Essay by Eric Worrall
h/t ResourceGuy – As key economic indicators redline, greens who believe the key to addressing climate change is economic “degrowth” might be about to get their wish.
US Bank Lending Slumps by Most on Record in Final Weeks of March
Alex Tanzi
Sat, April 8, 2023 at 8:06 AM GMT+10·(Bloomberg) — US bank lending contracted by the most on record in the last two weeks of March, indicating a tightening of credit conditions in the wake of several high-profile bank collapses that risks damaging the economy.
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Commercial bank lending dropped nearly $105 billion in the two weeks ended March 29, the most in Federal Reserve data back to 1973. The more than $45 billion decrease in the latest week was primarily due to a a drop in loans by small banks.
The pullback in total lending in the last half of March was broad and included fewer real estate loans, as well as commercial and industrial loans.
Friday’s report also showed commercial bank deposits dropped $64.7 billion in the latest week, marking the 10th-straight decrease that mainly reflected a decline at large firms.
The slide in lending follows the collapse of several firms including Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
…
The banking crisis has made a recession more likely, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon. The bank’s chief executive officer said in an annual letter that the failures have “provoked lots of jitters in the market and will clearly cause some tightening of financial conditions as banks and other lenders become more conservative.”
…
Read more: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-bank-lending-slumps-most-210839551.html
Why am I talking up the risk of an imminent recession?
My concern is so much of what Biden has done to date has made things worse. As inflation rose, Biden passed the misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act“, pouring fuel on the inflation fire. The Biden administration remains committed to wrecking the USA’s extractive industries, with nuisance bureaucratic attacks, permit cancellations, excessive regulation, and lease auction suspensions, deferrals or cancellations. And their blanket guarantee of bank deposits, while reducing the risk of further bank runs in the short term, has increased moral hazard and the risk of large scale resource misallocation, by leaving badly managed banks which should be allowed to fail in the hands of incompetents and criminals.
At every economic inflexion point I can think of, the approach of the Biden administration has been short term and reactive rather than strategic. For example, their decision to drain just under half the strategic oil reserve, without doing anything substantial to improve US oil production and energy security, lowered pump prices a little in the short term, but did nothing to address the underlying problems.
It is not too late. If the US government pulled back on excessive spending, stopped sucking bond markets dry with their debt funded climate extravagances, and did everything in their power to ease restrictions on drilling, to lower the cost of energy and defuse the ticking inflation bomb, confidence could be restored. The US economy might be able to grow its way out of the inflation trap, without raising interest rates and taxes to economy killing levels.
Over to you, President Biden.
Two chances – None, and sod all.
Biden wants to be the head of a global government, or at least set Hunter up for the job.
Biden just wants to be as feted as Obama is in the global cult of virtue signaling.
fetid is spelt with an i
🙂
Slim and none, and Slim just left town.
William Slim turned military disaster to a victory.
Capable men are not born every day.
There is a comment attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte that one is to not claim conspiracy for that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
The problem is that they are not mutually exclusive.
Which one cares more about the environment – a rich nation or a poor one? Strange as it may seem to some, when you have to struggle to get food and keep a roof over your head you aren’t going to be donating to WWF no matter how many cuddly toys they send you. So a policy of making people poorer doesn’t seem the brightest idea but then I guess nobody would describe Dementia Joe or ecofascists as bright.
Biden will certainly do none of the things you suggest. He does not understand why these things should be done, is unable to think clearly on any subject including our economy and is focused fully on himself and the Democratic party and not the welfare of the U.S. What you see is all you get.
Biden doesn’t think or do anything,
like most ‘heads of state’ (& other politicians ), he’s a puppet;
we need to worry about who’s pulling the strings.
Problem is no one does, he is just ‘flapping in the wind’.
Nothing strategic? If I were on a mission to destroy the US economy, I can’t imagine what I’d be doing differently.
A deep long recession would be great compared to what we’re going to get sometime in the next few years when the US dollar loses its role as the world currency.
not gonna happen- America is still the only real super power and for that reason the dollar is king
Modern civilisation is built on energy. Global influence is built on trust.
China is gaining in both while USA is static on energy and declining on trust.
China has a strategy backed by its global real market dominance to establish the RMB as the dominant global currency. It is not the current level of invoicing in RMB but its rapid uptake by trading partners that bears attention.
https://english.www.gov.cn/archive/statistics/202108/23/content_WS6122d5ebc6d0df57f98defda.html
This report predates the Ukranian conflict. The use of RMB for international trade has accelerated since the US embargo on Russia.
Destruction is not their mission. Look, these are the same clowns that think spending money is how you beat inflation. Their thinking is on the level of Pharaoh, “So shall it be written, so shall it be done”, or children raising a thermostat temperature as if that will heat the house faster.
All they know is that they want power. They don’t even know what it is or what to do with it once (they think) they have it.
They are just mindless politicians trying to stay in the spotlight, bulls in china shops.
The headline explains the apparent conundrum. Reduced consumption of goods and energy is a well-thought-out goal. The progressives don’t want big hurt to do that, while admitting a little hurt will happen. An economic recession would be a bighurt, but also in their mind an Opportunity: mire of the Great Reset.
The elite of all Western nations were clear during the pandemic about this opportunity the economic and cultural shutdown provided them. They didn’t want to exit the pandemic as we entered it. They wanted us in 2023 to be traveling less, buying less, using less electricity and tamping down fossil fuel use. (And interacting differently, but also less, as we stay in our neighborhoods looking at our screens). And they crafted laws and regulations to do this, which we are seeing in the Biden administration rulings.
Our fight is over the American Way of Life, once a gleaming wonder, now said to be an ignominious corruption.
Oh, BTW, this does not apply to the 1% wealthy rule makers. They know how to live virtuously in their splendor, unlike the unwashed masses in the streets who need their parental management.
“The progressives don’t want big hurt to do that, while admitting a little hurt will happen.”
They’ll make sure the bureaucrats, the population they love the most, will get their cost of living raise.
In 2019 a mere US$11million of net assets got a ‘household’ into the top 1%. It’s very doubtful that opens the door to global decision making. Maybe the top tenth of one percent, ie. billionaire country, but even this level of wealth probably doesn’t cut it. A combination of personal connections and wealth is more likely necessary. I doubt any level of wealth can protect you if you don’t have the right connections (think ‘Praetorian Guard’). I suspect most of the very rich are shaking in their boots as much as any of us.
The economic boom and bust cycle is the predominant feature of fractional banking systems controlled by a central bank.
The 2008 financial crisis was initially papered over by massive quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve, which then went on to print even more money to accommodate continued out of control Federal government spending. Coupled with government-mandated economic shutdowns and COVID spending, plus Biden’s war on fossil fuels and renewable ‘investment’, we now have way too much money chasing too few goods and services in addition to high levels of mal-investment in renewable energy.
In a free economy, the resulting inflation could be brought under control by drastically reducing government spending and regulation, which would mainly have impacted the public sector. Unfortunately, in our ‘mixed’ economy, the Keynesian medicine of high interest rates will mainly affect the private sector, thereby leaving the public sector and it’s parasitic adherents largely unscathed.
You are precisely correct. Democrats can be counted on to do the wrong thing, at the wrong time, in the wrong way, every time. We-are-screwed. They don’t get it a little wrong, they consistently do the opposite of what is required.
I bet it was a group of Dems who decided that Dylan Mulvaney promoting Budweiser was a good idea.
This is why the Dems are called the LEFT. Which in latin is Sinister. QED
“The economic boom and bust cycle is the predominant feature of fractional banking systems controlled by a central bank.”
1/ Boom-bust cycles are an inherent feature of market economies, and can be produced in simple classroom simulations. They long predate strong central banks – and even predate any regulation of banks.
They began in early industrial Britain, and were predominant features of 19th century Britain and America. The depressions of the 19th century were long and deep, in poorer societies. They occurred in nations with hard currencies, typically backed by gold, with weak central banks (by our standards).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression
The Great Depression was the last of these big cycles in the West, and sparked development of strong central banks and interventionist governments. Although these, of course, produced new sets of problems, since then economic growth has been more stable – and depressions very rare and small.
2/ Fractional-reserve banking predates the creation of central banks. In that era, banks were small and unstable, and this slowed the growth of those economies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional-reserve_banking#History
It’s always more complicated than that. For instance, the Panic of 1873. Financial and economic histories of the 19th century seldom mention the “Great Epizootic of 1872”. Literally every horse in Canada and the US contracted equine influenza. The economy, which depended entirely on horse-drawn transportation came to a screeching halt. Fires could not be fought, beer couldn’t be delivered, fields couldn’t be plowed, railroad freight was marooned at the depot. The horses didn’t die but couldn’t be worked. Imagine if, today, no trucks could make local deliveries and all cars were immobilized. A story: https://www.historicalsocietyottawa.ca/publications/ottawa-stories/momentous-events-in-the-city-s-life/the-great-epizootic
Without fractional reserve banking, loan activity disappears.
I don’t think so. We’d have ‘deposit’ banking, where people pay a small fee to safeguard their money, write checks, wire money, etc., and ‘credit’ (loan) banking, where people receive interest for lending their money out at term.
The main advantages of this alternative to fractional reserve banking include duration matching of the credit bank’s assets and liabilities, minimization of risk on deposits and elimination of business cycles due to credit expansion unbacked by production.
Who’d be making the loans? Or do you believe that everyone would just switch to paying cash for everything?
‘Who’d be making the loans?’
Undoubtedly people who have resources beyond their current needs, aka investors or savers.
Fractional reserve banking doesn’t require that old man Potter has to wait down at the local bank for some kid to deposit his allowance in order for him to loan out 90% (or whatever 1 minus the reserve ratio is) of it to someone else. Under the current banking system, if Potter’s bank wants to lend you a million bucks, it just simultaneously creates an asset (loan to MarkW) and an offsetting liability (deposit to MarkW). Poof, just like that, a million bucks created ex nihilo with no increase in real goods and/or services.
Wash, rinse and repeat and inevitably we live in an inflationary world. It adds nothing to the real economy, but as we’ve seen repeatedly over time, it is inherently unstable and is the secret sauce that allows governments to spend and expand way beyond what they could do, e.g., the current climate change nonsense, under a fully reserved, i.e., hard money, banking system.
Credit does not depend on fractional reserve or any other type of banking. The local department store, feed store, bar, etc. can extend credit without reference to, or interaction with, banks. This, in a sense, creates money out of nothing. You bought the goods on a promise to pay with money you earn or obtain in the future (e.g. something you sell or wages you get paid, etc.). As long as you do pay, things zip along smoothly.
Banks could, and always have, loaned monies in their possession, profit or deposits, without creating more money than they have, as do credit unions today. This puts existing money in circulation but doesn’t create any new money.
Paying with checks or bank cards, against your deposits, as with a debit card, does not create more money but does relieve one of carrying around currency or coins.
Fractional reserve mechanisms are a means for a lender to earn interest on something he doesn’t have. The payments on a house loan from a bank have two parts: the principle which just zeros out part of the fictitious loan balance, and the interest, which is profit to the bank. Where does the money for the interest payment come from? In this system it comes from someone’s else agreeing to an imaginary loan, creating the “money” to use for your interest payment. There is no end to that process.
The second big benefit of fractional reserve is that it is a means for a government to tax its citizens without most of them being aware that they are being taxed.
Prior to the government playing a more active role in the economy, contractions were of relatively short duration. The Great Depression was a prolonged extension of a periodic contraction thanks to misguided government intervention including a dramatic contraction of the money supply by the Federal Reserve.
Correct. Compare and contrast the relatively quick (~one year) recovery from the post-WWI economic downturn (~25%) of 1920 with the decadal recovery of the post-Roaring Twenties depression. PS – I wouldn’t fault the Fed so much for this fiasco as I would both Hoover and Roosevelt – the former, because he wouldn’t allow the needed correction to occur and especially the latter, for demoralizing the private sector with his socialist policies.
If I remember rightly, China holds about $1 trillion in U.S. debt. If there is deep recession and Xi asks for his money to be repaid, the USA can’t possibly behave as a ‘banana republic’ and default on its international debt.
In such case best possible solution is to gift Sacramento with all of its officialdom to the Chinese.
Some of their nearby SF numerous cousins may not like that much,, but then would California be governed any worse than it is.
‘1/ Boom-bust cycles are an inherent feature of market economies,…’
No. Since mankind evolved beyond subsistence living, these cycles are the result of credit expansion unbacked by production. In other words, you can neither consume nor lend out that which hasn’t already been produced. The invention of economic money, of course, was instrumental, along with specialization and the division of labor, in allowing economic activity to expand to modern levels. However just ‘printing’ money always results in the diversion of economic activity from productive to unproductive ends, typically at the whim of the most politically well connected.
‘
Long before the Federal Reserve Bank, boom and bust cycles were common, even routine. They are a product of human nature acting within markets. Typically, as good times persist, people grow complacent. Businesses overstock inventories. The system becomes pregnant with an inventory-related recession. Some random event occurs (a war, a storm, a plague, detail unimportant) and acts as a trigger. People slow down buying, companies react to growing inventories by slowing orders, a vicious cycle ensues. This is an old fashioned recession and inevitable.
The Fed raising interest rates is not Keynesian per se. Keynes would note the current expansionary impulse of our current federal budget deficit and be appalled that we are allowing deficits in a time of prolonged growth. Keynes expected budget surpluses to accompany growth to work off the debt built up during deficit-spending fighting a recession.
But under Biden, our deficit spending is accelerating, despite low unemployment and good growth. Meanwhile our fed is working for demand destruction to decrease the current inflation. Just as in the 1970’s, we have one foot on the accelerator and another on the brake. Stagflation, already happening, will continue until a good old fashioned recession resets everything.
‘Long before the Federal Reserve Bank, boom and bust cycles were common, even routine. They are a product of human nature acting within markets.’
Boom and bust cycles were common before the FRB because fractional reserve banking was common long before the FRB. The main issue with a central bank, like the FRB, is that the problems with fractional reserve banking become systematic to the entire economy, rather than being limited regionally or to certain economic sectors of the economy. Needless to say, I think that Keynes was all wet with his ‘animal spirits’ vision of markets.
I see a silver lining in the way the Biden administration is destroying the economy; not just in the USA but around the world. Eventually enough Americans are going to wake up to what is going on and just how appallingly the hard-left is handling the economy. When they wake up they will realise that this is the worst administration in US history and it is a perfect example of how hard-left socialists can destroy the American dream and the American way of life. When that happens, not only will Trump be re-elected, but there won’t be a Democrat President elected for the next 20 years, even with the obvious electoral cheating that is rife in the Democrat party. And then this anti hard-left sentiment will flow to the rest of the Western world.
Dream on, that’s what needs to happen, but I’ll wager that 90% of the woke West under the age of 45 don’t have the slightest understanding of how the West economy was systematically destroyed under the liberal/progressive business model of mine and manufacture nothing and import everything to save energy and reduce emissions. It’s not something that’s going to happen, it already has.
“mine and manufacture nothing and import everything to save energy and reduce emissions”
Right, but don’t forget exporting of industries to Mexico and China were all about corporations getting dirt cheap labor.
When you go shopping, do you always buy the most expensive items you can find?
If not, why is it wrong for businesses to do the same thing?
You and Joseph both make good points. I think the real reason free trade often gets a bad rap is because of over-regulation here. Moving stuff around has a cost, so businesses probably relocate production overseas less for lower labor costs than to escape from lunatics like Liz Warren.
did I say it was a bad thing? I didn’t.
You seem to be upset when businesses do the same thing.
It’s not a great thing for a nation when its industries move to another country. Especially China.
I hope you’re right. We’ll see before too long.
You are forgetting something. Feminists vote. And they will vote Democrat even if the Democrat running for office personally kicked them in the shin, stole all their money, cut off both their thumbs, and then blamed them for not being able to grab something only because the Democrats support abortion. “Sure, my life has become much much worse. But abortion! But transgender rights!”
No matter how bad the Democrat party makes their life, these people will blindly vote for them because they are a 1 issue person: abortion. As long as the Democrats promise that, they will get their vote, no questions asked. And these hateful people are not a small group. And make no mistake, they are full of hate.
As I’m sure many others can point out, that true believers witl wake up to reality is a pipe dream.
Accurately predicting recessions before they begin ranges from difficult to impossible. There are too many economic indicators. The useful ones are subject to heavy revisions (ie, using the final number shows the past not future). Most of the real-time ones have little predictive value. The economy always changes, so the value of a given indicator changes over time.
So no surprise that the consensus of economists has never successfully predicted a recession. But it’s fun to try, so pros and amateurs give absurdly confident predictions.
The current situation looks to be continued slow growth, but with many wild cards. For a good macro picture, I suggest looking at these indicators. They all use the most recent data. None look alarming.
Current GDPgrowth, predicted using the Atlanta Fed’s model. Q1 looks like +1.5% (seasonally adjusted annualized rate):
https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow
A GDP-based model (uses the current data that comprises GDP):
A graph of the ‘big four’ economic metrics:
“consensus of economists has never successfully predicted a recession”
so it’s not just “climate scientists” who don’t have a crystal ball
Sad but true. Scientists in both physical and social sciences often have ugly cases of physics envy.
‘Economics and climate science are relatively young and immature fields. People in both aspire to have the stature and influence of those in mature sciences.
So they pretend. As with astrologers and soothsayers in ancient times, they are paid well by the powerful to utter useful forecasts.
the difference being few people think “economics is settled science”- most people have a low opinion of it
I took a few economics courses in college in the late ’60s- I actually liked it. I think they’re trying to makes sense out of the subject but like all social sciences it’s just way too complicated.
Brandon is dismantling the USA in ways that Obama only dreamed of doing.
But Barry Obama said of Joe, “”Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f… things up.”
Hopefully he was referring to their common goals.
PS He was risen!
In fashionable circles degrowth Marxism is all the rage
“”Capital in the Anthropocene””
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/09/a-new-way-of-life-the-marxist-post-capitalist-green-manifesto-captivating-japan
Apparently it’s a new way of life
“Over to you, President Biden.”
no doubt he reads this blog 🙂
Your mistake is assuming he can still read. Judging from recent teleprompter results, bad assumption now.
sure, he mumbles- and Trump does too
what we need is a new generation- no more geezers
which is why I’ll support DeSantis- I’d like to see him run against a Dem of about the same age- that will make the election very interesting
Some of his problems of not knowing where he is on a podium, stumbling on steps and not being able to pick people in crowds or failing to read his teleprompter, can be sheeted to macular degeneration.
So he is ‘partially sighted’.
One of the causes of this is uv, hence the aviator glasses, no doubt carefully uv blocked, anti glare and placed at a correct focal length.
Many of his other problems can be sheeted home to exhaustion and lack of sleep, apart from age.
His off the cuff speech in Ukraine, which was very coherent, leads me to the above conclusions. If he has lost it, he could never have made that speech.
He is written off by Republicans as in severe decline, just as Hillary was, yet he still beat Trump.
Recently he allowed drilling in the Arctic and opened large areas to drilling in the Gulf.
Admittedly that was a deal, however he must be putting the price of oil in the US and secure supply, in case the Saud family chop the US off, as more important than his beliefs on climate change.
Perhaps his advisors and he have heard of and will act on, the problem of supply side inflation.
In the US, if the price of gasoline goes up 10 cents a gallon it rips about $39 million daily out of American billfolds because spending on commuting isn’t a discretionary expense. This is an anti-inflationary feature that the fed economists actually approve. Higher fuel prices raise the amounts of sales taxes attached to those purchases. They also help justify the continuing focus on alternative but impractical forms of renewable energy. Since oil leases are being cancelled, multi-national oil companies that are making record profits need to put their gains somewhere and the eco-fascists are forcing them to diversify into wind, tide and solar power.
Bernie Biden is very unpopular right now. He ran for office as Joe Biden, but has governed as Bernie Sanders. The voters don’t like to be lied to or fooled. His poll numbers are down in the 30s, which of course could always change but he is not doing the kinds of things it takes to improve them, such as ending inflation and high interest rates that are used by the Fed to tame those high interest rates. Today’s prime rate is 7.75%. When Bernie Biden was sworn in the prime rate was 3.25%, less than half what it is today. Today inflation is running at 6.4%. When Bernie Biden was sworn in the inflation rate was 1.4%, peaking at 7% in 2021 his first year in office.
This is a product of the same old, same old Democratic wild spending spree when they ran everything – both houses of Congress and the administration. Thankfully the People elected a Republican house which is going to rein in the massive drunken sailor spree of Democrat overspending. But it will be very important for Republicans to hold the House and take the Senate and White House next year if we are to get the economy back on an even keel.
‘He ran for office as Joe Biden, but has governed as Bernie Sanders.’
Democrats (specifically the DNC) have no problem with socialism. What they had was a problem with a candidate (Sanders) who outwardly identified as a Socialist, and was therefore unelectable. They fixed that problem in 2016 with Hillary, who lost, and in 2020 with Biden, who ‘won’. Now we have a problem with socialism.
The other shoe to drop comes later when the big pitch comes for higher taxes to avoid “crisis” conditions that was years in the making from bad public policy campaigns. This will be couched as “the responsible thing to do” by the same instigators. It also addresses the ills of compounding stimulus bills measured in multi-trillion dollars now.
samples
CLINTON PUSHES HOMEOWNERSHIP STRATEGY’ – The Washington Post
Clinton’s Legacy: The Financial and Housing Meltdown (reason.com)
Obama Unveils $75B Mortgage Relief Plan – CBS News
A different take. True, most of what Biden has done has been a disaster: Afghanistan, SPR, inflation, energy, and so much more. Now, that was expected of Biden, who was never the sharpest tool in the shed in his best days, now long behind him. Obama said of Biden, ‘Never underestimate his ability to eff things up.’
But what surprises me is who he has surrounded himself with. A VP who is demonstrably incompetent. A Transportaion Secretary who knows nothing about transportation. An energy secretary who knows nothing about energy. An HHS Secretary who is a lawyer knowing nothing about HHS. And so on.
I don’t think a Biden admin incompetency induced recession will slow greens down at all. If oblivious to the harm their Green policies causes, then also oblivious to the harm a recession caused by their compadres causes. Oblivious is oblivious.
These incompetents will probably induce a recession before yearend. Signs seem to point that way. But IMO it won’t faze theGreens at all.
Saving the earth is a tough job, but somebody has to do it. So they say.
‘[M’ost of what Biden has done has been a disaster’ because of ‘who he has surrounded himself with.’ And you’re right, the coming downturn won’t phase them at all.
People who sell tout sheets at horse races all make predictions too. As far as I can tell, nobody can predict the future.
Very nice Eric. You would think that after over 100 years experimenting with the Democrat/liberal/progressive/socialist/Marxist forms of governing that people could see they don’t work. The government is not up to running a country, the people of the country are the only ones who can do it. Will we all succeed? Not on your life. Will many of us fail? You can bet on it. That is my point with millions of us trying what we think will work the country doesn’t suffer when some of us fail. We allow people to fail, see what doesn’t work and move on. In the meantime the rest of the country has been humming along as usual. When the government is in charge and they fail we all fail. Biggest difference is the government doesn’t accept failure and will sacrifice almost everything to show its failure is a success. We need to get rid of those currently in charge they are really bad for the country.
“If the US government pulled back on excessive spending, stopped sucking bond markets dry with their debt funded climate extravagances, and did everything in their power to ease restrictions on drilling, to lower the cost of energy and defuse the ticking inflation bomb, confidence could be restored.“. Well, that ‘if’ is true, but the Australian expression for it is ‘Buckley’s and none‘. Until 2025, anyway. In the meantime, I suspect that the American people will once again show their resilience, aided by a constitution that has made it very difficult for the politerati to control everything in the way they do in other countries.
A possible first step could be for the American people to get their jobs back from China.
“It is not too late”
__________________________________
If you’re going to stick with Queensbury rules, it probably is too late.
Not to mention Biden’s war in Ukraine that has induced a supply side global inflation crisis because of the loss of energy supplies in the market(most of it intentional) and food production.
In addition, a new green energy law requires ships (that account for 80% of commodity movements around the globe) to burn very low sulfur diesel fuel which costs MORE than high sulfur fuel(or use scrubbers) has added an additional, across the board increase to commodity prices.
The poor countries are especially being crushed by this.
Ship fuel cost way down from war peak, but ‘green’ fallout looms
https://www.freightwaves.com/news/ship-fuel-cost-down-from-war-peak-but-green-fallout-looms
How Soaring Shipping Costs Raise Prices Around the World
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2022/03/28/how-soaring-shipping-costs-raise-prices-around-the-world
also a gift to all of Buyden’s Marxists buddies that want to destroy the USA