Inflation Dragon Is Back
Few people remember the inflation that occurred in the 1970s. From 1970 to 1980, the price of everything doubled. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker finally slew the inflation dragon by raising interest rates to 21%.
It appears very likely that the 2020s is going to be a repeat of the 70s. The Fed has printed so much money in the past few years that prices are guaranteed to rise. In just the past seven months, 40% of all the money in existence has been freshly created.
The government is trying to maintain the illusion of normal inflation by suppressing the prices of gold and silver. It slowly loses the battle as the price of other precious metals needed in industry that it can’t control has exploded. Palladium was once at $400 per ounce. It now trades at $2,840. Iridium was at $500 per ounce five years ago. It now trades at $6,300 per ounce. Rhodium was $600 per ounce five years ago. It now trades at $29,000 per ounce.
The main way the government manages inflation is by keeping interest rates at very low levels. Each month the fed goes into the market and purchases $120 billion of bonds. The 10-year bonds are at 1%, and the 30-year bond is at 2%. Once inflation gets above 5%, no amount of smoke and mirrors will be able to hide the fact that the value of the money is rapidly being destroyed.
I frequently check on the price of basic commodities. In the past year, the vast majority of them have soared in price. Soybean went from $8.40 a bushel to nearly $16 per bushel. Corn went from $3.50 to $6.50 per bushel. Lumber went from $400 to $1400 per thousand board feet. Copper went from $2 to a near-record high of $4.50 per pound.
I also keep a close watch on the value of the dollar against other currencies. I don’t think the dollar will decline against the Japanese yen and Euro based on debt. Because Japan and Europe have deficits just as large as the U.S., it’s unlikely the dollar will decline because of federal debt.
What would probably cause the dollar to go down is the massive trade imbalance we have with the rest of the world. They send us goods, and we ship them dollars. We now depend so much on imports, there is a massive backlog of container ships at our nation’s ports.
If the world suddenly realized the foolish nature of this trade relationship, America could find itself unable to get the most basic products. I was shocked to learn that we import material required to produce even the most common drugs. The Ford Motor Company has just had to slash its earning projections because it can’t get microchips for its vehicles. When we reach a point where we depend on third-world nations to make simple products, I think we’ve become a fourth-world nation.
The job market is another key source of inflation. As workers demand more money for their labor, prices are forced higher. There is such a shortage of labor, people are being paid to do job interviews. One Florida McDonald’s started offering a $50 incentive to anyone who went in for an interview to help hire more workers, according to Tampa Bay’s CBS affiliate WTSP.
“At this point, if we can’t keep our drive-thrus moving, then I’ll pay $50 for an interview,” said Blake Casper, a McDonald’s franchise owner in Tampa.
A tweet shared on social media on April 15 shows the sign offering $50 at a location off North Dale Mabry Highway and West Chestnut Street in Tampa. WTSP reported, citing Business Insider, the restaurant did not have many applicants despite the incentive.
Some business owners who spoke with the Associated Press said some “would-be workers” are worried about getting COVID-19 at work and prefer to live off unemployment benefits, which are higher during the pandemic.
I recently recorded a 5-minute audio promotion for my chapter in Terry’s book Lawless. I still find it amazing that my chapter is still valid. When I was writing it in March of last year, it looked like the second Great Depression was about to unfold.
I labored on because I knew God was going to continue to hold the world together. Inflation will add to the pressure on the economy, but the trigger point is going to be the rapture.
“For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words” (1 Thes. 4:16-18).
–Todd
Russian Nuclear War Threat?
Russia’s bellicose actions lately have some predicting nuclear war and what would amount to World War III. One blogger who is a long-time commentator on geopolitics as they might relate to Bible prophecy believes that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans an assault on Alaska.
His thinking is that Russians have long sought to recover Alaska from the time they owned and sold the now American state to the US. Josef Stalin was, he says, set to invade Alaska, but the action was preempted by the Soviet dictator’s death in 1953.
The blog pundit throws in the fact that China also has its sights on taking over America, and that Putin needs to prevent that from taking place, because Russia is planning the same thing.
The blogger’s conspiratorial analysis goes much deeper, but that’s the overall gist of his suspicion—America is on the brink of being taken over by Russia, China, or both.
The inept, even seditious, traitorous Biden administration, as he characterizes it, and its deep-state provocateurs are fomenting this attempted takeover by pushing hard at Russian involvement in the threat to Ukraine. He believes the new administration is doing this in order to provoke nuclear conflict. This, somehow, is so that the new, global order they wish to construct can, with the help of China as a sort of partner in the whole agglomerate matter, leap to world domination.
No, I haven’t a clue how China would ever agree to be part of such an amalgamation. Its goal is clearly total world dominion, not partnership in such.
And China, like the US Senate’s Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, plays the “long game.” That is, they are extremely patient and will go through the geopolitical gyrations for as long as necessary to—in China’s case—achieve global domination. Only if they see there is no longer a pathway to such domination will they then resort to all-out nuclear war.
They are threatening militarily around the world—like, for example, their constantly running their air force and navy up to the boundaries surrounding Taiwan. And like their nonstop intimidation of US and other naval forces in the China Sea and around the globe. But they know which side their bread is buttered on. They couldn’t win a nuclear conflict with America. They’ll never try—this side of the Tribulation era.
Same with Russia. They wouldn’t have a chance of winning nuclear all-out conflict with the US. Most all experts who study war agree. All would suffer unacceptable devastation in such a conflict.
The threat of nuclear exchanges has existed since the Soviets stole American technology and built their nuclear arsenal. The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was the closest the world has come to such an exchange.
Like in every case, avoidance of such world-changing or even world-ending conflict has been held back by the very hand of God. There is no doubt about this to anyone who is a believer and is spiritually attuned to the supernaturally foreknown movement of human history.
As a matter of fact, God’s Word outlines precisely the final disposition of both of the nuclear powers which the blogger confidently predicts will soon take over the US in a probable nuclear conflict.
Ezekiel the prophet gives us God’s view and His way of dealing with Russia in chapters 38 and 39. The Russian leader, Gog, leads his forces against God’s chosen nation and they are obliterated except for one-sixth of that force.
China is held behind the oriental barrier to the occidental world so far as domination is concerned until they are freed to come across the dried-up Euphrates, as prophesied in Revelation chapters 9 and 16. This force will be annihilated at Armageddon.
God’s restraining hand is in evidence even on the level of this nuclear confrontation matter.
Observers were looking to the potential conflict presented by Putin sending troops to the Ukrainian border en masse. They looked poised to invade. President Joe Biden’s poking at the Russian bear, sending airplanes full of tactical nuclear weapons into Ukraine, supposedly, was meant to provoke that nuclear conflict, whereby all the New World Order stuff outlined above would begin to roll out.
Of course, I see all of that as not possible—not if Bible prophecy is true. And it is. Even if such were the plans of the globalists and the Chinese leadership, God’s restraining hand would never allow it—again, according to Bible prophecy.
We again see a stepping down from the nuclear brink in the following excerpt.
After weeks of tension over a build-up of Russian troops close to Ukraine’s border, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shogun has ordered a number of units in the area back to their bases…
Russia said all along that these were nothing more than military exercises.
But Moscow knew very well that its troop movements close to Ukraine and in annexed Crimea were making a lot of people very nervous: in Ukraine, Europe and in America.
And that was the point.
Moscow may well have been using the build-up of troops to send a signal to Kyiv, Brussels and, especially, to Washington that Russia is a force to be reckoned with. (“Russia to Pull Troops Back from Near Ukraine,” BBC News, April 23, 2021)
Nuclear war involving these end-times nation-state actors will take place. The kings of the east will almost certainly use nuclear weaponry to kill one-third of the world’s population. Nuclear exchanges are inevitable during the Tribulation. No weapon ever invented by the fallen minds of mankind has ever been withheld in the murderous wars of history.
The Christian of this Church Age (Age of Grace) needs not fear suffering through that time of such horrors. Believe in Jesus today and be kept from that terrible hour of evil. Jesus promises the following to those who belong to Him.
Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation [Tribulation,] which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. (Revelation 3:10)
–Terry