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Have you noticed that store shelves are starting to get emptier and emptier? During the panic shopping that was sparked by the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, there were very intense shortages of certain items, but those shortages did not last very long at all. But now there are widespread shortages in just about every sector of our economy, and they are starting to become quite painful. Unfortunately, we are being told to expect the shortages to intensify as we head into the holiday season. That is extremely alarming, because in many areas the shortages are already quite severe.

I had been away from the news for a couple of days, and when I came back there were lots more stories about our ongoing shortages. For example, the following comes from an excellent piece by Matt Stoller…

There are shortages in everything from ocean shipping containers to chlorine tablets to railroad capacity to black pipe (the piping that houses wires inside buildings) to spicy chicken breasts to specialized plastic bags necessary for making vaccines. Moreover, prices for all sorts of items, from housing to food, are changing in weird ways. Beef, for instance, is at near record highs for consumers, but cattle ranchers are getting paid much less than they used to for their cows.

In my entire life, I have never seen anything like this.

Even the Federal Reserve is admitting that we have a major problem at this point. In fact, in the latest Beige Book the Fed referred to the shortages a whopping 80 times.

In certain parts of the country, these shortages are really beginning to sting. A reader just emailed me about what is going on in his section of Connecticut, and he said that I could share this with all of you…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

UK Tells People To Stop “Panic Buying” As “Winter Of Discontent” Fears Emerge

September 24, 2021

UK Tells People To Stop “Panic Buying” As “Winter Of Discontent” Fears Emerge

UK politicians are in utter panic as similarities to the 1970s-style “winter of discontent” of shortages and socio-economic distress could rear its ugly head in the coming months, according to Reuters.

A significant driver in what could very well be a hellacious winter for Brits is soaring natural gas and electricity prices that have already disrupted segments of the UK economy and sent shockwaves through energy markets, chemical producers, and the food industry, among others. Compound this all with labor shortages thanks to Brexit, and the dire situation may worsen.

Some Brits who remember the past worry a winter of discontent could be imminent. Many are facing extraordinary high power bills and sharp food inflation that are eating away at wages, along with shortages of goods at supermarkets.

The primary driver of this chaos is soaring natural gas prices due to declines in Russian flows to Europe, along with a drop in renewable power output. The soaring cost of natgas has pressured chemical firms that use the gas in production to limit or halt operations. One such industry is fertilizer that is a byproduct of natgas. From there, the decline of fertilizer has affected CO2 production, which heavily impacts food supply chains.

People are paying attention to the developments of the energy crisis and its immediate ripple effect across the economy and are taking no chances of being left without food. Many are panic buying food as government officials try to calm everyone down, reassuring everyone the winter of discontent is not upon them.

“There is no need for people to go out and panic buy,” Small Business Minister Paul Scully told Times Radio.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Quite Alarming” – UK Energy Crisis Sparks Fresh Chaos For Food Suppliers

September 21, 2021

“Quite Alarming” – UK Energy Crisis Sparks Fresh Chaos For Food Suppliers

Last week Fertilizer producer CF Industries Holdings Inc suspended operations at two UK plants because of soaring natural gas prices. As a result, these fertilizer plants that make carbon dioxide as a byproduct are in sudden shortages and are rippling through the UK food sector, according to Bloomberg.

The shortage of carbon dioxide has forced Online grocer Ocado Group Plc to halt all deliveries of frozen products to customers, and the meat industry warned slaughterhouse operations could “grind to a halt” in weeks.

The British Meat Processors Association warned carbon dioxide supplies could be exhausted by the end of the month, forcing slaughterhouses to close and result in a mass culling of animals.

Last Friday, Ocado halted deliveries of frozen food to customers because of the dry ice shortage.

“It’s quite alarming,” said Nick Allen, head of the meat association. “We’re talking between days and weeks from this really hitting hard, unless somewhere in the world — ideally here in Europe — there are supplies of this that can replace that amount of CO2 very quickly.”

The ripple effect continues as British Soft Drinks Association monitors the carbon dioxide situation as the industry could go flat.

Besides CF Industries, Norwegian fertilizer maker Yara said it would soon reduce ammonia output capacity by 40% because of record-high natural gas prices.

The broader impact could be soaring food and energy inflation across the UK, threatening the country’s post-pandemic economic recovery and financially strain consumers.

Exergy-driven crisis

September 1, 2021

Exergy-driven crisis

Media has little in the way of memory and the rest of us struggle to remember much of what happened more than a week ago. And so, the narratives we use in an attempt to make sense of the rapidly changing world we are living in, tend to revolve around short-term tribal talking points. Take, for example, the narrative about Britain having a shortage of lorry drivers. It tends to be a very short narrative: Britain left the European Union, European lorry drivers went home, Britain has a lorry driver shortage. Ergo “Brexit Bad!” Unfortunately, there are more holes than a Swiss cheese in this narrative. To begin with, driver shortages Across Europe were observable to anyone paying attention more than a decade ago:

“The study provides a concise overview of the road freight transport sector, in the light of the structural issue of qualified driver shortage. In particular, this study analyses the multiplicity of factors affecting labour supply and demand, by taking into due consideration also the impacts of the current EU legislation and the effects of the present economic downturn.”

Since 2009 was before the 2016 Brexit referendum, the 2009 lorry driver shortage could not logically have been the result of Brexit. Moreover, lorry driver shortages across Europe were sufficient that a Franco-German inspired change of regulation – the so-called “Macron Package” (which requires drivers to use hotels overnight and to return home every eight weeks) – was introduced to halt the impact of cheap and unregulated Eastern European drivers on the road haulage industry of Western Europe; this was not a solely British problem.

The driver shortage doesn’t end there though. According to the International Road Transport Union (IRU), driver shortages are a truly global problem which governments and media have turned a blind eye to for years…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The World Is Still Short of Everything. Get Used to It.

September 1, 2021

The World Is Still Short of Everything. Get Used to It.

Pandemic-related product shortages — from computer chips to construction materials — were supposed to be resolved by now. Instead, the world has gained a lesson in the ripple effects of disruption.

Credit…Tim Gruber for The New York Times

Like most people in the developed world, Kirsten Gjesdal had long taken for granted her ability to order whatever she needed and then watch the goods arrive, without any thought about the factories, container ships and trucks involved in delivery.

Not anymore.

At her kitchen supply store in Brookings, S.D., Ms. Gjesdal has given up stocking place mats, having wearied of telling customers that she can only guess when more will come. She recently received a pot lid she had purchased eight months earlier. She has grown accustomed to paying surcharges to cover the soaring shipping costs of the goods she buys. She has already placed orders for Christmas items like wreaths and baking pans.

“It’s nuts,” she said. “It’s definitely not getting back to normal.”

The challenges confronting Ms. Gjesdal’s shop, Carrot Seed Kitchen, are a testament to the breadth and persistence of the chaos roiling the global economy, as manufacturers and the shipping industry contend with an unrelenting pandemic.

Delays, product shortages and rising costs continue to bedevil businesses large and small. And consumers are confronted with an experience once rare in modern times: no stock available, and no idea when it will come in.

In the face of an enduring shortage of computer chips, Toyota announced this month that it would slash its global production of cars by 40 percent…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter

August 25, 2021

The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter

Have you noticed that it is a lot harder to get certain things these days? Just recently, someone in my local area was surprised when her appointment to get the windshield on her vehicle fixed was canceled because it wasn’t possible to get a replacement windshield. This was a windshield for a very common vehicle, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem at all. But these are not normal times. Thanks to several factors that I will detail in this article, global supply chains are now under more strain than we have ever seen in the post-World War II era, and unfortunately it appears that things are going to get even worse as we approach the holiday season.

I know that most of you probably don’t want to hear that the shortages that we are experiencing now are going to get worse.

So you may be tempted to stop reading this article now because you don’t want to see the bad news.

But it is imperative that you understand what is ahead, and so I urge you to keep reading.

Let’s take this one step at a time. Right now, local news outlets all over the country are doing stories about the shortages in their local areas. Here is one example…

Have you recently gone to the grocery store and found some of the shelves empty? If so, you aren’t alone.

Many people can’t find some of their favorite and essential items since the pandemic started.

As that article points out, the stores are trying to order the products that they need.

They just can’t get them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Plunge of Retail Inventories, Collapse of New & Used Vehicle Inventories: The Shortages Depicted in Charts

July 19, 2021

Plunge of Retail Inventories, Collapse of New & Used Vehicle Inventories: The Shortages Depicted in Charts

Inventories at retailers document this mess.

Turns out, when the US government spends $5 trillion in borrowed fiscal stimulus over 16 months, and the Fed hands out $4 trillion in monetary stimulus over the same period, causing asset prices to boom, demand for goods is going to wash over the land in tsunami-like waves, and supply chains that snake all over the world, amid finely honed just-in-time-inventory strategies, get tangled up. And as retail sales spiked in a historic manner, shortages of all kinds have been cropping up, including the semiconductor shortage that has slammed the auto industry with a vengeance.

Inventories at retailers document this mess. Inventories are tight all around, but they’re in catastrophic condition at auto dealers, which before the pandemic accounted for over one-third of total retail inventories.

Inventories at new vehicle dealers, used vehicle dealers, and parts dealers fell to $153 billion in May, down 36% from May 2019, according to data released by the Census Bureau on Friday. And the inventory-sales ratio – with inventories and sales both in dollars, the impact of inflation gets canceled out – dropped to 1.14, the lowest level in the data going back to 1992:

The inventory-sales ratio (inventories divided by sales) is a standard metric in the retail industry. A ratio of 1 means that the retailer has enough goods in inventory for one month of sales at the current rate of sales. This would be 30 days’ supply. A ratio of 2 – meaning 60 days’ supply – is considered healthy in the auto industry.

In dollar terms: The ever-more expensive vehicles in inventory over the years explain all of the long-term rise of inventories in the chart below. Unit retail sales – and unit inventories with them…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Where’s Dirk Gently When You Need Him?

April 5, 2021

Where’s Dirk Gently When You Need Him?

Did you hear? A supersized cargo ship got wedged in the Suez Canal on March 23rd? If you didn’t, you must do pretty well at avoiding the news, social media, and late night TV. But the short of it is: the Ever Given somehow lost control (sandstorm strength winds have been blamed, as have human errors) and crashed into the bank of the canal and lodged itself in.

So what? Is this really news? Or just a sensational story to distract us from the pandemic, which, one might argue, is itself a distraction from the rapid unraveling of Earth’s systems and thus human civilization? Perhaps. But then again perhaps not.

Here’s why this incident is worth understanding:

First, a ship single-bowedly disrupted global trade for six days. It was finally freed on March 29th. However, there is now a backlog of over 300 ships while many ships rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope. The Suez Canal is part of a trade route that carries more than 10 percent of global trade, including 7 percent of the world’s oil. Each day 30 percent of the world’s shipping container freight moves through the canal. Thus it created backlogs in shipping (including some 200,000 live animals who could have overheated or run out of food). It raised the price of oil briefly. It created shortages in factories—not just of parts but of shipping containers. And of course, it felt like a freak occurrence. Last year, of the 18,840 ships that moved through the canal, there were no incidents.

But the main reason is because this is an excellent metaphor on how fragile our entire globalized system has become.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Erik Assadourian, suez canal, supply chains, trade, shortages, globalisation, gaianism, shipping

“Things Are Out Of Control” – There Is A Shortage Of Everything And Prices Are Soaring: What Happens Next

March 19, 2021

“Things Are Out Of Control” – There Is A Shortage Of Everything And Prices Are Soaring: What Happens Next

In Wednesday’s press conference, Jay Powell confirmed that the Fed is setting off on a historic experiment: welcoming a conflagration of red-hot inflation for an indefinite period of time in an overheating economy, with the underlying assumption that it’s all “transitory” and that inflation will return to normal in a few years, and certainly before 2023 when the Fed’s rates will still be at zero.

There is a big problem with that assumption: while FOMC members, most of whom are independently wealthy and can just charge their Fed card for any day to day purchases of “non-core” CPI basket items, the vast majority of the population does not have the luxury of having someone else pay for their purchases or looking beyond the current period of runaway inflation, which will certainly crush the purchasing power of the American consumer, especially once producers of intermediate goods start hiking prices even more and passing through inflation.

Many readers may not recall, but one such instance of “transitory” inflation that proved to be anything but and led to the infamous Volcker Fed and its double digit rate hikes, was the price of oil which took off in the Arab oil embargo and then refused to come back for over a decade.

The Powell Fed, however, is eager to brush aside any analogues to previous episodes of runaway inflation which it sees as having a demand component, and merely ascribes what is taking place to unprecedented supply chain disruptions – i.e., collapse in supply – as a result of both the trade war with China and, more recently, the covid pandemic, which have unleashed chaos among traditional supply-chain intermediaries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Staying Ahead Of The Shortages: What To Stock Up On For The Coming Year

May 9, 2020

Staying Ahead Of The Shortages: What To Stock Up On For The Coming Year

While a lot of people are concerned about food shortages, one should not forget that there are a lot of items that make life easier or at least more enjoyable that come from abroad. A lot of these items specifically come from China and India. I am going to mention a few other things that are mostly made in the USA but that may potentially be in short supply as a result of the pandemic.

Food and water are primary concerns as they should be but what about these other things. I have compiled this list of things that you may want to consider acquiring if you don’t think you have enough to get through the next 6 months to a year.

Do what you can with what financial resources and ingenuity you have. You don’t have to jump on buying everything I talk about all at once. Sometimes people get caught up thinking that they have to do it all at once and that is not true. I presented this information so you can use it over the coming months to determine your preparedness needs and plan accordingly. I think this winter is going to be a difficult one and that the sooner you start planning the better.

That being said, I cannot predict what is going to happen but I can tell you that if you put back things you know you are going to need sooner rather than later than in the worst case you are prepared and in the best case you are ahead of the game and won’t have to buy those things later and may have some extra funds to put towards things later.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Next Wave Of Shortages Strikes: NYC Pharmacies Run Out Of Tylenol, Hand Sanitizer, Common Drugs

April 5, 2020

Next Wave Of Shortages Strikes: NYC Pharmacies Run Out Of Tylenol, Hand Sanitizer, Common Drugs

In the weeks since California became the first state to order residents to shelter in place, millions of Americans have grappled with an alarming fact: That shortages of products from Tylenol to toilet paper have continued. If anything, they’ve gotten worse, even as governors like Andrew Cuomo have pleaded with the public not to hoard and buy up supplies like gloves and masks that are needed by health-care professionals.

While health officials have tried to dismiss this simply as a consequence of panicked hoarding, there are more complex dynamics at play, as CNBC explains in a recent piece exploring the shortages of basic products and common medications at pharmacies across NYC – the epicenter of the national outbreak.

In Broadway Chemists, an independent pharmacy on the Upper West Side, Tylenol, the classic over-the-counter painkiller made by JNJ, has been unavailable for weeks. Sophia Liristis, the pharmacist in charge, told CNBC that it’s on back-order until April 30.

So unless something changes, the people of the Upper West Side won’t be able to buy Tylenol until the end of April at the earliest. That’s four weeks away.

But Tylenol isn’t the only common medical item that’s in short supply. When Liristis checked her system on Tuesday while speaking to CNBC, she found that thermometers, gloves and masks were not available until May. Pulse oximeters, used to monitor blood-oxygen levels, were unavailable until May 31. Ventolin inhalers, which can ease shortness of breath, were only available two units at a time. Hydroxychloroquine, the drug used to treat malaria and lupus, and the Zithromax Z-Pak, were so limited as to be practically unavailable.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

National Geographic Admits Billions Of People Will “Face Shortages Of Food And Clean Water” Over The Next 30 Years

October 12, 2019

National Geographic Admits Billions Of People Will “Face Shortages Of Food And Clean Water” Over The Next 30 Years

A lot of people out there don’t like when I write these kinds of articles, because they directly contradict the false narrative that humanity has an extremely bright future ahead. Sadly, the truth is that our planet and everything that lives on it is rapidly deteriorating. And I am not talking about the false environmentalism being pushed by the mainstream media, Greta Thunberg and countless well-funded NGOs. What I am talking about is the stuff that is happening right in our face. We are systematically poisoning our planet, thousands upon thousands of species are going extinct, and we are literally running out of all of our most important natural resources. There isn’t going to be enough of anything in the not too distant future. In fact, even National Geographic is admitting that up to five billion people could soon be facing “shortages of food and clean water”…

As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model examining how nature and humans can survive together.
“I hope no one is shocked that billions of people could be impacted by 2050,” says Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer a landscape ecologist at Stanford University. “We know we are dependent on nature for many things,” says Chaplin-Kramer, lead author of the paper “Global Modeling Of Nature’s Contributions To People” published in Science.

The clock is literally ticking for humanity, but meanwhile we spend immense amounts of energy on relatively meaningless political squabbles.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco

January 25, 2019

The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco

René Magritte The black flag 1937

One thing I am not is an expert on Venezuela. What I know is the country has the world’s largest oil reserves, mainly in the Orinoco Belt, but they come in a form of tar sands that while they are not as hard to exploit as Canada’s (viscosity), they’re far from easy, and buried deep. And I know Venezuela had Hugo Chávez as its president, who, for a socialist, was quite successful at what he did (depending who you ask).

And I know of course that the US yesterday recognized an opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the ‘real’ president of Venezuela, instead of the elected Nicolas Maduro, whom Chávez picked as his successor. Soon as I read that, I thought: CIA. If Chávez, and Maduro, are hated in one place in the world, look no further than Langley, Virginia.

So I looked up a few articles I though would be interesting to read. The first comes from a site called Venezuela Analysis, an entity recommended for Venezuela news. They had the article below, but also this enlightening picture:

Note: in 2002, coincident with the attempted coup against Chávez, half the employees at state oil company PDVSA went on strike. They must have felt like clowns, too, 48 hours later.

The article explains what happened in terms you can find everywhere (but are perhaps good to note), except for the last bit:

Venezuelan Opposition Leader Guaido Declares Himself President, Recognized by US and Allies

Opposition leader Juan Guaido swore himself in as “interim president” of Venezuela on Wednesday, a move which was immediately recognized by the United States and regional allies. “As president of the National Assembly, before God and Venezuela, I swear to formally assume the competencies of the national executive as interim president of Venezuela,” he declared before an opposition rally in eastern Caracas.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

MIT Computer Model Predicts Dramatic Drop In Quality Of Life Around 2020 And The “End Of Civilization” Around 2040

August 16, 2018

MIT Computer Model Predicts Dramatic Drop In Quality Of Life Around 2020 And The “End Of Civilization” Around 2040

Is humanity approaching a major turning point? A computer model that was originally developed in 1973 by a group of scientists at MIT is warning that things are about to dramatically change. If the computer predictions are accurate, our standard of living will start to decline dramatically around the year 2020, and we will witness the “end of civilization” around the year 2040. Of course this is not the first time ominous predictions such as this have been made about our future. For years, experts have been warning that we are heading for severe shortages of water, food and oil as our limited natural resources begin to run out. For years, experts have been warning that our economic model is not sustainable and that we are heading for a historic collapse. For years, experts have been warning about the alarming increase in seismic activity all over the planet and about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Society is crumbling all around us, and the elements for a “perfect storm” are definitely coming together.

So maybe this computer model is on to something.

The name of the computer program is “World One”, and it was originally created by Jay Forrester…

The prediction came from a programme nicknamed World One, which was developed by a team of MIT researchers and processed by Australia’s largest computer.

It was originally devised by computer pioneer Jay Forrester, after he was tasked by the Club of Rome to develop a model of global sustainability.

However, the shocking result of the computer calculations showed that the level of pollution and population would cause a global collapse by 2040.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Is Behind Surging Gas Prices?

September 10, 2017

What Is Behind Surging Gas Prices?

As gas stations raise prices in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, there have been numerous accusations of price gouging. Especially on social media, some are quick to conclude price gouging if they see gasoline prices go up by 10 or 20 cents per gallon over the course of a couple of days.

At the same time, there are widespread reports of gasoline hoarding, even as reports of shortages were spreading across Texas. The photo above, which has been widely circulated on social media, shows a motorist in Texas putting gasoline in two plastic trash cans in the back of his pickup (which, to be clear, is extremely dangerous). I tracked down the photographer — Miguel Jimenez — to obtain permission to use the photo. He confirmed this incident took place at the gas station located next to his Nomad Bar in Austin.

These issues — gouging, hoarding, and shortages — are all interrelated, and they demonstrate why the issue of price gouging isn’t always as simple it seems.

Here are the options that a gas station may face. If a service station’s gasoline inventories are depleting at a faster than normal pace (for example, deliveries are delayed), they have three choices. One, they can do nothing and just hope they don’t run out of fuel. Two, they can raise prices to slow down demand (especially from those who are hoarding gasoline) and to provide an incentive for more supplies to flow into the region. Or three, they can ration gasoline.

There are disadvantages of each approach.

In most cases, a station will opt to raise prices. This, effectively, is rationing by price. It provides a disincentive against hoarding while stretching gasoline supplies for those who really need it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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