(Alt-Market)—In 2022 there was considerable debate among alternative economists what the Federal Reserve was likely to do in the face of rising stagflation. There were people who argued that the Fed would capitulate to stock market demands, stop raising interest rates and return to QE. These analysts operated on the assumption that the central bank WANTS to save the US economy from substantial deflationary crisis and that they will happily print money forever in order to delay such an event.
Some of us, however, understand that the Fed is not loyal to the US economy, nor is it necessarily interested in self preservation as an institution. In 2022 in my article ‘It’s A Fact That Needs Repeating: The Federal Reserve Is A Suicide Bomber’ I predicted:
“This leads us to the final question – What happens next? That’s easy to answer: The fed continues to hike rates well into next year and will not reverse course or capitulate and return to stimulus. The dovish predictions were wrong. The people that said the Fed would not raise rates were wrong. The people that said the Fed would never remove support from stock markets were wrong. This process is ongoing and the effects will grow as the months pass, but those that were hoping for a manic return to the days of bailouts and QE are going to be deeply disappointed.”
This prediction proved correct. I noted at the time that the Fed is not following its own program, it’s following a global program coordinated by the IMF and BIS. In order to understand why the Fed does the things it does, one must accept that they don’t care about the current world order. They care about facilitating a new world order.
Of course, part of that agenda requires that the central bankers never receive blame for their role in any economic crisis. They have no problem blowing up the system as long as there’s a convenient scapegoat. They’ve done it before and they’ll do it again.
I usually don’t put much energy into tracking stocks because I see them as a side show. Equities are primarily built on delusions, false hopes and unchecked fiat and the bubble will pop when those delusions are inevitably dashed by reality. Stock markets are not a leading indicator; they are a trailing indicator and they crash long after numerous other alarms have been triggered. That said, every once in a while the smoke and mirrors lift and you can get a glimpse of what is really happening behind the scenes.
The central bank has removed the primary backstop supporting US and European markets – The low interest rates that were feeding cheap money into corporate buybacks. Despite endless spin and false data from the Biden Administration the deflationary side of the crisis is starting to rear its ugly head.
A weaker-than-expected jobs report last week has fueled concerns about a potential economic recession and calls for an interest rate cut. Employers hired 114,000 workers last month, falling well short of economist expectations of 185,000 jobs, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. The unemployment rate climbed to 4.3%, the highest level since October 2021. It’s only going to get worse from now on and I wouldn’t be surprised to see an unemployment avalanche in 2025.
Keep in mind that BLS jobs data has been rigged by the Biden White House for years; the majority of jobs “created” during Biden’s term are low wage part-time jobs and most have been going to illegal immigrants, not to American citizens. The same illegal immigrants that Biden has allowed into the country through open border and amnesty policies.
This trend is only going accelerate by winter. Why? Because the effects of the high interest rates are taking hold. It happens slow at first, then all at once. But how have stocks remained so high during this time period? A recent market shock may help us to understand…
As noted, the August stock slump has been partly driven by weaker-than-expected U.S. economic data at the end of last week. The readings led investors to worry that the Federal Reserve may be behind the curve in cutting interest rates to fend off a recession. But why does the Fed continue to keep rates high if this is the case?
There are two reasons.
First, as I have mentioned over and over since 2018, the end of QE and the raising of interest rates is a Catch-22; a trap. Not for the Fed, but for the US economy. Our financial system has become so addicted to cheap money from the central bank that it can barely function without it. We are seeing the addict begin to crash. Covid stimulus held up the system for another few years, but now that hit of sweet helicopter money is fading and the high is over.
At the same time we’re being crushed with a stagflationary hydraulic press. Prices continue to climb on most necessities and the cumulative inflation is around 30% (officially) on average since 2021. Compare grocery receipts from 2020 to today, though, and you’ll find a 30% to 100% increase in prices on most necessary goods and services.
The establishment (and the DNC) has been operating on the narrative that inflation has been defeated. The Fed knows that this is a lie. The moment they cut rates inflation will spike again and the illusion will be exposed. There’s FAR too many dollars floating around chasing too few goods. For those that believe a rate cut is in the works to support the Kamala Harris campaign, I would suggest such a move might actually hurt her chances (whatever those chances may be) because her entire economic platform requires doubling down on the “success” of Bidenomics. If CPI spikes again in October then her campaign is sunk.
Of course, over 54% of mainstream economists and investors polled now expect a rate cut next month and some Fed officials have mentioned the possibility. I remain doubtful, but it will certainly make the election cycle even more interesting if they do.
The second issue is what appears to be a “carry trade trap.”
Carry trades refer to operations in which investors borrow in a currency with low interest rates, such as the Japanese yen, and reinvest the proceeds in higher-yielding assets elsewhere (the US). The strategy is a considerable driver of US stock markets and has kept stocks alive despite the Fed’s removal of QE.
This month’s stock plunge was triggered by fears that the Bank of Japan might hike interest rates, coupled with expectations that the Fed will cut rates in the near term due to the recession threat. This would kill the carry trade that has kept stocks going. To prevent a destructive carry trade unwind the Fed would have to coordinate with the BOJ and introduce a new stimulus program to soften the blow. But as I mentioned above, if the Fed returns to QE inflation will skyrocket yet again.
The public will demand an explanation as to how it’s possible for there to be deflation in markets and jobs and inflation in prices all at the same time? The Fed won’t have answers for them. It’s a Catch-22 on top of a Catch-22.
I believe there is no way out of this situation and that central banks deliberately maneuvered the US into this predicament. The only thing left for them to do is pull the plug when the timing is most advantageous. After the elections makes the most sense, especially if conservatives come out on top and there is a red sweep in 2025. Then, the whole mess can be wrapped up and thrown in their laps.
One thing the events of this month prove is that the system is so unstable that even a hint of a change in the status quo could mean disaster. Don’t assume that banks will keep trying to kick the can down the road; they’re operating on a timeline that serves the interests of the global establishment, not the American public.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
