Now You Get to Pay for the Ukraine War with a Recession

(My Fleming.Foundation article)

I just paid $6.42 for gas out here in California. Because my car now has 140,000 miles on it, I had to switch to premium to stop the engine from “knocking.” Meat at the grocery costs 50 percent more than a year ago.

Meanwhile, I saw a video where a girl in Russia showed the place has some shortages and prices are higher, but food is on the shelves. And gas is the ruble/liter equivalent of $2 a gallon, which she said has gone down in price.

Biden’s sanctions are working – against us.

“Mission Accomplished!” as Bush enthused at the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003, which we’re still fighting. And least we got out of Afghanistan – after 20 years.

Meanwhile, back in the “free world,” as Biden calls our land of rapidly decreasing liberties, Bill Gates is building a $43 million “bachelor palace” on the beach in Del Mar, the ultra-exclusive suburb of San Diego. He recently split from his wife, Melinda, apparently after she got upset at his connections to the late Jeffrey Epstein.

Bill also just published a book, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Well, we already know that. First, grab $100 billion or more. Then, buy a $43 million bachelor palace. Because all those warnings of “global warming” or “climate change” – whatever the new buzzword is – raising the oceans and swamping the coasts is just make believe. It’s so the peasants won’t pester the oligarchs who run the government about things like rapidly dropping living standards and uncontrolled borders and 100,000 fentanyl overdose deaths and insane wars in places on the map almost no American could locate until a month ago.

The war also has led to Russia’s oligarchs getting their billion-dollar yachts seized around the world. That will mean fire sale prices for the other oligarchs who want to pick up a second or third megayacht. Gates’ yacht cost $644 million. But don’t worry, it’s hydrogen powered, so it won’t pollute the atmosphere, cause global warming/climate change/whatever and swamp his new bachelor palace.

With the war now a month old, it’s obvious it could have been avoided by Biden making clear Ukraine never would become part of NATO. To make that credible, he would have had to remove the American forces training the Ukrainian forces, including the Azov Battalion neo-Nazis.

Then again, the Hunter Biden’s Laptop from Hell story has resurfaced. We may soon find out just how close were the relations of Joe and Hunter to the Ukrainian regime, the most corrupt in the world.

Our country still hasn’t recovered financially from the $7 trillion wasted on the Iraq-Afghanistan wars. Although there were other causes, that blown money was a cause behind the 2007-10 Subprime Meltdown, the worst recession since the Great Depression.

Now, another recession approaches quickly. The Federal Reserve has been reluctant to raise interest rates from the 0 percent rate, only recently going to 0.25 percent. But with inflation now at 10 percent, it is going to have to boost rates much higher to prevent Weimar-Zimbabwe-Venezuela-style hyperinflation. If it gradually had raised rates the past few years, this would not be a problem.

Then there’s the dollar’s decline against gold, to $1,958 per ounce, about a 10 percent loss of value since the Ukraine War started.

But even before the war, gold had declined to $1,800 from the $1,300 it was just three years ago, in March 2019. The decline in the dollar’s value (rise in the gold price) started under Trump, so he bears much of the blame.

Do the math: Since March 2019, gold went from $1,300 an ounce to $1,958. That’s an increase of $658, or 50 percent. The 2020-21 pandemic scrambled supply chains, and now the war is doing so even more.

But when the price of an ounce of gold goes up that much, inexorably it moves through the economy eventually. And with the war continuing, and Russia reorienting its oil, wheat, fertilizer and other commodities to China, who knows how much more we’ll be paying for everything.

And when the wheat shortages hit the Middle East and Africa, millions of refugees will come here to join the 3 million illegals Biden is letting over the border every hear. Who is going to pay for them?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am shopping for a discount price on one of those megayachts.

John Seiler writes at johnseiler.substack.com