by Kerry Lutz
Financial Survival Network
Get ready for non-transitory inflation. 10 things about to shoot up in price.
Electricity In 2020 38% off all natural gas used in the United States went towards generating electricity. There are 1793 gas-powered electric plants in the US. While utilities generally buy most of their natgas through long-term fixed rate contracts, the low spot price that we experienced since 2015 has led to utilities increasing their gas spot purchases and decrease their long-term contracts. With natural gas recently nearing $5.5 per mm btu’s, higher electric costs are baked into the cake. In the past 12 months natural gas prices rose over %130. Assuming a prolonged period of increased gas prices, electricity rates will soon start shooting higher.
Last week, Brown University implemented strict new COVID-19 mitigation protocols following 82 confirmed positive (including asymptomatic) cases among students.
Upon reading special counsel John Durham’s 27-page indictment of attorney Michael Sussman, I found myself asking, “Is there anything Perkins Coie lawyers would not do to keep their Democratic clients in power?” Thanks to Durham, we know they launched a cyberwar against candidate Donald Trump that makes their work on the Steele dossier seem half-hearted. What we need to know is whether their work in producing Barack Obama’s birth certificate was any more legit than these other misadventures.
Fortunately for Americans, the keen-eyed Wall Street watchdog group, Better Markets, is not living in the same alternative reality universe as the cable financial news network, CNBC.
The very size and scope of the United States federal government is likely something that Ludwig von Mises could not have imagined, despite writing the book which foretold the results of such a behemoth, Bureaucracy. Early on Mises wrote, “Congress has in many instances surrendered the function of legislation to government agencies and commissions, and it has relaxed its budgetary control through the allocation of large appropriations for expenditures, which the Administration has to determine in detail.” That was in 1944.
Yeah, I know everyone is so certain that inflation is what we will be battling for the foreseeable future. The main reason why many of you are so certain we are battling inflation is because you are seeing prices rise on food and other items for which you shop. But, do rising prices really mean we are dealing with the true economic definition of inflation?
Rodney Scott, the widely praised head of U.S. Border Patrol that Democrat President Joe Biden forced out earlier this year, warned in a letter to Senate leaders that Biden’s disastrous border policies are destroying America’s borders and that bad actors are exploiting the situation.
Scientists at the University of California-Riverside will be studying how to turn plants into “mRNA vaccine factories,” the school announced last week.
It appears that some Americans are so Red Tribe-identifying that they distrust vaccines that have been taken by tens of millions with few cases of significant side effects, while simultaneously naively trusting non-experts telling them to take a horse dewormer. Some are even taking it prophylactically. As the old saying goes, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.”
Conservative presidential candidate Xavier Bertrand warns that France faces the risk of a “civil war” due its problems with gang violence and uncontrolled mass immigration.
A survey conducted by risk management and advisory company Willis Towers Watson has found that more than half of U.S. companies expect to impose COVID vaccine mandates on their employees by the end of the year.
As contagion fears begin to engulf global markets, today James Turk discussed the crisis and said gold will move to center stage.
Global bank stocks took a bruising today as questions grow as to just how much exposure large financial institutions have to the teetering China Evergrande Group, a real estate development company in China which owes more than $300 billion in debt that it can’t repay. The Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 614.4 points by the closing bell today, or 1.78 percent, while global mega banks were down anywhere from more than 7 percent for foreign banks to more than 3 percent for U.S. mega banks. (See chart below.)