Wheat, soybeans, and corn are basic for feeding people and animals around the world—certainly in the Western world. They’ve become much more expensive to produce. In today’s era of industrial agriculture, fertilizer is of critical importance. All of the main fertilizers—nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium compounds—have tripled or more.
It’s unlikely that they’re going to come down anytime soon because Russia and the Ukraine are two of the world’s largest fertilizer producers. Even if the Ukraine war ends soon, there will still be import/export restrictions on Russia. Availability from Ukraine will be limited because of war-related difficulties producing and shipping fertilizer abroad—on top of the fact actual grain production has collapsed. The world seems to have forgotten that from the 20s to the 80s, there was consistent and widespread hunger in Ukraine and Russia. Since then, they’ve transformed into two of the world’s biggest exporters—but that can change overnight.
And it’s not just fertilizer, planting, and transport. Fuel is critical for running tractors and processing everything. Oil is over $100 a barrel right now—also about double recent levels. I think it’s going to stay there and probably go higher because of the Green mania gripping the world. Large oil companies like Shell and BP, run by PC suits, intend to get out of the oil business. Their boards have been infiltrated with ESG types, and their hiring practices bow to diversity and inclusion. We’re looking at a situation where actual oil production is headed down at the same time that costs have gone up.
When the price of food and fuel go up radically, the planet’s poor are disproportionately affected. They’re going to riot. They don’t know who’s at fault. But since they’ve been taught their governments are cornucopias, they’ll blame the rich.
We’ll soon see financial chaos, which will lead to economic chaos, political chaos, and social chaos. What we’re hearing about in Sri Lanka and Peru is just the beginning. The US won’t be immune.
The hysteria surrounding COVID shut down a good part of the world’s production, made transportationnationally and internationally much slower and more expensive—the cost of shipping a container from China to the West Coast went from $3000 to $25,000. The public was encouraged to run around as if their hair was on fire. It wasn’t COVID itself but the insanity surrounding it that greatly compounded the situation.
What I’m afraid of is that there’s going to be a COVID 2.0, and then COVID 3.0, and then something else. That augurs poorly for price stability and social stability in the future. Before it’s over, I don’t doubt that the hoi polloi will clamor for a “Great Reset” like that the World Economic Forum is promising them.
Thanks to the Covid madness, governments have normalized the use of lockdowns. It’s a new tool in their toolbox. For example, there have been whispers about governments implementing lockdowns to address so-called climate change.
Let’s look at governments, which actually produce nothing and serve little useful purpose. Their main gifts to humanity are wars, pogroms, persecutions, proscriptions, inflation, taxes, and regulations. It’s as if the whole planet suffers from Stockholm Syndrome. I promise you governments will do whatever they think necessary to survive. Their citizens—subjects is a more honest word—are really just means to their ends. Governments believe they should manage their populations, viewing them as cattle in a feedlot. Of course, they’d prefer the cattle to be healthy and even happy. But that’s not the prime directive. It’s that the government itself survives.
A perfect example of this is what’s going on in Shanghai now. It’s actually unbelievable—but true—that the Chinese government has a city of 25 million people locked in their apartments. They can’t even leave to get food. Rotten vegetables are dispensed to them like prisoners or captive animals. Hundreds of thousands more have been placed in gruesome facilities, packed in like cattle if they’re suspected of having COVID. In many cases, people’s pets are being slaughtered. It’s criminally insane.
But what’s even more insane is that 25 million people are accepting this just because they’re told to. Why don’t the Shanghaiese grab meat cleavers, swarm out into the streets, and take care of business, pursuing the chain of command as far as it will go? The answer is that they know the CCP would send in the Red Army. I suppose it’s understandable that they’d rather cringe on their knees like slaves because that offers at least a chance of survival, no matter how degraded. Americans would likely bow to their government the same way.
So, yes, I think we’re going to see lots more of that type of thing in the world.
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