Science Tests Positive For COVID

Babylon Bee🐝

WORLD—The world is in disbelief today upon hearing the news that Dr. Fauci, also known as the living embodiment of SCIENCE itself, has come down with COVID.

"How could this happen? What if SCIENCE dies? We'll be lost! LOST WITHOUT SCIENCE!" cried Brian Stelter on CNN. "What does this mean? Is Fauci—blessings upon him—merely a human? I don't know what's true anymore!" Brian then curled up on the couch to have a good cry and watch A Christmas Kiss 2 on the Hallmark Channel.

Thousands of devoted followers of SCIENCE have gathered around the Fauci residence to call upon the powers of SCIENCE to defeat the COVID infection. Thousands more reported being shocked to hear COVID was still a thing.

Experts theorize that SCIENCE is possibly volunteering to take COVID upon himself for the whole world and are wondering why he didn't do this two years ago. 

Fauci has assured his followers that he only anticipates having COVID for 3 days, after which he will rise again.

Biden Is Sleepwalking U.S. into Nuclear War with Russia

How is it that Joe Biden and the rest of the foreign policy intelligentsia in Washington mistake the threat of nuclear war with Putin?

by Brandon J. Weichert for American Greatness

Since Russia initiated its brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine, the West has responded with a hearty bellow of “Cry Havoc! And let slip the dogs of war!” Since February 24, NATO has poured nearly all its otherwise limited surplus of weapons and diplomatic capital—as well as economic capital, especially from the United States—into propping up the Ukrainian resistance front. Due to this unprecedented level of support for Ukraine, Kiev’s forces have successfully rebuffed a Russian invasion of their historic capital and shifted the fighting over to the Russian-controlled eastern portion and the contested southern area of Ukraine. 

The Ukraine War has exacerbated the ongoing food and gas crises. The Biden Administration ignored the concerns of those who said that a war in Ukraine, and the subsequent onerous sanctions imposed upon Russia, the world’s largest exporter of fossil fuels, would increase costs for ordinary Americans and make life harder for people everywhere. These same “experts” who derided those with concerns about the ramifications of unfettered support for the Ukrainians in the ongoing war are the same people who’ve dangerously downplayed the threat we are all facing of nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine. 

When the war shifted from a justified defense of Ukraine’s territory in the central and western portions of the country to the predominantly Russian-speaking eastern section, things became complicated for Ukraine’s forces. Russia has long held a dominant position in Eastern Ukraine, supporting the breakaway provinces in Luhansk and Donetsk. 

Putin Not Giving Up in Ukraine

After the embarrassing defeat Vladimir Putin suffered in his quixotic attempt to conquer Kiev, he is not about to let the section of Ukraine his forces have controlled for the last eight years go back to Ukrainian control so easily. Since the war escalated, and the focus of fighting went over to the east and south of Ukraine, a coterie of Russian officials have indicated their increasing willingness to risk nuclear war with the Americans and their NATO partners if the West does not stop its full-throated support for Ukraine in their endeavors to completely evict the Russian invaders from the embattled country. 

Just as with the concerns over food and energy prices, the threat of nuclear war has been written off publicly by American and European leaders alike. We aretold that Putin is simultaneously the most insane man alive and that he wouldn’t dare risk nuclear warfare with the West because . . . Well, that’d just be insane. 

Of course, the same people ignoring the prospect of a Russian nuclear strike against NATO also insisted that Putin wouldn’t dare to invade Ukraine. Then when he did, they insisted that Putin wouldn’t dream of trying to conquer the capital of Kiev. How did those predictions work out? 

No doubt, they are wrong again. 

War Without End Goes Nuclear

Putin has staked his legitimacy upon his Ukrainian escapade. Thus far, it has not been the resounding victory he envisaged. Russia has not prevailed largely because the West has been such a good friend to Ukraine’s gallant defenders. But the longer the conflict drags on, the more illogical the notion that the war in Ukraine can be kept local appears—even in spite of the copious assistance Ukrainian forces are receiving from the West. 

If Ukraine’s forces insist on bringing the war to Russia’s zone of control in Eastern Ukraine, and if the West continues not only supplying arms but using its intelligence to actively target and, in some cases, to kill scores of Russian troops—then it is only a matter of time before Putin decides to let the nuclear genie out of its bottle. 

How can Biden and the rest of Washington’s foreign policy intelligentsia not recognize this? Especially as the West offloads missile systems that are capable of hitting targets deep within Russia. How would Washington respond if Russia were providing Mexican drug cartels with capabilities to strike targets deep within the United States? 

Historical Analogue

World War I began over a local conflict. Serbian nationalists, angered their lands were being incorporated into the foreign Austro-Hungarian Empire, hatched an assassination plot that culminated with the murder of Austria’s heir apparent, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife. Because of this murder, the Austro-Hungarian military eventually launched a massive strike directed against suspected Serbian nationalists. 

At the time, this was known as the “Third Balkan War”—indicating just how localized most governments in Europe and around the world viewed the conflict. Shortly thereafter, however, the conflict grew exponentially and became the catastrophe we remember today as World War I. No one involved in the “Third Balkan War” ever intended the crisis to become a society-shattering global conflagration. 

Like the Third Balkan War, the Russo-Ukraine War not only risks blowing up into a full-blown world war involving nearly every major nuclear weapon-possessing state on Earth, but it could see nuclear weapons being used in war for the first time since 1945. And these weapons would be far more destructive than the bombs the Americans dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Moreover, there have been a series of dangerous escalations in Ukraine, not just with Moscow’s blustery language about nuclear war with the West. Russia has used hypersonic missiles in combat for the first time in history and Moscow has engaged in a series of cyberattacks against Western targets. 

Potential Russian nuclear strikes against NATO targets would likely be met with nuclear reprisals from the West, and the nightmare scenarios that once terrorized those who lived through the Cold War could become a tragic reality. All because Joe Biden has refused to face the present crisis with a realistic objective in mind. Instead, he has deferred to the Ukrainians who, understandably, want to reclaim their entire country from the Russians—regardless of the consequences to the rest of the world. 

Sleepwalking Toward Armageddon

The ongoing food, energy, and supply chain crises, as well as the potential for a nuclear world war, are all connected via Ukraine. The West was justified in assisting the Ukrainians to prevent a total Russian takeover of their besieged nation. The time has now arrived, however, for the world’s great powers (namely, the United States) to use its immense power and leverage over the warring parties to end the conflict, restore some semblance of order into the region, and to avert a wider, unnecessary nuclear war with Russia. 

Given that we’ve got a man Joe Biden, who is frail and forgetful on a good day, the chances of a peaceful resolution are not great. The supply chain and gas crises are not the end of our woes in America. They are but the start—so long as the Ukraine War drags on and the Biden Administration remains in power. 

Just as the leaders of Europe in the run up to World War I failed to recognize how their actions (or inaction exacerbated the likelihood of total world war, we now need to seriously contemplate the possibility of a nuclear war with Russia over tiny Ukraine simply because we’ve got leaders in Washington who are too ignorant and corrupt to avoid one. 

America and its NATO partners have done the right thing in Ukraine: They have stood by a partner (however imperfect) and ensured that the embattled nation-state has a chance at remaining an independent proto-democracy. But, reconstituting Ukraine’s sovereignty as a whole is simply outside the realm of the possible—particularly given how committed to hanging onto Eastern Ukraine the criminal regime in Moscow is.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- June 15

 

What a day! :) Here's tonight's news:

Can Republicans Save the Middle Class?

A certain kind of rich man’s policies and hobbies are a bulldozer rolling over the poor.

by Anthony Esolen for American Greatness

Right now, Americans are experiencing the dire effects of the most regressive and unjust tax of all: government-engineered and government-fueled inflation. Let us consider the matter. What is an extra $50 at the gas tank to the rich man? He can absorb the loss. What if a box of cookies at Walmart costs $5 instead of $2? He doesn’t go there anyway. Why, he can offset the extra expense of the high price of oil, which becomes the extra expense of everything else either made of oil or delivered by oil or gasoline, by eating at home a little more often than at his favorite restaurant.

I am exaggerating a little, I know, but you get the point. People need food, shelter, clothing, and the means to get around to do their work, and they need the work, too, work that will permit a man to support his wife and children, so that home and not the workplace, the street and the neighborhood and not the highway and the strip mall, will be the center of human activity. Everything that makes it more expensive for ordinary people to obtain those ordinary goods is, if government policy is behind it, a tax on the working class and the middle class, and it hurts the most vulnerable among us the worst. 

The principle is easy to grasp. The rich man eats no more than the poor man. The rich man’s body needs to be kept no warmer in the winter than the poor man’s body. The rich man is probably less likely than the poor man to have to drive a few hundred miles a week.

The Democrats, when my father was young, used to be, as he told me, “for the little guy,” but that has not been reliably true since they gave the black ball to the littlest guy of all, our brother in the womb, and it has not been true at all since the party has cast its lot with the social and ideological hobbies of certain of the rich. 

The old jest, that an environmentalist is someone who already has his summer home in the mountains of Colorado, is revealing in its unwittingly Marxist way. For Karl Marx, that great stopped clock in the history of ideas, did understand that, in general, rich people will pursue policies that keep them rich and eliminate the threat of being overtaken from below. The environmentalism that drives up the price of oil is a rich man’s hobby, as the feminism that has helped to drive the skilled trades from our schools (because boys mostly profit by them) is a rich woman’s hobby. The WNBA, indeed, is a rich man’s hobby for sort-of-rich women, as it is financed mainly by the NBA. I can think of plenty of uses for that money that would be far more profitable for basketball-playing boys in our dysfunctional cities.

Far be it from me to tell rich people to give up their hobbies. If the NBA wants to finance the WNBA, it’s scarcely any business of mine. But when hobbies become cultural imperatives, or legal directives, then they are everyone’s business. Then we must ask what the imperatives and directives do for the common good, or, often, whether they tend to harm or ruin the common good. 

A party that genuinely cares for the poor will keep its eye on the ordinary goods of human life, and it will attempt to foster conditions that enable the poor to secure those goods at the least cost, by their own initiative, with as little interference from third parties as possible. That does not mean low-cost daycare and food stamps. It means, with few exceptions, no need for daycare and no need for food stamps. 

These conditions are not only legal. It is, after all, quite possible by law and in theory for a poor family in the United States to scratch its way into security by hard work, much self-denial, and the practice of prudential virtues now held in scorn, such as, most obviously, not getting into bed with somebody before you are married and ready to have a child. But the whole cultural environment has been corrupted, including by church leaders—who know whose pockets are deep—mostly going along with good cheer. And the economic environment is now perfectly dreadful.

If the Republicans could hold a thought in their heads for more than a few seconds, they might see an opening, a political shift that would flip the parties for many decades to come. They might, for example, steal a page from the playbook of the much-loathed Franklin Roosevelt. When you drive down the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut, you will see one handsome bridge after another, no two the same, built by men hired by the Works Progress Administration, men who had the skills to do that work but who had no one to hire them, or, and this is really my point here, boys who did not yet have the skills but came to learn them in the doing. The latter made up the main force of the Civilian Conservation Corps. The idea was to get young men out of the vice-ridden slums and put them to work outdoors, hardening their muscles and freshening their hearts, and teaching them how to use tools they had never used before, perhaps had never held or seen before. The idea was, of course, that a young man could go fromthe CCC into gainful employment elsewhere—why, almost anywhere.

Now, a WPA or a CCC will degenerate into a bloated make-work program riddled with political correctness, unless we keep clear in our minds what we are aiming for: working-class families, secure in their homes, with married parents and no need for both to be outside of the home. And that can only be the case if, again, the ordinary commodities of human life are easy and cheap to secure. And that can only be the case, in the world as it now is, if fuel is cheap. You cannot, right now, be an advocate for the poor all while you pursue policies that make it a hardship for them to heat their homes, fill their bellies, and drive to work, or work at all. 

You must make a choice. 

Likewise, you cannot be an advocate for the poor all while you pursue cultural directives that make it less and less likely—that will, rather, require a kind of herculean commitment to virtues that are mocked on all sides—for the working-class boy and girl to meet, to fall in love, to marry, and to have children in rather than out of wedlock, and to keep their vows to one another through the hard times that come to all of us, and to the poor most frequently and urgently. 

You can fly the rainbow flag, you can flood the minds of young people with porn, and you can at the same time advocate policies that pour public funds into the lives of the poor, but you will be like people who punch holes in someone’s tank while giving them bottled water instead. If diabetes could be communicated, you would be like someone with such a heart for diabetics, you pursue policies that make as many diabetics as possible, while you feed them some good food and a lot of cookies, so that they never do get free of the disease. You can hold on to your sexual nihilism, or you can work for the poor, but you cannot do both at once. 

You must choose.

Do I think the Republicans will seize the opening? I have no idea. We could have cheap fuel again. We could have intact families again, too, and not just for professionals. We could encourage more work that does not require a college degree. We could encourage cultural practices that keep the cost of housing low. We could—there is nothing in the universe that forbids it. For most of our expenses are self-imposed, self-inflicted. 

You can’t turn back the clock? Wrong metaphor. A certain kind of rich man’s policies and hobbies are a bulldozer rolling over the poor. You can tell him to get the heck out of the bulldozer. If he won’t, you can shoot a political hole in his tank, so that the bulldozer comes to a stop whether he likes it or not.

Will Hollywood ever wake up from it's cult like obsession from the jabs?

 

Source: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/06/wayne-root-will-whole-hollywood-soon-either-dead-like-ray-liotta-paralyzed-like-justin-bieber-will-still-trust-lies-government-cdc/

By Wayne Allyn Root

I’ll get to Justin Bieber and Ray Liotta in just a minute….

But first I want to explain why I know and understand liberal Democrats who worship “the vaccine god” better than any conservative in America.

It’s because I’ve known nothing but liberal Democrats all my life. I grew up on a dead-end street on the Bronx borderline, in a majority minority city. I attended an almost 100% black middle school, then a 90% black high school. Almost everyone I knew was a Democrat.

I grew up Jewish, attended synagogue and was Bar Mitzvah-ed. Almost every Jew I knew was a Democrat- from my rabbi, to my own uncles and aunts.

I was accepted to Columbia University, one of the finest Ivy League colleges in America. Forget Democrats, most of my professors and classmates bragged they were socialists, Marxists, or communists.

I became host of five television shows on Financial News Network (now known as CNBC). Everyone I met in journalism, broadcasting and the media was an ultra- liberal Democrat. I lived for 13 years in Malibu, California. Everyone I met in Malibu was an ultra-liberal Democrat.

One more unique tidbit- I’m a lifelong health food and vitamin enthusiast. For decades most of the people I met in vitamin stores were liberal Democrats.

So, I’ve been living and working around liberal Democrats, socialists, Marxists and communists my entire life. I may understand them better than any conservative or Republican in America.

And never did politics, or liberal Democrat politics in particular, ever have anything to do with medicine or vaccines. Actually, to the contrary, most of the liberal Democrats I met in my life were cynical, anti-establishment, never trusted anything politicians or government told them, hated and distrusted Big Pharma, and were almost always anti-vaccine.

Most of the Birkenstock crowd I met in vitamin stores and health food stores would not allow their kids to be vaccinated. Most of the liberal mothers I met over the years (and I lived in Manhattan, the Hollywood Hills and Malibu- so I know liberal mothers) did not trust vaccines and believed vaccines caused autism.

So, how did we get here?

Because right now, in this moment in time, liberal Democrats, and assorted socialists, Marxists and communists (who make up the Democrat Party)…and in particular everyone in Hollywood and entertainment…have spent the past 18 months in a spell…a mass psychosis…a Stepford Wife trance…a Jim Jones of Guyana-like, Kool-Aid drinking, mass brainwashing event.

The liberal Democrats I knew my whole life were mostly atheists. But suddenly, every Democrat I meet believes in a “god.” They’ve all found religion. Their god of choice is the Covid vaccine. Their religion is “Vaccineology.”

They love Vaccineology so much, many of them switched from Scientology.

The liberal Hollywood crowd is filled with addicts- drug addicts, alcohol addicts, sex addicts- but now their addiction of choice is the vaccine needle.

Instead of AA meetings, soon they’ll be attending VA meetings- “Vaccine Anonymous.”

Suddenly every liberal Democrat in Hollywood loves Covid vaccines like Christians love Jesus. They worship the needle. They are desperate for boosters for their boosters!

Suddenly Democrats ask no questions- they trust everything Big Pharma tells them. They hate capitalism, yet Big Pharma committing fraud and covering up vaccine injuries and deaths to make trillions of dollars and turn Big Pharma executives into billionaires, doesn’t bother them in the slightest.

If a brain-dead zombie puppet with diapers and dementia (ie Joe Biden) tells them the vaccine is safe, they just roll up their sleeves and say, “Your wish is my command.”

Hollywood limousine liberals want the Covid vaccine god on the back of our coins. “In Vaxx We Trust.”

Funny, but doesn’t this sound a lot like what happened under Stalin…and Hitler…and Castro…and Rev Jim Jones in Guyana?

All over the world athletes, politicians, actors, rock stars and celebrities have been “dying suddenly” or suffering cardiac arrest, heart issues, strokes, blood clots and massive increases in cancer- all since 2021 and the advent of the vaccine. Athlete deaths are up over 1700%. FIFA (pro soccer) deaths are up five fold- almost 100% are heart related. Millennial deaths are up by a staggering 84% since the vaccine.

The numbers are shocking. Ask any life insurance executive, or funeral home owner. Ask any cardiac nurse. Study the VAERS report.

But now it’s hitting home in Hollywood. In recent weeks one of my favorite actors, Ray Liotta died in his sleep on the set of his latest movie. Was he vaccinated? Almost certainly. No actor can get on a movie set without proof of vaccination.

*NOTE: Obviously, I’m not a MD. I can’t state for certain that Ray Liotta, or any number of other celebrities, actors, rock stars, athletes, and politicians died or suffered heart attacks or strokes directly from the Covid vaccine. But I am an opinion commentator. And it is my opinion that the vaccine is the likely suspect. And we all have a right to ask questions. We all have a responsibility to try to save future lives from this slow-motion train wreck. We all have every right and reason to ask for investigations.

And then only days ago, 28-year old superstar singer Justin Bieber went public with his face paralysis- from a rare disease called Ramsay Hunt Syndrome (from a virus in the shingles family). Bieber was forced to cancel his tour. Shockingly, his 26-year old wife had a mini-stroke “unexpectedly” only weeks ago.

These are medical conditions that mimic vaccine injuries happening all over the world. Were Bieber and his young wife vaccinated? Almost certainly- his fans are not even allowed to attend his concerts without proof of vaccination.

*NOTE: Obviously, I’m not a MD. I can’t state for certain that Justin Bieber or his young wife, or any number of other celebrities, actors, rock stars, athletes, and politicians died or suffered heart attacks or strokes directly from the Covid vaccine. But I am an opinion commentator. And it is my opinion that the vaccine is the likely suspect. And we all have a right to ask questions. We all have a responsibility to try to save future lives from this slow-motion train wreck. We all have every right and reason to ask for investigations.

All over the world vaccine injuries and deaths are piling up. Hundreds of studies from around the globe report the Covid vaccine damages the immune system and results in dramatic increases in heart attacks, heart inflammation, strokes, blood clots, cancer and terrible outbreaks of shingles and facial paralysis.

Liberal Hollywood has lapped up the lies, misinformation and world-class coverup by the government, media and CDC like no other group in the world. You can’t step on a set or stage in Hollywood, or anywhere the entertainment industry, without proof of vaccination.

Bieber and his wife are the tip of the iceberg. Soon we’ll be seeing and hearing about a tsunami of Justin Biebers and Ray Liottas. Which star is next?

The question is, in this celebrity obsessed world, what famous celebrity’s death will be the tipping point that wakes the world up to this unfolding tragedy?

*NOTE: This is an opinion column. These are my opinions. These are public figures. In a free speech society we have every right to ask questions and request investigations of an issue that could affect our future health and lives.

Wayne Allyn Root is known as “the Conservative Warrior.” Wayne’s latest book, “The Great Patriot Protest & Boycott Book” is a #1 bestseller. Wayne is host of the nationally- syndicated “Wayne Allyn Root: Raw & Unfiltered” on USA Radio Network, daily from 6 PM to 9 PM EST and the “WAR RAW” podcast. Visit ROOTforAmerica.com, or listen live at USAradio.com, or “on demand” 24/7 at iHeartRadio.com, or on the Audacy app.

Elon Comes to the Defense of Libs of TikTok Causing Taylor Lorenz to Have a Meltdown

Nick Arama reporting for RedState 

Elon Musk just revealed one more reason he’s desperately needed to change the ethos of Twitter.

We’ve seen that when it comes to Twitter, the rules pretty much depend on whether it serves the Democratic narrative. If it’s something that might hurt the Democrats — like a breaking story from the NY Post on the Hunter Biden laptop and emails showing Joe Biden lied about not having contact with Hunter’s business associates — then watch out, suppression may be coming.

There’s a general rule against targeting and harassing people. Yet, when conservatives are targeted, it often seems like the rules don’t apply.

Libs of TikTok — which has become a very prominent account simply by posting videos of the left being themselves — has been targeted by the left for retribution.

The woman who runs the account has now moved to another location after all the death threats. She complained to Twitter about the threats multiple times, but according to her, they hadn’t taken any action against any of the accounts. Not only hadn’t they addressed her concerns, as we reported, they allegedly were also talking about whether not to ban Libs of TikTok on their private channel.

But then Libs had Elon Musk come to her defense.

Then he hit on the basic problem that Twitter has now.

“A platform cannot be considered inclusive or fair if it is biased against half the country,” he said.

How true that is, but that’s why the left doesn’t want Elon to take over Twitter because they know that he won’t stand for this and that would change their ability to use the platform to control the narrative.

But even though Elon hasn’t taken over yet, his comments appear to have affected Twitter’s response to Libs of TikTok. Suddenly, accounts about which she had complained suddenly were suspended after his remarks.

This is why he needs to take over Twitter, to change this not just for a big account that he can see, but for the whole platform.

Naturally, that caused the professional crank, the Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz — who recently doxxed Libs of TikTok herself — to have a meltdown because Musk intervened.

This is disinformation since Seth Dillon has made clear that the Babylon Bee did not invest in Libs of TikTok — he personally invested in her.

But Lorenz blocked the ability of people to respond to her, in a typically cowardly fashion.

However, the efforts of the left to take on Libs have resulted in even more attention to the account.

So, great job, liberals! It’s going to be great fun when Elon takes over Twitter.

Actress Patricia Heaton Blasts Disney for Replacing Tim Allen with Chris Evans in ‘LightYear'

 

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/06/15/actress-patricia-heaton-blasts-disney-for-replacing-tim-allen-with-chris-evans-in-lightyear-completely-castrated-the-character/

Actress Patricia Heaton blasted Disney-Pixar over its decision to replace actor Tim Allen with actor Chris Evans in the animated children’s movie LightYear, asking “Why would they completely castrate” the Buzz Lightyear character?

“Saw the trailer for Buzz Lightyear and all I can say is Disney/Pixar made a HUGE mistake in not casting my pal @ofctimallen Tim Allen in the role that he originated, the role that he owns,” Heaton tweeted on Tuesday.

“Tim IS Buzz!” the actress added. “Why would they completely castrate this iconic, beloved character?”

In a follow-up tweet, Heaton wrote, “Ok so the current Buzz Lightyear movie is an origin story – but the reason the character became so beloved is because of what [Tim Allen] created.”

“Why remove the one element that makes us want to see it?” the Everybody Loves Raymond actress added, along with the hashtag, “Stupid Hollywood Decisions.”

Pixar’s upcoming children’s film has reportedly been banned in Middle Eastern countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — as well as Malaysia — over a scene featuring a gay kiss.

The same-sex kiss, which was initially cut from the film, was restored after LGBTQIA2S+ employees and their allies complained that Disney executives had censored “overtly gay affection” in the company’s films.

Disney/Pixar

The outrage from a woke mob at Pixar Animation Studios was part of a larger protest against Disney’s initial silence in response to a Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill, which prohibits teachers from talking to children about sexuality and transgenderism in kindergarten through third grade.

After the Walt Disney Co. faced the wrath of left-wing activists, Disney CEO Bob Chapek caved to the woke mob and announced that the company is pledging $5 million toward LGBTQ groups in response to Florida’s anti-grooming legislation.

Additionally, the groveling Disney CEO also promised to launch as task force to make more LGBTQIA2S+ content for children and families.

Production Prices Continue Exceeding Current Consumer Prices, Meaning Higher Prices Still Coming

The “Producer Price Index” (PPI) is essentially the tracking of wholesale prices at three stages: Origination (commodity), Intermediate (processing), and then Final (to wholesale). Today, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the May 2022 price data [Available Here] showing another 10.8% increase year-over-year in Final Demand products at the wholesale level.

The inflation within the total goods supply chain continues to accumulate at a more significant rate than the finished goods on the store shelves.  This means replacement goods will continue arriving with higher prices than current.   Final demand goods in May were 1.4% higher than April (16.8% annualized).  And the May year-over-year prices show a 10.8% increase [See Table A].  However, there’s more trouble ahead:

More troubling than the final demand price increases (wholesale finished goods), are the price increases in the intermediate goods and unprocessed raw materials.

Intermediate processed goods increased 2.3% in May (27.6% annualized).  The intermediate unprocessed goods, raw materials, jumped even higher in price at 6.3% for May (that’s a whopping 75.6% annualized increase).   It would appear the raw materials coming into the goods sector are coming in with even higher built-in energy costs than most people anticipated.

Once those intermediate products reach the final demand stage (wholesale), the cumulative price increase will mean even higher consumer prices.

(VIA ABC) – WASHINGTON — U.S. producer prices surged 10.8% in May from a year earlier, underscoring the ongoing threat to the economy from inflation that shows no sign of slowing.

Tuesday’s report from the Labor Department showed that the producer price index — which measures inflation before it reaches consumers — rose at slightly slower pace last month than in April, when it jumped 10.9% from a year earlier, and is down from an 11.5% yearly gain in March.

On a monthly basis, producer prices climbed 0.8% in May from April, above the previous month, when they increased 0.4%.

Energy prices, led by gas, rose 5% just in May from April. Another big driver of the price gains last month was a sharp 2.9% increase in the cost of truck freight hauling, a sign that supply chain problems still aren’t fully resolved. Food costs were unchanged.

The figures indicate that rising prices will continue to erode Americans’ paychecks and wreak havoc on household budgets in the coming months. Inflation has created major political headaches for President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats and has forced the Federal Reserve into a series of rapid interest rate hikes intended to slow the economy and cool price increases. (read more)