How To Whip Inflation Now (WIN) In Five Easy Steps

Well, it's official.  The infamous "Inflation Dragon" has finally been rudely awakened after a long 40 year slumber, and what was thought to be merely "transitory" last year has turned out to be anything but.  This inflation has several causes, and the collateral damage from lockdowns (and the FERAL Reserve and federal government's attempts to paper it over with unprecedented spending, money creation, and rock-bottom interest rates), supply chain snarls, and corporate greed all played a part.  And that is before the most recent cause, namely the Russia-Ukraine war and the resulting sanctions that decreased fuel supplies and increased fuel prices, with knock-on effects on food prices as well.

We do know how to solve this though, despite the FERAL Reserve and federal government apparently being far too milquetoast to do so as of yet:

1. Raise interest rates, sharply and quickly, as high as it takes, until inflation drops below 3%.  Then, and only then, should rates be cut.
2. Shrink the Fed's massively bloated $9 trillion (!) balance sheet by ending Quantitative Easing (buying bonds) and beginning Quantitative Tightening (selling bonds).
3. Raise the reserve ratio to at least 10% and sterilize all excess reserves.
4. Suspend all fuel taxes for 90 days, if not all general sales taxes as well.
5. The federal government should buy fuel, food, etc. at a premium, and sell it to the population at a loss.  Just like the Pentagon already does with the military.  That would also incentvize production as well, and thus reduce the supply shortages that are the root cause of inflation.

And it should go without saying, but also we need to also end all remaining Covid restrictions and states of emergency, and yesterday is not soon enough.  And the Russia-Ukraine war needs to be brought to a swift and diplomatic end ASAP, or at the very least no further escalations.  The sanctions against Russia have basically served their purpose already now, so let's not cut off our proverbial nose to spite our face.

And even if raising interest rates high enough ends up triggering a recession like in 1980-1982, remember that persistently high inflation can have an even worse effect in the long run, so temporarily hiking rates is the lesser evil here.  And once inflation is under control, then cutting rates fairly quickly should ameliorate any lingering adverse effects of high interest rates.  Another round of stimulus checks may also be called for once inflation is finally beaten.

Raising interest rates works by increasing the demand for dollars via the reward for holding such dollars, thereby increasing the value of the currency.  It is this effect, far more so than the decreased supply of dollars, that really squeezes inflationary expectations out of the system.  Of course, keeping rates too high for too long increases "cost-push" inflation by increasing borrowing costs, so it is a balancing act.

As Rodger Malcolm Mitchell notes, the best way to cure stagflation is to 1) raise interest rates to cure the inflation, and 2) increase federal deficit spending to cure the stagnation.  Which is exact what happened in the early 1980s, albeit with a lag between measures 1 and 2.  Had there been no lag between the two, the effectively "engineered recession" may not have even occurred at all, or would have been much milder.  

As for oil (and thus gasoline, diesel, etc.) prices in the 1980s, well, the market ultimately worked its magic and the oil shortage eventually turned into an oil glut.  And prices subsequently crashed to levels not seen in a while, not to rise even close to their previous peak until decades later.  Funny how that works when markets are left to their own devices long enough.

One mistake NOT to make, of course, is government-imposed price and wage controls like Nixon did, which inevitably lead to shortages and rationing, making the problem worse in the long run.  Prices are essentially signals for the market, and trying to bluntly and artificially force prices down by legislative or executive fiat has a very long history of backfiring.  That said, a "windfall profits tax" on corporations would go a long way to taming the root causes of inflation from the corporate greed angle.

So what are we waiting for?

FINAL THOUGHT:  Some may argue that all of this inflation, and the policies that promote it, is a deliberate "controlled demolition" of the world's major currencies, so that the globalist oligarchy (WEF, IMF, World Bank, and all of their many tentacles including the various central banks and corporate banks) can usher in a global Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) and global Universal Basic Income (UBI) after crashing the dollar and other national (or supranational) currencies.  That may be so, thus the best thing that Monetarily Sovereign nations like the USA can do would be to 1) Increase the value of their own currency by hiking interest rates yesterday, 2) Issue their own UBIs (with truly NO strings attached) in their own currencies to pre-empt the globalists by beating them to it, and 3) Do NOT even THINK about phasing out cash in favor of purely digital currencies of any kind, and/or giving up the nation's Monetary Sovereignty to any global or supranational entity!  What the globalist oligarchs want is a totalitarian's dream come true, with plenty of strings attached in the form of CCP-style "social credit" scoring on steroids--and the worst nightmare for the rest of us.

JUNE UPDATE:  The Treasury has another tool they can use, the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), to help increase production and thus reduce the large and widening mismatch between supply and demand.  That would actually target the supply side of the equation, something that merely raising interest rates cannot do.  So what are they waiting for?

State Of The Planet Address 2022

It is now 2022, and this year the TSAP will not waste any time giving our annual State of the Planet Address as we do every year.  Yes, we know it is a bit of a downer to say the least.  So sit down, take off your rose-colored glasses, and read on:

Our planet is in grave danger, and has been for quite some time now.  We face several serious long term problems:  climate change, deforestation, desertification, loss of biodiversity, overharvesting, energy crises, and of course pollution of many kinds.  Polar ice caps are melting.  Rainforests have been shrinking by 50 acres per minute.  Numerous species are going extinct every year.  Soil is eroding rapidly.  Food shortages have occurred in several countries in recent years.  Weather has been getting crazier each year thanks to climate change.  We have had numerous and often record-breaking wildfires, floods followed by long periods of drought, and a "storm of the century" at least once a year for the past several years.   And it is only getting worse every year.  In fact, 2020 is tied with 2016 as having been the hottest year on record.  Look no further than the three record-breaking storms in the past 15 years:  Katrina (2005, highest storm surge), Sandy (2012, largest diameter), and now Harvey (2017, a 1000-year flood, and overall worst hurricane on record), followed by Irma and Maria which devastated Puerto Rico, for a taste of the not-too-distant future.  And that was before Hurricane Michael devastated a rather large chunk of Florida.  And now Texas is being plagued by wildfires.

None of this is an accident of course.  These problems are man-made, and their solutions must also begin and end with humans.  We cannot afford to sit idly by any longer, lest we face hell and high water in the not-too-distant future.  Our unsustainable scorched-earth policy towards the planet has to end.  Yesterday.

While we do not invoke the precautionary principle for all issues, we unequivocally do for the issue of climate change and any other environmental issues of comparable magnitude.  In fact, for something as dire as climate change, as of 2015 we now support a strong "no regrets" approach.  With no apologies to hardcore libertarians or paleoconservatives, in fact. We are not fazed one bit by the naysayers' pseudoscience as it does not really "debunk" the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming. The only serious debate is about how fast it will happen, and when the tipping point (or points) will occur. It is not a matter of if, but when. And the less precarious position is to assume it is a real and urgent problem. We need to reduce CO2 emissions to the point where the CO2 concentration is at or below 350 ppm, ASAP.  And it is currently at an unsustainably high level of 400+ ppm, and growing rapidly every year.

Given the latest IPCC report, which is truly nothing short of horrifying, the general consensus among climate scientists is that we have only at most 12 years left (now more like 11) to act radically before truly catastrophic climate change is a foregone conclusion.  And 2030 will be here before we know it.  

Now THAT is a national emergency!  And a global one, in fact.  Thus, a full-steam-ahead, Green New Deal 2.0 is LONG overdue.  We have already squandered over a whole decade since Copenhagen, and we cannot afford to squander even one more day, let alone another decade.

Solving the problem of climate change will also help to solve the other ecological crises we are facing, for they all ultimately have the same root causes, not least of which is our insatiable addiction to dirty energy.  However, there is a right way to solve it, and several wrong ways.  Technology is important, but it won't be decisive on its own (economics geeks may recall Jevons Paradox).  The real problem is the paradigm that our society has been following, and that system is based on wetiko, the parasite of the mind and cancer of the soul.  It often seems that the only difference between capitalism and cannibalism is the spelling.

The TSAP endorses the ideas embodied in Steve Stoft's new book Carbonomics, most notably a tax-and-dividend system that would tax carbon (i.e. fossil fuels) at the source, and give all Americans an equal share of the revenue generated from this tax.  (Note that our proposal to tax natural resources and pay out an Alaska-like citizen's dividend already includes this.)  Yes, prices for various things would undoubtedly rise due to this tax, all else being equal, but the dividend will allow Americans to pay for this increase. The average American would in fact break even, but those who (directly or indirectly) use less energy than average will effectively pay less tax, while the energy hogs will effectively be taxed more, as they should be. Thus it is certainly not a regressive tax, and may even be mildly progressive. This is both the simplest and most equitable way to reduce carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution, not to mention waste of dwindling non-renewable resources. The real challenge is getting the feds to accept something that won't directly benefit them (in the short term).  Carbonomics also includes other good ideas, such as improving how fuel economy standards are done, and crafting a better verison of the Kyoto treaty.   

In addition to the ideas in Carbonomics, we also support several other measures to help us end our addiction to fossil fuels once and for all.  Our Great American Phase-Out plan would phase out all fossil fuels by 2030 at the latest, via alternative energy, efficiency, and conservation.  One good idea to further the development of alternative energy would be the use of feed-in tariffs for renewable power sources. 

Of course, it is not enough to stop emitting carbon dioxide, we also need to remove the current excess levels of it from the atmosphere as well, as that stuff can otherwise linger for centuries and continue wreaking havoc on the climate.  We support ending net deforestation completely, planting a LOT more trees, and putting carbon back in the ground through carbon sequestration. One method is known as biochar, a type of charcoal made from plants that remove carbon dioxide from the air, that is subsequently buried. This is also an ancient method of soil fertilization and conservation, originally called terra preta.  It also helps preserve biodiversity.  Another crucial method would be regenerative organic farming, which also turns the soil into an effective carbon sink as well.  And we will most likely also need to employ higher-tech methods of sucking carbon out of the air as well.

We've said this before, and we'll say it again.  Our ultimate goal is 100% renewable energy by 2030, but we need to hedge our bets.  We can phase out fossil fuels, or we can phase out nuclear power, but we can't do both at the same time--and fossil fuels need to be phased out first, and quickly.  Nuclear is doing a pretty good job of phasing itself out as it is.  So let's not get rid of it prematurely.  

LENR (low energy nuclear reactors) and fusion power are also worth considering.

But the biggest elephant in the room (make that the elephant in the Volkswagen) is overpopulation.  It does not make for pleasant dinner conversation, but it must be addressed or else all other causes become lost causes in the long run. We absolutely need to have fewer kids, or nature will reduce our population for us, and the latter will NOT be pleasant to say the least. The TSAP believes in voluntarily reducing the total fertility rate (TFR) to 1.5-1.9 children per woman to do so, but let us be clear that we do NOT support draconian and/or coercive measures of population control (like China has used).  We believe that more liberty is the answer, not less.  In fact, the two most effective means of reducing the birthrate are poverty reduction and female empowerment.

Fortunately, America's TFR has recently dropped to a record low of about 1.73 with no indication of rising back above replacement rate in the near term.  And with the massive social and economic fallout from the pandemic and especially the lockdowns, the TFR is forecast to drop to 1.6 for 2021 (and even that is most likely an overestimate).  But clearly we cannot keep growing and growing, that's for sure (in fact, we need to shrink). And our insatiable addiction to economic growth (despite being decoupled from well-being) is also every bit as harmful as overpopulation as well, if not more so.  Growth for the sake of growth, the ideology of the cancer cell,  is clearly one of the most asinine obsessions our nation (and world) has ever had.  We clearly need to transition to a steady-state economy, most likely following a period of what Naomi Klein calls "selective degrowth" as well.  And to do that, we need a radical paradigm shift to happen yesterday.  Put another way, we need to leave room for Nature, lest Nature not leave room for us.  We have been warned, decades ago in fact.  Unfortunately, such warnings have largely fallen of deaf ears until very recently.

Yesterday is the time to jettison the Twin Big Lies that "everybody must work for a living" and "everybody must procreate".  Because doing so is the sine qua non of any realist plan to avert ecological catastrophe.

Last but not least, the TSAP now believes that as long as men remain in charge, we are all merely rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Let's face it, it ain't gonna be us fellas who will save the world, as the past 7000 years or so have shown.  We paved paradise and put up a parking lot, we created a desert and called it peace.  We devoured and suffocated our own empire, and our proverbial 15 minutes of fame is almost up.  Only when women finally take over and reclaim their rightful position as the new leaders of the free world--and they will--will there be any real permanent solution.

Bottom line: we need to take the environment much more seriously than we do now.  We ignore it at our own peril.  And while the current administration in DC clearly doesn't care, We the People must act nonetheless.  With no apologies to the deniosaurs or Big Oil, Big Gas, or Dirty Coal.

Oh, by the way, wanna hear a joke?  Peak Oil.  Not saying it won't happen, of course--it will eventually peak and decline at some point--but climate change kinda supersedes it.  While conventional oil most likely has already peaked, there is more than enough total oil (including unconventional) to deep-fry the Earth--and most of which needs to stay in the ground if we wish to avoid catastrophic climate change.  Fossil fuels are, after all, what Buckminster Fuller referred to as our planet's "energy savings account", which we need to wean ourselves off of and save just in case of a planetary emergency--and he first said this in 1941!

So quibble all you want, but the truth must be faced head-on.  Hindsight is 2020, and we have a planet to save.  So let's roll!

UPDATE:  We never thought we would ever have to say this, but the TSAP does NOT support a "climate lockdown" or any other type of lockdown for that matter.  It is at best a category error, and would do far more harm than good in the long run.  And of course it flies in the face of the basic principles of anything remotely resembling a free society.  So take that off the table now!

It should also go without saying, but we at the TSAP DO NOT support the WEF "Great Reset", social credit scoring, or a cashless society (aka CBDC) either.  Those are a totalitarian's dream come true, and our worst nightmare come true for the rest of us.  We believe that the answer is MORE liberty and democracy, not less.

Behold, The Millennial Remover

Two years ago at the start of the pandemic, the COVID-19 virus was very tastelessly nicknamed the "Boomer Remover" giving how age-stratified the death rates were already known to be, thus disproportionately killing Baby Boomers.  And now, two years later, there is now apparently a "Millennial Remover" in town these days, and this time it's not a virus.  Rather, it's a group of novel experimental gene therapy jabs masquerading as "vaccines" that have been imposed by force, coercion, and/or blatant fraud on millions of people.  And the victims are disproportionately young, including children, teens, and younger adults, as well as older adults too.

First, Google "died suddenly" and click News.  Then look at the surprisingly young ages of those who died.  Then look at the Google Trends curve for "died suddenly", it practically looks like a hockey stick from Q3 of 2021 onwards.  Then look at how the supposed lifesaving effect of the jabs is largely an artifact of deliberately ignoring the first two weeks of data after the first dose (and probably the second and third dose as well), and looking only at virus deaths.  Negative efficacy (by the jabs suppressing the immune system, ironically) in the first two weeks basically pulls forward and front-loads many infections and thus deaths that would have otherwise occurred a bit later, in addition to the jab injury excess deaths on top of it.

As Steve Kirsch has noted, the insurance industry has recently reported a 40% increase in overall death rates among 18-64 year olds in Indiana in 2021 compared to pre-pandemic levels.  That is huge!  Normally, overall death rates don't change anywhere near that much from year to year.  And it was worst in the third and possibly fourth quarters of 2021.  The official press release seems to insinuate that it was the virus that caused all (or nearly all) of the increase, but they are clearly ignoring the massive elephant in the room--the jabs.  And given the timing and the age group, the jabs are the largest and most likely culprit of all.  Notice they didn't compare 2021 (virus and vaccine) specifically with 2020 (virus but no vaccine), as that would have been too obvious, of course.  

If that is not a screaming loud safety signal, the largest in all of recorded history in fact, we really don't know what is!  (Over 1000 studies concur.)

Looking closer, we can see the age group 25-44 year olds (i.e. Millennials) are seeing an 84% excess death rate now, as Edward Dowd has pointed out.  This is the worst excess mortality seen in modern history!  If not the jabs, what else could it possibly be?  We didn't see anywhere near this kind of excess among people that young in 2020 or even early 2021, so blaming it on the virus (or even its sequelae) rings hollow.

And for those who are still not convinced, the Department of Defense data on death rates in the US military (one of the most vaccinated institutions in the nation, and known for keeping excellent records in general) are also quite disturbing as well.

Keep in mind that these deaths are, of course the very tip of a very large iceberg of jab injury.  Many more have yet to be uncovered, and many many more people, of course have been maimed by these jabs, sometimes likely permanently.

Some may still speciously claim that all or nearly all of these excess premature deaths are actually Covid, or perhaps longer-term sequelae of Covid, deaths disguised as non-Covid deaths.  But New Zealand had barely any Covid or flu in 2021, not getting their first real wave in earnest until February 2022.  And yet, they still had excess deaths in the latter half of 2021, coinciding almost perfectly with their extensive "vaccine" rollout.  So either 1) the New Zealand government has been lying through their teeth all along about their Covid numbers, or more likely, 2) the "vaccines" are in fact at least as deadly as the skeptics feared (and, at least for those under age 70 and reasonably healthy, significantly deadlier than the virus itself).  Neither of which is very flattering at all to either Team Vaccine OR Team Zero Covid.  

And embalmers in the USA have seen some pretty scary stuff recently as well.  Put it all together and apply Occam's Razor.  The conclusion is obvious.

Not only do all mandates need to end, but these jabs must be taken off the market, and yesterday is NOT soon enough!  And the liability shield of the manufacturers must be revoked for fraud, and let the trials begin.  Nuremberg 2.0, here we come!

UPDATE:  See the latest deep dive here, about just how increasingly impossible-to-ignore the jab injury death toll is becoming now.  No wonder the purveyors of these jabs are rushing for the exits as we speak now.

A new study finally admits that mRNA jabs (Pfizer and Moderna), not just the DNA/AAV ones (J&J and AstraZeneca), can cause fatal blood clots.

And yet more proof that pretty much any studies that make the jabs look "safe and effective" are rigged.

JULY UPDATE:  Even more excess deaths in New Zealand were seen again in January and February 2022, during and after the booster rollout, but crucially beginning before Omicron had established itself in that country and while virus prevalence was still quite low.  Then, of course, Omicron predictably exploded in late January and February after finally breaching Fortress New Zealand.  But the timing of these excess deaths suggests they are primarily jab-related rather than virus-related, as any Omicron death wave would not have even been noticeable until March given the typical lag of three to four weeks.  And while NZ's Omicron wave was less deadly than Hong Kong's and South Korea's, one is left to wonder if that was only because one cannot die twice.

Speaking of South Korea, one can observe that their cumulative excess death rate was equivalent to Sweden's.  Only difference was that most of the former's excess deaths occurred after the jabs, rather than before as in the latter's case.  Oh, and by the way, the same can be said about Denmark in terms of cumulative excess deaths as well.  So it looks like those favorite cherry-picked Nordic comparisons did NOT age well at all, as they no longer show Sweden as an outlier in a bad way anymore, but rather show Norway as the real global outlier in a good way.  And if you include their Baltic neighbors in the comparison, then Sweden was never even an outlier at all except perhaps briefly in the first wave.

Team Reality Vindicated Yet Again

Looks like us at Team Reality have been vindicated yet again:  two years into the pandemic, we still see no correlation between stringency and excess all-cause deaths.  And this was from a famous mainstream British medical journal, The Lancet, of all places.  One can see that not only did Sweden do better than the European average, but they actually did about the same or better than all of their immediate neighbors except Norway (and Norway wasn't even all that much stricter for the majority of the pandemic).  We can see that not only Sweden, but also Belarus, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Brazil, Uruguay, the Faroe Islands, Florida, Utah, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota were generally within error bounds of their much stricter neighbors (and/or the USA or world average), and in some cases actually did better.  Even Arizona was apparently within error bounds of their much stricter neighbor New Mexico.  And furthermore, a simple population age adjustment puts Florida and California at roughly equivalent to each other and the USA national average despite radically different policies, even if it makes Nevada look terrible by the same token.

The very worst country by far was Peru, who had one of the earliest, strictest, and longest lockdowns in the region, if not the world.  And the very worst US state was Mississippi, whose stringency was not very different from the national average overall.

But overall, the net result is that most countries and states simply ended up within error bounds of each other regardless of what they did policy-wise.

Cumulative excess all-cause deaths is the best way to compare states and countries since it shows us the "final bill" with no bias from the wide differences in counting Covid cases and deaths.  It thus captures all the collateral deaths from lockdowns and such, as well as direct and indirect virus deaths.  And it also captures any deaths from the very biggest elephant in the room of all--the experimental "vaccines".

Like the song goes, some will win, some will lose, and some are born to sing the blues.  And the latter category seems to be dominated by the perpetual quasi-lockdown countries and states repeatedly punctuated by on-again, off-again full lockdowns and other mandates and restrictions.  They have remained mired in an "epidemic yo-yo" with the worst of both worlds overall.  Basically, you either do China (excluding Hong Kong), or you do Sweden (or less).  Anything in between basically does far more harm than good on balance.  And China's brutal and totalitarian strategy, one with still no end in sight to this day, is of course utterly incompatible with anywhere even remotely close to being a free country.

Thus, lockdowns, mask mandates, and NPIs really need to be taken off the table forever. Period.

UPDATE:  Of course, all purely utilitarian arguments are ultimately built on quicksand, so that cannot be our only argument against lockdowns and such.  We must note that the real argument is, individual rights are inalienable, and thus NOT up for grabs, regardless.  It is an egregious affront to human dignity to violate such rights.  That, and the Hippocratic Oath of "first, do no harm" (since all of these restrictions and mandates are by definition, harmful to one degree or another) are the only arguments we need.

And for those who are still scared and miss the phony "security blanket" of universal masking, remember that you are still perfectly free to wear one yourself even well after mask mandates are lifted.  Better yet, build up your own "invisible mask" via the following:  Vitamin C, Vitamin D, Vitamin K, Vitamin A, Zinc, Quercetin, Thiamine, Magnesium, NAC, Niacin, Selenium, the amino acid Lysine, Resveratrol, Fisetin, Oregano Oil, Omega-3, and mouthwash and nasal spray such as Xlear, dilute Povidone-Iodine, or Betadine Cold Defence with Carageenan.  And all without the dreaded Foegen Effect or any of the numerous other adverse effects of face masks.

See also here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

And use common sense.  Wash your hands, cover your coughs and sneezes, don't touch your face, and stay home when actually sick.  Ventilate, ventilate, ventilate.  Vulnerable people should avoid crowds as much as possible when case numbers are elevated.  In other words, adopt the "flu strategy" and move on.