Monthly Archives: February 2010

Hyper Inflation Starting?

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Drudge is red lettering these reports. The inflation is said to be “unexpected” but haven’t we crazed survival types been crying about this for months?

From CNBC:

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits increased 31,000 to 473,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That compared to market expectations for 430,000.

Another report from the department showed prices paid at the farm and factory gate rose a faster than expected 1.4 percent from December after a 0.4 percent gain in December, as higher gasoline prices and unusually cold temperatures helped boost energy costs.

“When you have PPI moving up and still no progress in the jobs situation, that doesn’t bode well for continued improvement in equity prices,” said Alan Lancz, president at Alan B. Lancz & Associates in Toledo, Ohio.

Last week was the survey week for the employment report for February, which is scheduled for release in early March.

The labor market, hardest hit by the worst recession in seven decades, has lagged the economic recovery that started in the second half of 2009. The economy has lost 8.4 million jobs since the start of the downturn in December 2007.

The PPI report may give investors, who keeping a wary eye on inflation following massive efforts by the Federal Reserve to pull the economy out of its worst slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s, something to worry about.

“The bottom line is that the Fed is going to have some decisions to make at its next meeting, since it seems inflation is now back on the table,” said Lancz.

Fed officials, keeping an eye on how quickly the recovering economy absorbs the excess slack that built up during the recession, have said they are likely to keep interest rates extraordinarily low for “an extended period.”

About three-fourths of the increase in PPI last month was due to a 5.1 percent jump in prices for energy goods, the department said. Energy costs were pushed up by a spike in prices for gasoline, liquefied petroleum and home heating oil.

Strong energy prices overshadowed a slowdown in the food prices, which rose 0.4 percent after increasing 1.3 percent in December.

Stripping out the volatile food and energy costs, core producer prices rose a faster than expected 0.3 percent last month after being flat in December. The core index had been forecast to rise 0.1 percent in January.

Er, how to explain this. Breitbart has video from this report that kind of does but this is pretty arcane stuff. In essence, there is going to be inflation that you will feel whenever yo pull out your wallet unless the Fed makes some moves to combat it including raising interest rates which they will never do.

Yahoo finance has more of the same. Job numbers are also a problem.

Thanks for the “recovery” Obama.

TEOTWAWKI is Here Link Round-Up

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A lot of people think of TEOTWAWKI as a single catastrophic event. I call this the zombie apocalypse scenario, where you go to bed one day and wake up in a world of complete chaos the next. Obviously this is more of a fantasy than reality, as real world examples of economic collapse (like Argentina) and natural disasters (like Katrina) show that no matter how bad things get there is no situation in which there is not nominal government authority. Your pipe dream of making a living looting empty stores will never happen.

TEOTWAWKI as simply The End of the World as We Know it has already happened. Our lifestyles of cheap credit, plentiful food and American decadence are over and most people haven’t even realized it:

Suburban homelessness is at record levels, and the new homeless comprise former blue and white collar workers:

ROOSEVELT, N.Y. – Homelessness in rural and suburban America is straining shelters this winter as the economy founders and joblessness hovers near double digits — a “perfect storm of foreclosures, unemployment and a shortage of affordable housing,” in one official’s eyes.

“We are seeing many families that never before sought government help,” said Greg Blass, commissioner of Social Services in Suffolk County on eastern Long Island.

“We see a spiral in food stamps, heating assistance applications; Medicaid is skyrocketing,” Blass added. “It is truly reaching a stage of being alarming.”

The federal government is again counting the nation’s homeless and, by many accounts, the suburban numbers continue to rise, especially for families, women, children, Latinos and men seeking help for the first time. Some have to be turned away.

“Yes, there has definitely been an increased number of turnaways this year,” said Jennifer Hill, executive director of the Alliance to End Homelessness in suburban Cook County, Illinois. “We’re seeing increases in shelter use along the lines of 30 percent or more.”

In a perhaps related note Minneapolis wants to limit the amount of time people can park at a rest stop to six hours.

Large retailers are cutting the number of brands they carry. Even Wal-Mart! Stock up on your favorite toothpastes now!

Pennsylvania man dies waiting for ambulance … for 30 hours. He made 10 911 calls:

Snow-covered roads, poor communication and a 911 center deluged with more than double the average number of calls during last week’s crippling snowstorms combined to cause Mr. Mitchell’s long wait, city officials said.

Ambulances were dispatched three times on Saturday, Feb. 6, to the couple’s home in the 5100 block of narrow Chaplain Way, but couldn’t get there because of the snow. Paramedics twice asked whether Mr. Mitchell could walk to an intersection, even after he told them that he could not because he was in too much pain.

Emergency vehicles were within blocks of his home three times — once so close Ms. Edge could see the ambulance lights from her porch — but did not make contact with him. They finally reached the home on Sunday morning, Feb. 7, but Mr. Mitchell was already dead.

Even A.B.C. is now running stories on how the debt will cripple our nation with tax increases and spending cuts that “aren’t even imaginable.”

China is dumping our treasuries.

The Kansas City Fed President is warning that our debt is unsustainable.

Crow Nation tribal members held a Tea Party where they called on the tribe to break from the federal government.

Credit card holders are facing “crippling” rate increases.

L.A. is set to lose thousands of jobs and will have its credit rating downgraded making it harder to borrow money.

Texas is challenging the E.P.A.’s greenhouse gas emissions ruling.

The U.S. almost had a failed treasury auction. If you only read one link, read this one.

The strengthening dollar is going to hurt our export market, thus our recovery.

Don’t expect to wake up to TEOTWAWKI. The decline of our lifestyles as we knew them started last year and in all likelihood will continue to do so no matter what plans either party comes up with. Are you prepared to live through that?

h/t Drudge and Survivalblog

John Podesta: A Constitutional Republic Sucks

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Surprise! Center for American Progress head and George Soros lackey John Podesta thinks Obam’s inability to run America Hugo Chavez style and the American people’s ability to have input into policy decisions “sucks” and makes him very unhappy. Podesta has has a long career of circumventing the Constitution that lefty loyalists would like Americans to forget but Podesta isn’t concerned that his nascent Communism comes to the fore.

After all most progressives are Communists themselves.

Via Breitbart:

Tone deaf? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Podesta is advocating an all powerful executive branch isn’t he? Doesn’t that fly in the face of lefty mythology about how evil Bush was?

Democrat Dark Horse Candidate Wants “Tea Baggers” to Help Her Campaign

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Forget the fact that she’s a far left weirdo who claims that she’s the world’s only impoverished small business owner and even Democrats are against, Tamyra D’Ippolito is possibly the most tone deaf and asinine politician on the planet. This is one of her Facebook updates, word for word:

We are calling all people to file signatures tomorrow Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Tea Baggers, everyone with a pulse go to your county clerks office tomorrow before noon in your district.

Nothing will rally people to your side like using a vulgar sexual reference designed to insult them. I kind of hope she wins the primary.

So does Allahpundit.

Texas Democratic Candidate Farouk Shami Says White People Won’t Work, 9/11 an Inside Job

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What the hell is in the water in Texas? First Paulnut Debra Medina loses the Glenn Beck endorsement by supporting trutherism, now she has a Democrat counter part who doubles down on that and adds in some race baiting for good measure.

From WFAA:

Race became an issue in the Democratic primary for governor today.

Farouk Shami, the millionaire hair care products maker who’s running, said he doesn’t find many white people willing to work, so he says he hires Hispanics and blacks instead.

He made the comments responding to a question about whether the state should crack down on employers hiring illegal immigrants.

He also said he, too, would not disavow the conspiracy theory that the U.S. government was involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

[…]

Asked to explain what he meant about not hiring many whites, he said they want special treatment. “A majority of the people are going to be Hispanic and African-American. You don’t find white people who are willing to work in factories. And our history proves, you know, lots of time when they, you know, the white people come to work in a factory they either want to be supervisors or they want to be, you know, paid more than the average person. And unfortunately they exit.”

And then just a day after Medina, didn’t reject the notion that the government was involved in the 9/11 attacks, Shami didn’t either.

“I’m not sure. I am not going to really judge or answer about something I’m not really sure about. But the rumors are there that there was a conspiracy. True or not? It’s hard to believe, you know, what happened. It’s really hard to comprehend what happened. Maybe. I’m not sure.”

I assume he’s also not sure he wants to be Governor of Texas.