Forget the Fed “Pivot”, Basel III, Billionaire Bullion Buyers, and India & Russia saving the day yet again, and understand something super simple…
(by Half Dollar) Why isn’t silver skyrocketing?
People are broke.
That’s the super simple answer, that’s the right answer, and that’s putting it lightly.
Like, do you even have four income streams, bro?
You see, as Economic Misery and Financial Ruin set in, by design, if Joe Deplorable is not constantly increasing his income, significantly, then he is rapidly falling behind.
And if your friends and family haven’t asked you for money yet because they just aren’t doing so well, then don’t worry.
They will.
Of course, the need to immediately generate significantly more income is something that Charles Hugh Smith and I discussed in granular detail in a recent podcast:
The fact that not a lot of people watched that most important video or read that most important article is telling.
Indeed, we’re still floating down Da River Denial.
Or we’re treading water in it.
Or we are drowning.
Or something.
Yup.
Now, I’d like to mention just a few of the things that I pay for on a regular basis, just to drive the point home.
First are the utilities, and forget what people say, especially “elected” “leaders” and “public” “servants”:
In April, my internet bill went from $110.67 per month to on a $114.92.
That is to say, if you are unaware of The Chocolate Ration, then now might be a good time to do some reading up on it.
But what good is paying for internet service without paying for subscriptions to crappy services you never use, such as Netflix?
Sure, the question was rhetorical, but there’s a point here: Netflix has gone from under $10 per month when we first signed up, to $16.54 per month, but really, it’s way worse than that, because in an unaccounted for reverse-hedonic adjustment kind of way, the quality of the digital media that comes streaming down the magic copper line is more than just poorer.
It’s arguably a tool for brainwashing and propagandizing.
But wait, there’s more!
That’s right folks, because I’m paying more for property taxes, for insurance of all types, for electricity, for water, sewer & trash service, for gas in the house, for gas in the cars, and for etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
But wait, there’s more, again!
That’s right folks, because I don’t know about you, but I have to eat and drink, and the price of coffee is up at least 25%, I’m paying at least 47% more for bread, I’m paying way more for eggs, for cooking oil, for meat, for milk, for tortilla chips, for pizza, for produce, for snacks, for eating out, for eating in, and I’m even paying over 40% more for bottles of water at Costco, which, the last time I checked, were made with less plastic to “save the environment” and totally not to cut costs, and contain the same ingredients as before (water plus some other fun chemicals).
But don’t take ‘Ol Half Dollar’s word for it, for you can see the price increase for yourself:
I added the screenshot to make a point, which I’ll ask as a question: Disregarding the fact that Costco’s search history won’t let me go back that far, even though it’s the Internet combined with modern payment systems we’re talking about here, it’s rather fitting that Costco, the reigning King of Scamflation, a concept/term I coined which everybody should really understand, now forces paying “members” to do their own math to calculate the per unit cost, isn’t it?
Meh.
Doesn’t matter.
There are simply too many Fakes, Frauds, Phonies and Worse out there, and they absolutely love spreading the lies and the propaganda.
In other words, anybody who talks about the CPI as if it was a legitimate, truthful measure of inflation is part of the problem and quite frankly, spoonfeeding the Beast.
Said differently, the CPI is more than just pretty darn evil when you dig right into it:
But people love evil, and they especially love evil in good’s clothing, so is it any wonder why things are so screwed up around the world generally and in this country specifically?
But wait, there’s more, yet again!
That’s right folks, because we haven’t even talked about rising interest rates!
So that means credit card interest rates, home mortgages, car loans, and all of those other big ticket purchases done with credit cost more to service than they did before.
I could go on and on and on and on about the fact that prices on everything, everywhere, are skyrocketing, but there’s no sense in beating a dead horse.
I’d just like to briefly explain why the Inflation Reduction Act, the student loan forgiveness hoopla, and the various state “stimulus” programs I read about somewhere last week are not contributing to a rise in the silver price.
The Inflation Reduction Act is simple, and I’ve explained it before, but it basically boils down to this: That free money isn’t going to the public good, much less will any of it be funneled down to Joe Deplorable, but rather, that free money is going to select buddy-buddy, wink-wink corporations, to politicians’ personal bank accounts, to Wall Street, and to basically any place that it does not actually need to go, and instead, that free money is going to places where it does need to go for the purposes of a self-enriching cash grab.
The Student Loan Forgiveness Program, or whatever it is called, is simple too: If we consider loan forgiveness a type of free money, well now, that money has been spent, so it will not be inflationary in the sense that some people may be thinking.
I mean, the COVID-19 Emergency Relief and Federal Student Aid program suspended student loan payments in the Spring of 2020, and once again, there has been yet another extension, so student loan repayments do not even begin until December of 2022.
Here’s the question: Have people been saving up that money for nearly two years for use once they must begin repaying their student loans, or have those loan repayment “savings” long since been spent by the people on something else?
When it comes to other forms of stimulus, including stimulus at the state and local levels, remember this important point, which I made at the very beginning of this article: Now more than ever, people need more income.
In fact, if one is not generating significantly more income, then one is falling severely behind.
A temporary stimulus, in the grand scheme of things, with prices going up on everything, everywhere, is not going to translate into extra sales of gold and silver, which, curiously, happen to be the only things in the entire world that are going down in price.
Queue Silver Squeeze 2.1?
More like Silver Flood 1.0.
Gold & silver are money, and as far as I can tell, Joe Deplorable is spending a whole lot of it, and not like a drunken sailor, either, but more like a victim of extorsion & racketeering:
Institutional investing to the rescue?
Funny.
Starve the Beast…