees from US war zones, spends billions to manipulate the media with fake news and propaganda, persecutes truth-tellers and whistleblowers, ran illegal torture prisons and holds prisoners indefinitely without trial, bullies nations and UN delegates to obey a “rules-based order” made of US rules that it ignores at will. The US failed the world with arrogant and criminal foreign policies. Time for a multipolar order.
Sri Lanka and Panama were among the earliest nations to see crisis-related unrest spill over into the streets. But now Peru, Ecuador, Haiti, Pakistan, Argentina, Tunisia, Kenya, Albania, Uganda, and Nigeria are also seeing protests and riots in response to widespread food and fuel shortages, inflation, and other major signs of very serious collapse soon on the way.
In the First World, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and Norway are all seeing similar societal rattles that point towards a global cataclysm in the making.
The world economy is in dire straits as country after country descends into crisis followed by chaos. It all seems to have begun, as it usually does, in the Third World, but is now rapidly spreading to the First World.
Sri Lanka and Panama were among the earliest nations to see crisis-related unrest spill over into the streets. But now Peru, Ecuador, Haiti, Pakistan, Argentina, Tunisia, Kenya, Albania, Uganda and Nigeria are also seeing protests and riots in response to widespread food and fuel shortages, inflation, and other major signs of very serious collapse soon on the way.
In the First World, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland and Norway are all seeing similar societal rattles that point towards a global cataclysm in the making.
In France, the primary issue at hand has to do with rail workers demanding higher wages due to inflation.
Both rail and air transport workers in France ended up joining each other in calling for a nationwide strike unless their demands were addressed.
In The Netherlands, farmers threatened by the country’s anti-nitrogen “green” initiatives unleashed tractor brigades to show Dutch politicians what The People really think about their climate change schemes.
We are told that upwards of 30 percent of Dutch livestock farms could be forced to close if the globalist government’s plans to eliminate nitrogen from the country are a success.
If things get bad enough, will Americans rise up in protest?
A similar farmer uprising also occurred in nearby Germany, which we now know is in the throes of a total energy collapse due to Western sanctions against Russia.
Back in July, some 500 farmers participated in protests in Bavaria, expressing solidarity with their Dutch colleagues. They also spoke out against the German government’s environmental regulations, which threaten to destroy the country’s fuel stability.
Poor working conditions, job cuts and inflating fuel and fertilizer costs also sparked protests in Italy around the same time.
Amid the worst drought conditions in 70 years that resulted in widespread fires, Italian farmers chained themselves together in protest in a square outside Premier Mario Draghi’s office.
In Spain around the same time, there was a metallurgist strike involving 20,000 trade union workers who demanded higher pay and improved working conditions.
There was also another strike involving Irish Ryanair flight attendants that disrupted hundreds of flights between Spain and Ireland.
In Warsaw, Poland, agricultural producers belonging to an organization called Agrounia protested against interest rate increases on loans, as well as unabated imports from Ukraine that they said continue to displace domestic products.
Over in Norway around the very same time, oil and gas industry workers held a strike that resulted in entire oil fields halting production.
The result of this strike was even higher gas prices across Europe, which is already struggling through massive energy hyperinflation on the back of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Iran, Chile, Venezuela, Libya, Yemen, Ghana and even China can all now be added to the protest and unrest list as well. Each of these countries has seen similar events occur as those aforementioned.
In communist China, protests turned violent in the central Henan province after a financial scandal was exposed that threatens the entire country’s banking system.
More than 1,000 protesters showed up, according to reports, in front of the Zhengzhou sub-branch of the People’s Bank of China to demand access to their now-frozen funds. These people continue to demand answers as to what happened to their money.
Interested in learning more about the engineered takedown of the global economy? You can do so at Collapse.news.
Matt Pike, volunteer co-ordinator of the Memorial University St. John’s campus food bank, blames a rising cost of living for increased demand. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
The food bank at Memorial University’s St. John’s campus is temporarily closed after surging demand overwhelmed resources.
Matt Pike, the food bank’s volunteer co-ordinator, said the closure will last until at least Nov. 3 while volunteers restock.
“The demand over the past few months has just been more than we could have possibly predicted,” he said.
Pike said use of the campus food bank in August — about 150 clients — usually increases by 50 per cent in September as students head back to class, but this year it doubled. He said the food bank served about 300 clients in September and 360 in October before it was forced to close.
“We were on track to doing closer to 500 clients this October had we not had to shut down,” he said.
Pike said the campus food bank serves clients in the MUN community — mostly students, but also some staff and professors.
“The cost of living is tough for everybody; it’s not just students,” he said.
Increased costs, tuition — and pressure
This year, food banks across the province have reported increased demand — and more difficulty obtaining supplies — as groceries get more expensive. The consumer price index rose 6.7 per cent from September 2021 to September of this year.
Pike said the St. John’s campus food bank is feeling that pressure.
“When our donations haven’t grown but the cost of food has grown and the demand has grown, that means our hampers are getting smaller and the number of people we can really get a lot of food out to is getting smaller,” he said.
Pike said the food bank hopes to reopen Nov. 3, and he doesn’t know what people who rely on the food bank will do in the meantime.
Isabel Ojeda, executive director of campaigns for the MUN students’ union, said the closure of the food bank is “devastating.”
“I think it’s really, really reflective of the fact that students are struggling all around with the increasing cost of living,” she said.
Isabel Ojeda, MUN’s students’ union director of campaigns, says the increased cost of living impacts some students academically. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
Ojeda said food insecurity, trouble finding housing and higher tuition rates — which kicked in this term — are impacting students.
“All in all, it’s becoming harder and harder for students to actually focus on their education because they have so many other barriers coming up to them,” she said.
MUNSU has been vocally opposed to the increase to undergraduate student tuition, and Ojeda criticized university administration and the provincial government for the tuition increases.
Tuition for new undergraduate students from Newfoundland and Labrador more than doubled this fall, and existing undergraduate students will see their fees hike by four per cent a year until 2026. International undergraduate student tuition, while still below the Canadian average, has gone up to $20,000 a year.
Trick-or-eat
Mosaic Campus Church, a group that holds services at the Breezeway — MUN’s undergraduate student bar — is holding a “trick or eat” food drive on Halloween for the food bank.
Jenna Reid, MUN communication studies student, is a team lead at Mosaic Church, which holds services at the Breezeway, MUN’s undergraduate bar. (Darrell Roberts/CBC)
“Basically, a bunch of college students are going trick-or-treating for non-perishables,” said Jenna Reid, a MUN communication studies student and part of the church lead team.
“From what I’ve encountered, students are working harder than they ever have before just to survive, honestly,” she said.
Reid also blamed the rising cost of living and criticized the tuition hike.
“If you know a student in your life and you can, like, have them over for a meal or even just, like, check in on them, I would highly recommend doing that,” she said. “A lot of students are having a rough go right now.”
According to the report, food banks across the country were straining under a historically high demand that culminated in 1.5 million visits in March 2022.
The study found that one-third of clients using food banks are children, and they represented about 500,000 visits in March 2022. It says the higher cost of living makes households with children more vulnerable to poverty and hunger.
This year saw the use of food bank rise to the highest levels in Canadian history, according to a bleak new report.
Food Banks Canada just dropped its landmark HungerCount 2022report that reveals just how devastating the state of food insecurity is in the country.
According to the report, food banks across the country were straining under a historically high demand that culminated in 1.5 million visits in March 2022.
This means the use of food banks is up 35% compared to pre-pandemic visits in 2019.
Food Banks Canada cites high inflation and a “broken” social safety net as the main causes for this spike, which has affected Canadians of all ages and socioeconomic status.
“Canada’s food banks are facing uncharted challenges as turbulent economic conditions continue to exacerbate and deepen systemic inequities, especially for employed people earning low incomes, students and seniors on fixed incomes,” explained Food Banks Canada CEO Kirstin Beardsley in a statement.
The only way we can even come close to feeding everyone on the planet is by using vast quantities of fertilizer, but now fertilizer plants all over Europe are being forced to shut down because of the price of natural gas.
All of our lifestyles are about to change in a major way, but the vast majority of the population still does not understand what is coming. Throughout our entire lives, we have always been able to depend on a couple of things. There would always be cheap gasoline to fuel our vehicles and there would always be mountains of cheap food at the grocery store. No matter who was in the White House and no matter what else was going on in the world, those two things always remained the same. Unfortunately, those days are now over and they aren’t coming back.
We have entered the greatest energy crisis that any of us have ever experienced, and it isn’t going to go away any time soon.
So you might as well get used to high gas prices. Earlier this month, brand new all-time record highs were set all over southern California…
Los Angeles-Long Beach – $6.46 (Record high)
Orange County – $6.42 (Record high Saturday)
Ventura County – $6.40
Riverside County – $6.33 (Record high)
San Bernardino County $6.32
But that isn’t the real problem.
The real problem is with natural gas.
Thanks to the war in Ukraine, supplies of natural gas in Europe have become extremely tight, and this has pushed prices into the stratosphere.
Needless to say, this is going to greatly affect food productions in the months ahead. According to Bloomberg, over two-thirds of all fertilizer production capacity in Europe has already been shut down due to soaring natural gas costs…
Europe’s fertilizer crunch is deepening with more than two-thirds of production capacity halted by soaring gas costs, threatening farmers and consumers far beyond the region’s borders.
This is an absolutely massive story, but hardly anyone in the United States is covering it.
Global fertilizer production is going to be greatly reduced, and that is going to have very serious implications for agricultural production all over the world…
“Nitrogen plant shutdowns in Europe are not simply a problem in Europe,” she said. “Reduced supply on the scale seen this week not only raises the marginal cost of production of nitrogen fertilizers, but will also tighten the global market, putting pressure on plant nutrients’ availability in Europe and beyond.”
We’re already seeing prices elsewhere rise again. The price of the common nitrogen fertilizer urea in New Orleans rose over 20% in weekly prices Friday, the most since March, a few weeks after the war began, according to Green Markets.
I know that fertilizer may not be the most exciting topic for a lot of people, but the truth is that approximately half the global population would starve if we didn’t have any…
In fact, it’s estimated that nitrogen fertilizer now supports approximately half of the global population. In other words, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch — the pioneers of this technological breakthrough — are estimated to have enabled the lives of several billion people, who otherwise would have died prematurely, or never been born at all.
Let that paragraph sink in for a moment.
The only way we can even come close to feeding everyone on the planet is by using vast quantities of fertilizer, but now fertilizer plants all over Europe are being forced to shut down because of the price of natural gas.
As long as this global energy crisis persists, the global food crisis will also persist.
Russia is normally the largest exporter of natural gas in the entire world, and an end to the war in Ukraine would go a long way toward solving our current problems.
But there isn’t going to be an end to the war in Ukraine.
Once again, western leaders are assuring us that the war will not end until Russia is forced out of every inch of Ukrainian territory.
That includes Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.
Of course the Russians would use tactical nukes long before we ever get to that point.
And once the Russians use tactical nukes, the west will do the same.
As it currently stands, there is no “off ramp” for this war.
Instead, we are simply counting down the days until it goes nuclear.
I am sorry to tell you that, but it is the truth.
If the American people truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive peace protests all over the nation right now.
Meanwhile, the worst multi-year megadrought in 1,200 years continues to absolutely ravage agricultural production in the western half of the United States.
A reporter from FOX recently visited the cornfields of Wayne County, Nebraska and what he discovered is extremely chilling…
“I’m standing in the middle of a cornfield that, if this was a normal year or in other words, if the corn was growing the way it was supposed to be, you wouldn’t even really be able to see me right now,” FOX Business’ Connell McShane reported from Wakefield, Nebraska. “It would be way up above my head. But now I look at this, maybe knee-high at best.”
McShane visited field after field in Wayne County and found the same short stalks with very sparse ears. Over 99% of that county is in exceptional drought.
This drought has been going on for years and years.
And it just keeps getting worse.
On the west coast, we are being warned that production of tomatoes, garlic and onions will be very disappointing this year due to the drought.
As a result, prices are going to go much higher in 2023…
In addition to tomatoes, other crops like garlic and onion are also expected to be impacted.
“What you’re seeing harvested this summer that really hasn’t even hit the grocery shelf is a 25% increase in the cost of the product to the processors — the canners, the buyers downstream,” California State Board of Food and Agriculture President Don Cameron told Reuters. “The onions and garlic have already been negotiated for 2023 with another 25% increase in price.”
This is really happening.
Food prices may seem high to you right now, but the truth is that this is the lowest that they are going to get.
The cost of living is becoming extremely oppressive, and countless people out there are really struggling to make it from month to month.
Earlier today, I came across a tweet from a 47-year-old lawyer that really hammered this point home…
-20 years ago, working as a server, I lived in a corner 1 bdrm apt downtown with amazing water views for $700/month.
-A similar apt now $3,600/month, more than 5x as much.
-As a lawyer at age 47 I am unable to afford living in the apartment I did at age 27 while waiting tables
The cost of gasoline is going to continue to go up.
The cost of natural gas is going to continue to go up.
The cost of food is going to continue to go up.
In fact, the cost of just about everything is going to continue to go up.
The artificially-inflated lifestyles that we were able to enjoy for decades are now disappearing, and there is a tremendous amount of pain on the horizon.
We were warned that this would happen, and now a day of reckoning is here.
As in the 1930s, bankrupt liberalism, grotesque social inequality, and declining living standards are empowering fascist movements in Europe and the U.S.
Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis’ rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament.
Energy and food bills are soaring. Under the onslaught of inflation and prolonged wage stagnation, wages are in free fall. Billions of dollars are diverted by Western nations at a time of economic crisis and staggering income inequality to fund a proxy war in Ukraine. The liberal class, terrified by the rise of neo-fascism and demagogues such as Donald Trump, have thrown in their lot with discredited and reviled establishment politicians who slavishly do the bidding of the war industry, oligarchs and corporations.
The bankruptcy of the liberal class means that those who decry the folly of permanent war and NATO expansion, mercenary trade deals, exploitation of workers by globalization, austerity and neoliberalism come increasingly from the far-right. This right-wing rage, dressed up in the United States as Christian fascism, has already made huge gains in Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Italy, Bulgaria and France and may take power in the Czech Republic, where inflation and rising energy costs have seen the number of Czechs falling below the poverty line double.
By next spring, following a punishing winter of rolling blackouts and months when families struggle to pay for food and heat, what is left of our anemic western democracy could be largely extinguished.
Extremism is the political cost of pronounced social inequality and political stagnation. Demagogues, who promise moral and economic renewal, vengeance against phantom enemies, and a return to lost glory, rise out of the morass. Hatred and violence, already at the boiling point, are legitimized. A reviled ruling class, and the supposed civility and democratic norms it espouses, are ridiculed.
It is not, as the philosopher Gabriel Rockhill points out, as if fascism ever went away. “The U.S. did not defeat fascism in WWII,” he writes, “it discretely internationalized it.” After World War II the U.S., U.K. and other Western governments collaborated with hundreds of former Nazis and Japanese war criminals, who they integrated into western intelligence services, as well as fascist regimes such as those in Spain and Portugal. They supported right-wing anti-communist forces in Greece during its civil war in 1946 to 1949, and then backed a right-wing military coup in 1967. NATO also had a secret policy of operating fascist terrorist groups. Operation Gladio, as the BBC detailed in a now-forgotten investigative series, created “secret armies,” networks of illegal stay-behind soldiers, who would remain behind enemy lines if the Soviet Union made a military move into Europe. In actuality, the “secret armies” carried-out assassinations, bombings, massacres and false flag terror attacks against leftists, trade unionists and others throughout Europe.
See my interview with Stephen Kinzer about the post-war activities of the CIA, including its recruitment of Nazi and Japanese war criminals and its creation of black sites where former Nazis were hired to interrogate, torture and murder suspected leftists, labor leaders and communists, detailed in his book Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, here.
Fascism, which has always been with us, is again ascendant. The far-right politician Giorgia Meloni is expected to become Italy’s first female prime minister after elections on Sunday. In a coalition with two other far-right parties, Meloni is forecast to win more than 60 percent of the seats in Parliament, though the left-leaning 5-Star Movement may put a dent in those expectations.
Meloni got her start in politics as a 15-year-old activist for the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, founded after the World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini. She calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.” She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people. She has called on the Italian navy to turn back boats with immigrants, which the far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini did in 2018. Her Fratelli d’Italia, Brothers of Italy, party is a close ally of Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban. A European Parliament resolution recently declared that Hungary can no longer be defined as a democracy.
Meloni and Orban are not alone. Sweden Democrats, which took over 20 percent of the vote in Sweden’s general election last week to become the country’s second-largest political party, was formed in 1988 from a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish. It has deep fascist roots. Of the party’s 30 founders, 18 had Nazi affiliations, including several who served in the Waffen SS, according to Tony Gustaffson a historian and former Sweden Democrat member. France’s Marine Le Pen took over 41 percent of the vote in April against Emmanuel Macron. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party is the third largest party in Spain’s Parliament. The far-right German AfD or Alternative for Germany partytook over 12 percent in federal elections in 2017, making it the third largest party, though it lost a couple percentage points in the 2021 elections. The U.S. has its own version of fascism embodied in a Republican party that coalesces in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump, embraces the magical thinking, misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy of the Christian Right and actively subverts the election process.
Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis’ rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament. The Weimar government, tone deaf and hostage to the big industrialists, prioritized paying bank loans and austerity rather than feeding and employing a desperate population. It foolishly imposed severe restrictions on who was eligible for unemployment insurance. Millions of Germans went hungry. Desperation and rage rippled through the population. Mass rallies, led by a collection of buffoonish Nazis in brown uniforms who would have felt at home at Mar-a-Lago, denounced Jews, Communists, intellectuals, artists and the ruling class, as internal enemies. Hate was their main currency. It sold well.
The evisceration of democratic procedures and institutions, however, preceded the Nazis’ ascension to power in 1933. The Reichstag, the German Parliament, was as dysfunctional as the U.S. Congress. The Socialist leader Friedrich Ebert, president from 1919 until 1925, and later Heinrich Brüning, chancellor from 1930 to 1932, relied on Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution to largely rule by decree to bypass the fractious Parliament. Article 48, which granted the president the right in an emergency to issue decrees, was “a trapdoor through which Germany could fall into dictatorship,” historian Benjamin Carter Hett writes.
Article 48 was the Weimar equivalent of the executive orders liberally used by Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, to bypass our own legislative impasses. As in 1930s Germany, our courts — especially the Supreme Court — have been seized by extremists. The press has bifurcated into antagonistic tribes where lies and truth are indistinguishable, and opposing sides are demonized. There is little dialogue or compromise, the twin pillars of a democratic system.
The two ruling parties slavishly serve the dictates of the war industry, global corporations and the oligarchy, to which it has given huge tax cuts. It has established the most pervasive and intrusive system of government surveillance in human history. It runs the largest prison system in the world. It has militarized the police.
Democrats are as culpable as Republicans. The Obama administration interpreted the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force as giving the executive branch the right to erase due process and act as judge, jury and executioner in assassinating U.S. citizens, starting with radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki. Two weeks later, a U.S. drone strike killed Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, Anwar’s 16-year-old son, who was never linked to terrorism, along with 9 other teenagers at a cafe in Yemen. It was the Obama administration that signed into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, overturning the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military as a domestic police force. It was the Obama administration that bailed out Wall Street and abandoned Wall Street’s victims. It was the Obama administration that repeatedly used the Espionage Act to criminalize those, such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, who exposed government lies, crimes and fraud. And it was the Obama administration that massively expanded the use of militarized drones.
The Nazis responded to the February 1933 burning of the Reichstag, which they likely staged, by employing Article 48 to push through the Decree for the Protection of the People and the State. The fascists instantly snuffed out the pretense of Weimar democracy. They legalized imprisonment without trial for anyone considered a national security threat. They abolished independent labor unions, freedom of speech, freedom of association and freedom of the press, along with the privacy of postal and telephone communications.
The step from dysfunctional democracy to full blown fascism was, and will again be, a small one. The hatred for the ruling class, embodied by the establishment Republican and Democratic parties, which have merged into one ruling party, is nearly universal. The public, battling inflation that is at a 40-year high and cost the average U.S. household an additional $717 a month in July alone, will increasingly see any political figure or political party willing to attack the traditional ruling elites as an ally. The more crude, irrational or vulgar the attack, the more the disenfranchised rejoice. These sentiments are true here and in Europe, where energy costs are expected to rise by as much as 80 percent this winter and an inflation rate of 10 percent is eating away at incomes.
The reconfiguration of society under neoliberalism to exclusively benefit the billionaire class, the slashing and privatization of public services, including schools, hospitals and utilities, along with deindustrialization, the profligate pouring of state funds and resources into the war industry, at the expense of the nation’s infrastructure and social services, and the building of the world’s largest prison system and militarization of police, have predictable results.
At the heart of the problem is a loss of faith in traditional forms of government and democratic solutions. Fascism in the 1930s succeeded, as Peter Drucker observed, not because people believed its conspiracy theories and lies but in spite of the fact that they saw through them. Fascism thrived in the face of “a hostile press, a hostile radio, a hostile cinema, a hostile church, and a hostile government which untiringly pointed out the Nazi lies, the Nazi inconsistency, the unattainability of their promises, and the dangers and folly of their course.” He added, “nobody would have been a Nazi if rational belief in the Nazi promises had been a prerequisite.”
As in the past, these new fascist parties cater to emotional yearnings. They give vent to feelings of abandonment, worthlessness, despair and alienation. They promise unattainable miracles. They too peddle bizarre conspiracy theories including QAnon. But most of all, they promise vengeance against a ruling class that betrayed the nation.
Hett defines the Nazis as “a nationalist protest movement against globalization.” The rise of the new fascism has its roots in a similar exploitation by global corporations and oligarchs. More than anything else, people want to regain control over their lives, if only to punish those blamed and scapegoated for their misery.
We have seen this movie before.
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Chris Hedges
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
The US economy could sink into a quagmire of shrinking output, surging inflation, and soaring unemployment, renowned economist and New York University professor Nouriel Roubini warned last week during an eToro webinar.
He argued that the Federal Reserve might have to double interest rates to 5% in order to curb inflation. However, such an increase could choke economic growth and cause a spike in joblessness, Roubini stressed. Moreover, raising rates could trigger a debt crisis.
The economist also cautioned that the US regulator’s moves to rein in inflation could tank the economy, and cause crashes across stocks, bonds, housing, credit, private equity, and other assets in bubble territory. However, if the central bank gives up on fighting inflation, price increases could spiral out of control.
Stubborn inflation and the coronavirus pandemic might force the Fed to drive the US economy into an even deeper recession than the one it has avoided, Roubini warned.
“I worry about a stagflationary debt crisis, because you have the worst of the ’70s in terms of supply shocks, and you have the worst of the global financial crisis because of too much debt, and that combination is dangerous,” he said.
“If you’re behind the curve, eventually the recession is going to be more severe, the loss of jobs and income and wages is going to be more severe,” the economist explained, referring to the Fed’s rate hikes relative to inflation. “You need to be ahead of the curve.”
Roubini came to prominence for predicting the financial crisis of 2008-09 and was dubbed ‘Doctor Doom’ by Wall Street.
“Although there have been several high-profile and large-scale protests during the first half of 2022, the worst is undoubtedly yet to come,” the firm warned.
Soaring food, energy, and shelter inflation have led to what could be a new era of civil unrest worldwide. Pockets of unrest have been observed in Sri Lanka, Peru, Kenya, Ecuador, Iran, and Europe. New research forecasts a broader wave of discontent is just ahead.
Earlier this year, Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv warned that a “massive, immediate food crisis” is nearing. The UN said this summer that the world is “marching towards starvation” with an increased likelihood of civil unrest and political violence.
Making sense of the impending global turmoil is Verisk Maplecroft, a UK-based risk consulting and intelligence firm. They have just published an updated version of the Civil Unrest Index (CUI), covering seven years of data, showing the last quarter saw the most countries ever since the index was created move higher in civil unrest risks (101 of the 198 countries tracked by the firm saw increased risks of civil unrest, while only 42 experienced reduced risks).
“The impact is evident across the globe, with popular discontent over rising living costs emerging on the streets of developed and emerging markets alike, stretching from the EU, Sri Lanka, Peru to Kenya, Ecuador, and Iran, ” Verisk wrote in the report, adding conditions are worsening as the frequency of protests and labor strikes could accelerate into fall.
“Although there have been several high-profile and large-scale protests during the first half of 2022, the worst is undoubtedly yet to come,” the firm warned.
Verisk noted Algeria has the highest likelihood of projected civil unrest over the next half year because of rising inflation. Other areas include Europe, mainly due to energy hyperinflation decimating household finances.
“Bosnia and Herzegovina, Switzerland, Netherlands, Germany, and Ukraine are all among the states with the biggest projected increases in risk,” the report said.
“Only a significant reduction in global food and energy prices can arrest the negative global trend in civil unrest risk. Recession fears are mounting, and inflation is expected to be worse in 2023 than in 2022,” Verisk said.
The question remains if central banks can arrest inflation with the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades. If not, then Verisk expects: “the next six months are likely to be even more disruptive” than earlier this year.
The resistance is growing as more than 75,000 irritated people in the UK have pledged not to pay their electricity bill this fall when prices jump again.
“75,000 people have pledged to strike on October 1st! If the government & energy companies refuse to act then ordinary people will! Together we can enforce a fair price and affordable energy for all,” tweeted “Don’t Pay UK,” an anonymous group spearheading the effort to have more than one million Brits boycott paying their power bill by Oct. 1.
🔥 75,000 people have pledged to strike on October 1st!
If the government & energy companies refuse to act then ordinary people will!
The strike comes as an inflation storm of high energy prices has obliterated household incomes. Brits are the most miserable in three decades as inflation is expected to hit 13%. And while Bank of England (BoE) Governor Andrew Bailey hiked interest rates the most in 27 years to tame inflation, risks are mounting of a recession.
On Oct. 1, the average household will pay almost £300 a month for power, the BoE warned. Couple surging power costs with negative real wage growth, and it becomes apparent households are being squeezed. This excludes soaring prices for shelter, food, and petrol at the pump — this trend is unsustainable and could result in social instabilities.
British news outlet Glasgow Live said the strike is similar to the “action in the late 1980s and ’90s to fight against the poll tax brought in by PM Margaret Thatcher. In protest, 17 million people refused to pay.”
UK financial journalist and broadcaster Martin Lewis said this about the strike:
“I think I can categorise it more accurately now, the big movement that I am seeing is an increase of growth in people calling for a non-payment of energy bills, mass non-payment. Effectively a consumer strike on energy bills and getting rid of the legitimacy of paying that.
“We are getting close to a Poll Tax moment on energy bills coming into October and we need the Government to get a handle on that, because once it starts becoming socially acceptable not to pay energy bills people will stop paying energy bills and you’re not going to cut everyone off.”
Meanwhile, Ofgem (UK energy regulator) Chief Executive Jonathan Brearley told BBC Radio 4’s Today on Saturday that people shouldn’t join the strike for two reasons.
“First of all, it will drive up costs for everyone across the board. And secondly, if you are facing difficulty in paying your bill, the best thing you can do is get in touch with your energy company.”
He added: ‘I would not encourage anyone to withhold their paying their bill because that just damages things further and it will impact them personally.’
Last week, the UK government slammed the movement, calling it “highly irresponsible.”
“This is highly irresponsible messaging, which ultimately will only push up prices for everyone else and affect personal credit ratings,” a government spokesperson was quoted by The Independent.
Don’t Pay UK believes 6.3 million UK households will be pushed into power bill poverty this winter, with millions more feeling the stress of out-of-control inflation.
People on Twitter responded to the moment by saying, “the Revolution has begun” and “a bit of civil unrest on its way onto our streets & rightly so.”
Perhaps the movement’s involvement will be an excellent proxy for the growing discontent festering among Brits that could result in civil unrest this winter as millions will struggle with keeping the lights on, the furnace hot, and putting food on the table.
Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits.
In short, the real problem is not inflation. The real problem is the increase in corporate power and the decline in worker power over the past 40 years.
Robert Reich, is the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies.
Increased corporate power and the decline in worker power over the past 40 years is driving inflation. Unless we address this growing imbalance, corporations will continue siphoning off the economy’s gains, while everyday Americans get shafted.
Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits.
Prices are surging — but let’s be clear: Corporations are not raising prices simply because of the increasing costs of supplies and labor. They could easily absorb these higher costs, but instead, they are passing them on to consumers and even raising prices higher than those cost increases.
Corporations are getting away with this because they face little or no competition. If markets were competitive, companies would keep their prices down to prevent competitors from grabbing away customers.
But in a market with only a few competitors able to coordinate prices, consumers have no real choice.
Are they using these record profits to raise their workers’ real wages? No. They’re handing out meager wage increases to attract or keep workers with one hand, but effectively eliminating those wage increases by raising prices with the other.
So what are corporations doing with their record profits? Using them to boost share prices by buying back a record amount of their own shares of stock. Goldman Sachs expects buybacks to reach $1 trillion this year — an all-time high.
This amounts to a direct upward transfer of wealth from average working people’s wallets into CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets.
The Federal Reserve intends to curb inflation by continuing to raise interest rates. That would be a grave mistake because it doesn’t address corporate concentration and it will slow job and wage growth. The labor market isn’t “unhealthily tight,” as Fed Chair Jerome Powell claims. Corporations are unhealthily fat.
So what’s the real solution?
First, tougher antitrust enforcement to address the growing concentration of the economy into the hands of a few giant corporations. Since the 1980s, over two-thirds of American industries have become more concentrated, enabling corporations to coordinate price increases.
Next, a temporary windfall profits tax that takes corporations’ record profits and redistributes them as direct payments to everyday Americans struggling to cover soaring prices.
Third, a ban on corporate stock buybacks. Buybacks were illegal before Ronald Reagan’s SEC legalized them in 1982 — and they should be made illegal again.
Fourth, higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
In short, the real problem is not inflation. The real problem is the increase in corporate power and the decline in worker power over the past 40 years.
Unless we address this growing imbalance, corporations will continue siphoning off the economy’s gains into their CEOs’ and shareholders’ pockets — while everyday Americans get shafted.
Speaking to legislators in the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee on Monday, May 16, Bank of England Gov. Andrew Bailey said he is increasingly concerned about another massive surge in food costs if Ukraine, one of the world’s major growers of crops, is unable to ship out wheat and cooking oil from its warehouses due to the Russian blockade. (Related: Global hunger crisis on the horizon as US, Britain, Australia, others deliberately demolish their own food production.)
“The [risk] I’m going to sound rather apocalyptic about I guess is food,” said Bailey. “Ukraine does have food in store but it can’t get it out at the moment. While [the finance minister of Ukraine] was optimistic about crop planting, he said at the moment we have no way of shipping it out as things stand, and it is getting worse.”
“That is a major worry. It’s not just a major worry for this country, it is a major worry for the developing world,” he continued. “I am by no stretch of the imagination a military strategist, but whatever can be done to help Ukraine get its food out would be a huge contribution.”
British central bank “helpless” against food inflation
Speaking about the rising price of food, Bailey admitted feeling “helpless” against inflation. He admitted that inflation was far too high, but he blamed it on “a series of supply shocks” that had unprecedented effects on the global economy, including the war in Ukraine.
Bailey warned that he expects inflation to peak at around 10.2 percent. This would be Britain’s highest inflation rate in 40 years. He added that the Bank of England has little hope of bringing inflation back to its target of around two percent or less, as he has seen prices already climb by seven percent, if not more, even before the next expected surge in prices in the coming months.
“It is a very, very – more than uncomfortable – I am trying to think of a word that is even more severe than that. It is a very, very difficult place to be,” said Bailey. “To forecast 10 percent inflation and to say there is not a lot we can do about 80 percent of it, I can tell you it is an extremely difficult place to be. We have to recognize the reality of the situation we face.”
Traditional policy in the U.K. to combat high inflation requires the Bank of England to raise its interest rates. This would raise borrowing costs and slow down the growth of the domestic economy. Many experts and politicians in Britain have blamed the central bank for acting too slowly in enacting this and other policies that would have helped against inflation.
But the bank has only increased rates from 0.1 percent in December to one percent now in the hope of stopping the cost increases from feeding into the wider economy. It has argued against more rate increases by claiming that the current period of inflation does not have domestic causes but is coming from global markets.
The Bank of England has also been criticized for failing to reduce its quantitative easing money-printing program over the past decade. This has flooded the U.K. with new bills, further contributing to Britain’s current inflation crisis.
Because of the bank’s recent bungles, many leading members of government are “now questioning its independence.” Bailey hit back by claiming that the central bank’s independence and the trust placed on it to bring inflation back down are vital.
“This is the biggest test of the monetary policy framework that we have had in its 25 years,” said Bailey. “The independence of the bank and the target framework and the nominal anchor matter more than ever – more than in the easy times.”
Watch this episode of the “Health Ranger Report” as Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, provides a timeline of the coming food and diesel shortages that will soon hit America.
When the financial system imploded in 2008 because of the rampant speculation over the previous two decades, fueled by its determination to sustain the stock market after the crash of October 1987, the Fed instituted the regime of quantitative easing, pouring trillions into the financial system.
This brought about a massive redistribution of wealth to the upper echelons of society with stock portfolios rising to record highs as workers were hit with major job destruction as real wage reductions were enforced by the trade unions.
Yesterday’s large-scale sell-off on Wall Street, in which shares of major retail companies experienced their biggest decline since the October 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, was in response to clear indications the US and global economy are moving rapidly into recession.
A television screen on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, March 16, 2022, shows the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates. [AP Photo/Richard Drew]
Wall Street has been falling since it reached record highs at the start of the year as increasing interest rates hit high-tech companies whose rise has been fuelled by the pouring in of virtually free money by the US Federal Reserve. But this supply is now being cut off as the Fed lifts interest rates in response to the highest inflation in 40 years to clamp down on workers’ wage demands.
As a consequence, the tech-heavy NASDAQ index has fallen by more than 25 percent this year amid signs the speculative bubble is being deflated, increasing the risks of a major crisis in the financial system.
But yesterday’s sell-off, in which the Dow lost more than 1,100 points in its worst day in almost two years, the S&P dropped by 4 percent and the NASDAQ was down by 4.7 percent, marked a qualitative new turn as growing fears of recession took hold.
The shares of Target, one of the biggest US retailers, plunged by 25 percent after the company reported its costs had risen by $1 billion due to higher gas prices and transportation costs.
At the same time, it was hit by falls in discretionary spending as working-class families have had to divert growing portions of their declining real wages to spending on essential items, such as food and gas, in the face of an inflationary spiral which has seen the price of these items rise faster than the official inflation rate of 8.5 percent.
The Target crash was mirrored by Walmart whose shares fell 6.8 percent after dropping by 11 percent the previous day.
Numerous statements by Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell and other officials have made clear that, if necessary, the Fed will induce a recession on a scale equal to, or even greater than, that instigated by its chair Paul Volcker in the 1980s which created massive social and economic devastation.
Speaking at a conference on Tuesday, Powell made it clear the central bank would push ahead with its lifting of interest rates to suppress growing wage demands.
“Restoring price stability is a non-negotiable need. It is something we have to do. There could be some pain involved,” he said.
Powell’s remarks underscore the essential class and social dynamic which has shaped and determined Fed policy over decades.
When the financial system imploded in 2008 because of the rampant speculation over the previous two decades, fueled by its determination to sustain the stock market after the crash of October 1987, the Fed instituted the regime of quantitative easing, pouring trillions into the financial system.
This brought about a massive redistribution of wealth to the upper echelons of society with stock portfolios rising to record highs as workers were hit with major job destruction as real wage reductions were enforced by the trade unions.
When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in 2020 and the financial markets froze out of fear that necessary public health measures would impact Wall Street, the Fed shoveled over $4 trillion more into the financial system. The government bailed out the corporations and a return-to-work drive was initiated, in defiance of all science, to ensure the profit flow was not interrupted.
The refusal of governments around the world, following the lead of the US, to institute meaningful measures on an international scale to eliminate COVID-19, led to a supply chain crisis resulting in the escalation of inflation, fueled by the endless supply of money to the Wall Street speculators.
But the class struggle, suppressed for decades by the trade unions, is now re-emerging in the waves of strikes and social protests in the US and around the world.
The same class dynamic which created the crisis is at work, albeit in a different form, as the US Fed and other central banks move to impose a recession to crush this movement.
In the UK, where inflation has hit 9 percent, the highest rate for any of the major economies, the Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, while warning of an “apocalyptic” increase in food prices, has insisted that interest rate rises will continue whatever the cost. “We have to get [inflation] back to target. And that is clear,” he told the UK parliament this week.
The Fed’s tightening of monetary policy is already impacting on the global economy. Rising interest rates bring economic stagnation while the fall in domestic currencies vis-à-vis the dollar increases debt burdens and lifts inflation, especially in food.
This week the Institute of International Finance, a worldwide grouping of 450 financial companies, warned that the world economy would at best flatline this year with the recession risk “elevated” with a “disorderly tightening of financial conditions” underway.
Less-developed countries, struggling with the effects of COVID-19 and now the escalation of food prices because of the US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine are already being hit, leading to massive social protests and strikes spearheaded by the eruption against the Rajapakse government in Sri Lanka.
The social eruptions in that country are the outcome of global processes at work in every country and which will intensify in the next stage of the class war being waged by the ruling elites as they seek to make the working class pay for the crisis they have created.
There is no economic upturn in prospect. The trends are the same everywhere. The European economy is stagnant and on the brink of recession. The Japanese economy, the world’s third largest, contracted at an annualised rate of 1 percent in the first quarter. The US economy shrank at an annual rate of 1.4 percent in the same period.
The history of the economic events of the past decades and the past two years, in particular, is a searing indictment of the profit system.
Refusal to act on COVID has led to millions of unnecessary deaths and created an out-of-control upsurge in inflation.
The US-NATO proxy war against Russia has resulted in the food crisis that is imposing starvation on hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
The pumping out of trillions of dollars by the world’s central banks has fueled the inflation fire, while creating a mass speculative bubble that threatens to implode at any time.
And on top of this, finance capital is moving relentlessly to make the working class pay through ever lower wages and cuts to social services by inducing a recession with untold social and economic consequences.
The necessity for the international socialist reorganisation of society by the global working class is not some abstract conception or mere theoretical postulate. It is staring at mankind out of the chaos and devastation generated by the capitalist profit system.
The Governor of the Bank of England has warned of “apocalyptic” global food price rises and said he is “helpless” in the face of surging inflation as the economy is battered by the war in Ukraine.
Apocalyptic food shortages 2022
Andrew Bailey said he has “run out of horsemen” when counting the shocks facing Britain, with runaway energy and food costs driven by global market forces beyond his control.
Prices are rising at the fastest rate in 30 years, creating a “very big income shock” that is expected to intensify in the coming months with a risk of double-digit inflation before the end of the year.
Mr.Bailey told MPs on the Treasury Select Committee that he is increasingly concerned about a further surge in food costs if Ukraine, a major crop grower, is unable to ship wheat and cooking oils from its warehouses because of a Russian blockade.
The Governor said that he had spoken to Ukraine’s finance minister and added: “The [risk] I’m going to sound rather apocalyptic about I guess is food.
“Ukraine does have food in store but it can’t get it out at the moment. While [the finance minister] was optimistic about crop planting, he said at the moment we have no way of shipping it out as things stand, and it is getting worse.
“That is a major worry. It is not just a major worry for this country, it is a major worry for the developing world.
“I am by no stretch of the imagination a military strategist, but whatever can be done to help Ukraine get its food out would be a huge contribution.”
The comments from Mr. Bailey are likely to increase pressure on the Bank from Conservative MPs who are increasingly exasperated that he failed to act sooner.
Many experts believe the institution acted too slowly in increasing interest rates as prices took off last year, and it has also been criticized for failing to reduce its quantitative easing money-printing program over the past decade.
The bleak assessment will also likely add to pressure on the Treasury to hold an emergency Budget to tackle the cost of living crisis, after Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, chose to raise taxes at the same times as incomes were being squeezed.
Food prices are already surging because of fears about disruption. Ukraine supplies large parts of the Middle East with grain, and there is a risk that families will be unable to afford to eat unless a solution is found. Wheat prices rose as much as 6pc on Monday.
inflation food and gas prices
The Governor also admitted that the Bank has little hope of bringing inflation back to its 2pc target, with prices already climbing by 7pc and a further surge expected in the coming months.
Asked by MPs on the Treasury Select Committee if he felt “helpless” to control inflation, Mr Bailey said: “Yes.”
He said: “It is a very very, more than uncomfortable – I am trying to think of a word that is even more severe than that – it is a very very difficult place to be.
“To forecast 10pc inflation and to say there is not a lot we can do about 80pc of it, I can tell you it is an extremely difficult place to be. We have to recognise the reality of the situation we face.”
The traditional policy requires the Bank to raise interest rates to combat high inflation, which works by raising borrowing costs and slowing the domestic economy. But most price rises currently are coming from global markets, so this would have little effect in the short run.
Instead, the Bank has only increased rates from 0.1pc in December to 1pc now in the hope of stopping these cost increases feeding into the wider economy.
Once the energy price shock has passed it hopes inflation will fall back to 2pc.
So far the biggest impact on the UK has come through soaring gas bills and higher petrol prices, which could worsen depending on the supply of fossil fuels from Russia.
The series of shocks to inflation are so severe that a Cabinet minister criticized the Bank over the weekend for failing in its “one job – to keep inflation at around 2pc”.
extreme volatility in gas prices
Another cabinet minister told The Telegraph that Government figures are “now questioning its independence”.
Mr. Bailey hit back that the Bank’s independence and the trust placed in it to bring inflation back down are vital at a time of rampant price rises.
He said: “This is the biggest test of the monetary policy framework that we have had in its 25 years.
“What I would say to these people is, this is when the independence of the Bank and the target framework and the nominal anchor matter more than ever – more than in the easy times.”
If you have enough time here is the whole discussion:
He implied that he would be prepared to raise rates to control inflation even if that led to a recession, saying: “We have to get [inflation] back to target. And that is clear.”
Mr. Bailey suggested that he does not expect higher rates to trigger a house price crash, arguing that growth is likely to cool as the crisis bites but a “structural” shortage of properties will prevent a plunge.
Sir Dave Ramsden, a deputy governor at the Bank, said that it was hard to disentangle the impact that a post-Brexit labour shortage has had on inflation, given that data suggests the European Union and the US are both dealing with similar price surges and many countries are suffering more than the UK. Mr. Bailey added that he still believes Brexit will have a negative impact on trade over the longer term.
Meanwhile, the Confederation of British Industry called on the Chancellor to step in with extra help for poor households and for struggling companies.
Tony Danker, the business group’s director-general said it is crucial “to help people facing real hardship now; it’s the moral underpinning of our economy and society”.
“Putting pounds in the pockets of people struggling the most should not be delayed,” he said, adding that it is also vital to “start stimulating business investment now”, potentially by extending the Recovery Loan Scheme to help businesses get back on track after the pandemic and now the energy price shock. [Telegraph]
Most Americans didn’t understand that the exceedingly foolish decisions of our leaders would eventually have a major impact on how they live their lives every single day. But there are some of us that did. Many of us literally begged our politicians to stop borrowing and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have. But they refused to listen. And many of us literally begged the officials at the Federal Reserve to stop pumping trillions upon trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system. Of course, they wouldn’t listen to us either. Now our standard of living is steadily being eviscerated, and most of the population seems quite surprised that this is happening.
Flooding our economy with money was inevitably going to create an inflation crisis, and that is precisely what has happened.
Back in May 2020, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.96.
One year later, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $3.08.
That was more than a 50 percent increase in just 12 months.
Then on Monday, it hit another all-time record of $4.48 per gallon.
That means that the price of gasoline has risen almost another 50 percent since May 2021.
Has your paycheck gone up by 50 percent during each of the last two years?
Needless to say, most of you cannot answer that question affirmatively.
Of course, some areas of the country are being hit harder than others. In California, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has now reached $5.92.
But just wait until the war in the Middle East starts.
Once that occurs, it won’t be too long before many Americans are paying 10 dollars for a gallon of gasoline.
Meanwhile, food prices in the U.S. are rising at a pace that is unlike anything that I have ever seen before. Just check out these extremely alarming numbers that the government released last week…
Thursday’s report showed a broad-based rise in the cost of food at the wholesale level, with grains up 41.3 percent from a year ago as Russia’s war in Ukraine raises world prices. Both Russia and Ukraine are major grain producers.
The cost of eggs skyrocketed 161.3 percent, driven up by a bird flu outbreak that has killed 10 percent of chickens in the US. Processed young chickens were up 24.1 percent from a year ago.
Fresh vegetables were up 45.7 percent and fresh fruit rose 17.3 percent.
Eating fresh vegetables is a very good thing to do.
But now they will cost you 45 percent more than they did a year ago.
Has your paycheck gone up by 45 percent over the past year?
Sadly, food prices have been going crazy all over the globe, and this is going to hurt those on the bottom of the economic food chain the hardest.
In fact, the head of the Bank of England is using the word “apocalyptic” to describe the impact that these prices will have on the poor…
The Bank of England governor has blamed the war in Ukraine for the highest inflation in the UK for three decades and warned that “apocalyptic” food prices caused by Russia’s invasion could have a disastrous impact on the world’s poor.
And the head of the UN World Food Program is warning that extremely painful food prices could lead to widespread civil unrest in many areas of the planet…
A perfect storm of war, extreme weather and Covid-19 will drive global food prices to levels that will cause social unrest in some parts of the world, according to David Beasley, head of the United Nations World Food Programme.
“If people can’t feed their children and their families, then the politics unsettles,” Beasley told CNN during a conference on Thursday.
If you have been waiting for everything to “go back to normal”, you can stop.
The combination of rising home prices and higher interest rates — driven largely by the Federal Reserve’s more aggressive efforts to curb inflation — hiked monthly mortgage payments on the typical U.S. home by 19.5 percent in the first three months of the year, according to real estate listing service Zillow. Payments are 38 percent higher than a year ago.
Has your paycheck gone up by 38 percent over the past year?
I keep asking questions like that to point out the fact that your standard of living is being systematically destroyed.
It wasn’t just an intellectual exercise when I penned long article after long article about the evils of debasing our currency.
This is real.
I wasn’t joking when I warned that we were committing financial suicide. Now a day of reckoning has arrived, and everyone is expecting the same clowns that got us into this mess to get us out of it.
It ain’t gonna happen.
Once the next major crisis comes along, our leaders in Washington will respond by borrowing and spending even more money, and the “experts” at the Fed will respond by pumping even more fresh cash into the system.
But the American people just kept sending big spenders to Washington, and any political candidates that dared to be critical of the Federal Reserve were considered to be “fringe”.
Now we get to reap what we have sown, and it will not be fun at all.
“Our citizens should know the urgent facts…but they don’t because our media serves imperial, not popular interests. They lie, deceive, connive and suppress what everyone needs to know, substituting managed news misinformation and rubbish for hard truths…”—Oliver Stone
Tales from the Conspiratum 
