I'm Not Surprised

By rising food prices.

G. Edward Griffin - Inflation

Learn how institutions which can legally print money are artificially creating inflation every second. Those central banks are the root cause for decreasing the value of our money and also the value of our work.

How Inflation Helps The 1%

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The Tea Party Does Not Understand Inflation

If you’re not preparing for mega-inflation already, you need to start doing so NOW

Stick a fork in Bernanke's Monopoly money, it's done...

In case you missed it, earlier this week China announced that its foreign currency reserves are excessive and that they need to return to “reasonable” levels.

In politician speak, this is a clear, “we are sick of the US Dollar and will be taking steps to lower our holdings.” Remember, the US Dollar is China’s largest single holding. And China has already begun dumping Treasuries (US Debt).

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In simple terms, China is done playing nice and is now actively moving out of US Dollar denominated assets. This is the beginning of the US Dollar’s end as world reserve currency.

It’s Official: China Will Be Dumping US Dollars

China Worried About Inflation

Food, housing, raw materials, all rising in China.

In China’s latest move to fight inflation, the government said Sunday that Chinese banks would be required to set aside larger cash reserves.- China Orders Banks to Raise Reserves to Combat Inflation

It appears that China's "booming economy" is built on sand. Stimulus and increasing the money supply in the aftermath of the 2008 global crisis that threatened China's continued economic growth, only now, like in the US, the inflation chickens are coming home to roost. Now the very problem that the government there created is the "number one economic priority" that the Chinese government vows to fight. Idiots! The insane are running ALL the governments of the world.

Serious Inflation Coming

Get ready for more food inflation across the board in the coming months at your local grocery store, a lot more price inflation, including for staples such as dairy products, meat, and bread.

Coffee, sugar and cocoa prices will rise five- to 10-fold by 2014 because of shortages that will mean consumers getting “swamped” by food-price inflation, according to Superfund Financial.-Food Commodities Rise Seen Swamping Consumers With Inflation

The United States has enjoyed monetary stability for the last eighty years, a stability that has been the cornerstone of American prosperity—

—but that stability is set to end.

Most American consumers and investors don’t know it yet, but they are about to experience a profound, disruptive macro-economic crisis: A hyperinflationary event.

It has happened before in many countries, in many periods of history—Weimar Germany, Latin America, Zimbabwe—and it is about to happen in the United States.-Hyperinflation In America, A Message from Gonzalo Lira

Glenn Beck interviews "The Creature from Jekyll Island" author G. Edward Griffin

Relationship of Monetary Policy and Rising Prices

Hearing of the Domestic Monetary Policy and Technology subcommittee, March 17, 2011.


"It is unconscionable that published government statistics mislead Americans regarding the true rate of price inflation, which is much higher than commonly-reported CPI numbers," Paul stated. "It is also unconscionable that Federal Reserve Bank officials continue to deny the effects of their monetary expansion on consumer prices. Inflation, properly understood, is a monetary phenomenon. The price inflation Americans suffer today is largely the direct result of relentless monetary expansion by the Federal Reserve over the past decade. Our witnesses will explore how current monetary policy, including QE2, directly impacts the standard of living of Americans in ways that are not reflected in official government data."

Congressman Walter Jones, vice chairman of the subcommittee, stated, "The Fed has attempted to convince the public that its money printing campaign is necessary to stimulate America's economic recovery. Instead of recovery, the real effect of the Fed's money printing has been monetization of America's exploding fiscal deficits, devaluation of the dollar, and creation of inflation in asset prices across the board. As a result, working people in places like Eastern North Carolina are being squeezed at the gas pump and the grocery store as they struggle to make ends meet in a world in which their salaries have no chance of keeping up with Mr. Bernanke's printing presses."

Inflation Tsunami

The earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that hit Japan this past week and the destruction that it caused is nothing compared to the tsunami of inflation that will soon hit the U.S. as a result of this crisis. A tsunami of inflation in the U.S. will mean a complete collapse of our monetary system, which could lead to millions of deaths due to a lack of food and heat. 44 million Americans are now dependent on food stamps, but when the U.S. dollar becomes worthless as a result of hyperinflation, the government will no longer have the power to support these Americans and many of them will simply starve to death.

Japan's citizens were smart enough to save up $885.9 billion in U.S. treasuries to spend in a situation like it finds itself in today. The U.S. has no such savings and is the world's largest debtor nation. Our ability to survive depends on our ability to print money that has purchasing power. The only reason the U.S. dollar still has purchasing power is the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency.

All Japan has to do is sell their U.S. treasuries and they will have the financial resources necessary to rebuild the parts of their country that were destroyed by this past week's disaster. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Tuesday that he doesn't think Japan will unload their $885.9 billion in U.S. treasuries. It remains to be seen if Japan will do the right thing and sell their U.S. treasuries or if they will make the mistake of continuing to artificially prop up the U.S. economy.-Tsunami of Inflation to Hit U.S. with Japan Crisis

Food prices soared 3.9 percent last month, the biggest gain since November 1974. Most of that increase was due to a sharp rise in vegetable costs, which increased nearly 50 percent. That was the most in almost a year. Meat and dairy products also rose.-Wholesale prices up 1.6 pct. on steep rise in food

Preparation H (Hyperinflation)

“Happy days are here again! Stock markets are strong, company profits are up, bankers are making record profits and bonuses, unemployment is declining, and inflation is non-existent. Obama and Bernanke are the dream team making the US into the Superpower it once was.

Yes, it is amazing the castles in the air that can be built with paper money and deceitful manipulation of all economic data. And Madame Bernanke de Pompadour will do anything to keep King Louis XV Obama happy, including flooding markets with unlimited amounts of printed money. They both know that, in their holy alliance, they are committing a cardinal sin. But clinging to power is more important than the good of the country. An economic and social disaster is imminent for the US and a major part of the world and Bernanke de Pompadour and Louis XV Obama are praying that it won’t happen during their reign: ‘Après nous le déluge’…

…most nations seem to have the uncanny knack of selecting the political individuals who will put fuel on the fire and make the situation catastrophically worse.

Greenspan was one such individual. During his 19 years as Chairman of the Fed, he could have limited the economic and social damage that the US would suffer. Instead he took every single measure possible to ensure that there would be a catastrophe with uncontrollable consequences. But we shouldn’t just blame the incompetence of Greenspan. It was sickening to watch every sycophantic congressman and senator licking Greenspan’s boots and praising his wisdom. Because Greenspan’s money printing and incompetent interest rate management created one of the biggest financial bubbles in world economic history. But the politicians loved this. It made the stock market boom, and house prices surge…

Portfolio Preparation for Hyperinflation



"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value - ZERO"-Voltaire


We now live in a world where governments print worthless pieces of paper to buy other worthless pieces of paper that combined with worthless derivatives, finance assets whose values are totally dependent on all these worthless debt instruments. Thus most of these assets are also worth-less.

So the world financial system is a house of cards where each instrument’s false value is artificially supported by another instrument’s false value. The fuse of the world financial market time bomb has been lit. There is no longer a question of IF it will happen but only WHEN and HOW. The world lives in blissful ignorance of this. Stockmarkets remain strong and investors worldwide have piled into government bonds in a perceived flight to safety. Due to a century of money creation (and in particular since the 1970s) by governments and by the fractal banking system, investors believe that stocks, bonds and property can only go up. Understanding risk and sound investment principles has not been necessary in these casino markets with guaranteed payouts for anyone who plays the game. Maximum leverage and derivatives have in the last 10-15 years driven markets to unfathomable risk levels, with massive rewards for the participants.

In the meantime central banks are cranking up the printing presses but as Bernanke recently said quantitative easing is an “inappropriate” description of what should be called “securities purchases”! Who is he kidding? What the Fed is buying has nothing to do with “securities”. There is no security whatsoever in the rubbish the Fed is purchasing. They are buying worthless pieces of paper with worthless pieces of paper. This is the Ponzi scheme of all Ponzi schemes.

Let us be very clear, this financial Shangri-La is now coming to an end. The financial system is broke, many western sovereign states are bankrupt and governments will continue to apply the only remedy they know which is issuing debt that will never ever be repaid with normal money.

So why does the world still believe that the financial system is sound?-Hyperinflation will drive gold to unthinkable heights

U.S. Inflation Will Spiral Out of Control, Collapse of the Dollar Could Happen At Any Time!

China this morning reported 4.9% price inflation for the month of February, exceeding analyst expectations of 4.8%. With China now mimicking the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and taking steps to artificially manipulate their consumer price index (CPI) numbers as low as possible, it is likely that real price inflation in China is now closer to 10%. China was at least smart enough to raise interest rates last month by 25 basis points to 6.06%, while the Federal Reserve continues to leave interest rates near zero with there being absolutely no talk of the Federal Reserve ever raising interest rates again. China will be successful at containing inflation, as U.S. inflation spirals out of control and becomes the greatest economic crisis in American history.


U.S. Dollar Collapse Could Occur at Any Time

Inflation!

The stakes have seldom been higher. With the unemployment rate still above 9%, and federal debt at record levels, this latest error by the monetary authorities is likely to be the most costly since the Great Inflation of the 1970s. Monetary instability will slow employment growth and further erode confidence in government at the same time that higher interest rates will add billions of dollars to the interest cost on the national debt. Yet, failure to act in a timely basis will lead to an even greater crisis.

When it arrives, the Federal Reserve and its defenders will call it “cost-push” inflation and blame it on economic growth, the weather, Arab sheiks, China, and perhaps greedy companies and labor unions.

The actual cause of the looming crisis is the same as the cause of the Great Inflation of the 1970’s: a too easy monetary policy that has devalued the dollar by 40% against gold during the past two years.

Higher Inflation Is On The Way

Risking a Hyperinflationary Outcome

The bottom line is that by the time the Fed becomes institutionally aware that inflation is raging across the globe - and I often wonder when they'll finally awake to the threat - it will be too late. Inflation will have the momentum, and it will take a vast overreaction on the part of the Fed to restrain it. They'll have to drain enormous amounts of liquidity and tolerate vastly higher interest rates to be able to do that, and I doubt they have the courage for such bold action. I think they will hesitate, equivocate, and ultimately be late.

History suggests that inflation is best tamed early, but the Fed is already late and demonstrating a remarkable callousness by doing the exact opposite of fighting inflation. While we cannot know what it is that the Fed sees, or which demons it is fighting that provide the internal rationalization for risking a hyperinflationary outcome, we can only conclude that these threats are more spectacular than the alternatives.

Unfortunately, these events conform to the main themes that I have been writing and advising about for the past several years. Sadly, they are not a surprise at all; the only mystery to me so far is how they have managed to carry on as long as they have.

Events of the past few weeks - unrest in Tunisia/Egypt/Jordan, skyrocketing food prices, Dow cracking a 2-year high, dropping dollar with rising bond yields - make me even more confident in the conclusions of my recent report on How This Will All End (published January 12) in which I derive a calculated estimate of when a final fiscal deterioration will overwhelm even the best of intentions. While the money-printing-induced high we're currently on may feel fun today, the unavoidable inflationary smackdown we'll experience tomorrow most certainly will not.


How long can the party in stocks last?

Food Prices Skyrocket!

Grocery prices increased at more than 50 percent the rate of inflation in 2010, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Food prices increased an average of 1.7 percent between November 2009 and November 2010, in comparison with a general inflation rate of only 1.1 percent. The greatest price increases were seen among meat, poultry, fish and eggs, which went up in cost by 5.8 percent. The price of sugar and sweets increased 1.2 percent, the price of fats and oils increased 3 percent and the price of dairy-based products increased 3.8 percent.

The only commodities to go up in price more than food were medical care and transportation.

"I noticed just this month that my grocery bill for the same old stuff -- cereal, eggs, milk, orange juice, peanut butter, bread -- spiked $25," said Sue Perry, deputy editor of "ShopSmart" magazine. "It was a bit of sticker shock."

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Prices are only likely to keep rising. The Department of Agriculture has forecast a further 3 percent rise in food prices in 2011, but openly admits that the estimate is conservative.

"The USDA always plays it safe," said Wells Fargo agricultural economist Michael Swanson. Swanson predicted price increases of 4 percent, the highest since the 5.5 percent increases that led to riots worldwide in 2008.

Grocery prices skyrocket faster than official inflation

Food Price Index Surges To Highest Level On Record

Yes, "inflation is now a threat", but of course, the Federal Reserve's money printing has nothing to do with it. The kind of people that Bret considers "nuts" for worrying about a coming economic collapse have been warning for months about rising food prices, telling folks to buy food now and stock up. It's not too late, though, and NOW is the time. Watch food inflation soar in 2011!

Hyperinflation Ahead?

Lew Rockwell interviews Jorg Guido Hülsmann.

Quantitative easing is designed to bail out the federal debt, but it may presage Weimar.Dr. Hulsmann discusses the evils of central banking and fractional reserves, the blessings of deflation, and how Austrian economists are making vast progress.

Food Inflation

With the mainstream media once again being distracted by the debt crisis in Europe, a much larger crisis has been breaking out in China. China has been hit hard in recent weeks with massive food inflation. Food prices in China have risen by 10% during the past month, including a 20% rise in fruits and vegetables. McDonald's recently announced that they will be rising prices for products in all of their stores in China, including a $0.15 increase for Chicken McNuggets. Kweichow Moutai Co., China’s largest liquor maker, is expected to raise prices on their products by 24% this month.

In NIA's top 10 predictions for 2010, NIA predicted there would be major food shortages around the world. The China Banking Regulatory Commission is now admitting that there are severe shortages in China of corn, cotton, sugar, and other crops.

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The same food inflation crisis that China is currently experiencing will likely hit the U.S. in early 2011, only much worse. NIA believes it is only a matter of time before Congress places the blame for rapidly rising U.S. food prices on American "speculators" who are buying agricultural commodity ETFs and "hoarders" who have food storage at home. While China can easily solve their food inflation crisis by allowing the yuan to strengthen, the U.S. will have no way of solving its upcoming food inflation crisis. Despite the U.S. being a major producer of agricultural products and being mostly self-sufficient, oil is a very important commodity used in agriculture production and the U.S. needs to import most of its oil. Oil prices hit a new 52-week high last month of about $88 per barrel.

It is also important to realize that agricultural commodities now trade on the international market. Americans are now competing against the rest of the world for the consumption of food. The U.S. just raised its forecast for fiscal year 2011 agricultural commodity exports to $126.5 billion, up $13.5 billion from its last estimate three months ago. They didn't raise this estimate by 12% because the U.S. is increasing production, they raised it as an admission that high agricultural commodity prices are here to stay.

In recent weeks, the mainstream media in the U.S. has been running nightly reports about large crowds at U.S. shopping malls. The media has been hyping up "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" as signs that the U.S. recession is over and U.S. consumers are once again confident and spending money. The truth is, the only reason shopping malls are full is because U.S. retailers have not been passing on their wholesale price increases to consumers.-China Importing U.S. Food Inflation

The notion that inflation is harmful is a staple of economic science. But most textbooks underrate the extent of the harm, because they define inflation much too narrowly as a lasting decrease of the purchasing power of money (PPM), and also because they pay scant attention to the concrete forms of inflation. To appreciate the disruptive nature of inflation in its full extent we must keep in mind that it springs from a violation of the fundamental rules of society.

Inflation is what happens when people increase the money supply by fraud, imposition, and breach of contract. Invariably it produces three characteristic consequences: (1) it benefits the perpetrators at the expense of all other money users; (2) it allows the accumulation of debt beyond the level debts could reach on the free market; and (3) it reduces the PPM below the level it would have reached on the free market.

While these three consequences are bad enough, things get much worse once inflation is encouraged and promoted by the state (fiat inflation). The government’s fiat makes inflation perennial, and as a result we observe the formation of inflation-specific institutions and habits. Thus fiat inflation leaves a characteristic cultural and spiritual stain on human society.


The Cultural and Spiritual Legacy of Fiat Inflation

The Day the Dollar Died

National Inflation Association

Hyperinflation is Guaranteed

NIA believes that if the U.S. stays on its current path, we are guaranteed to see hyperinflation this decade. The only way it will be possible to prevent hyperinflation is if the U.S. government dramatically cuts spending across the board immediately and if the Federal Reserve raises interest rates from near zero percent (where they have been for nearly two years) to a level that is higher than the real rate of price inflation. Considering that the Federal Reserve still claims to fear deflation and just announced massive quantitative easing, we see very little chance of any major interest rate hikes taking place during the next six months.


National Inflation Association: Hyperinflation is Guaranteed if U.S. Stays on Current Path

Inflation Will Hit America With A Vengeance

The Fed is trying another round of QE, even though the first installment of $1.7 trillion did not work to actually repair the economy. We spent another $2 trillion in TARP and other stimulus that was, also, supposed to fix the economy. It’s a grand total of $3.7 trillion just in the last two years. (Some say it’s more than $12 trillion spent or committed.) All this money printing did inflate stock prices. It also helped out the big banks. It worked so well they are paying a record $144 billion in bonuses this year. What did the man on the street get?–foreclosure fraud and higher unemployment (22.5% according to Shadowstats.com). Now, the money is running out, and the Fed is back to printing to keep the economy from falling off a cliff–again. Nothing has been fixed; the day of reckoning has just been postponed, but this cannot go on forever. At some point, the U.S. dollar will take a severe plunge, and inflation will hit America with a vengeance.

Insanity or Ingenious?

Beware of Massive Food Inflation