Authored by Todd Hayen via Off-Guardian.org,

As you all know, I have not been one to believe that the tides are turning. But lots of people think they are. They cite many victories, in court, in the streets, with family and friends.

The fact that the agenda has not sent out a second wave of horror and fear propaganda is also rather telling to these folks. Where is the next pandemic? What happened to Covid’s diabolic never-ending run of mutations, what happened to Monkey Pox? What happened to Disease X?

Yes, all this could still happen, but it seems there have been more false starts—starts that didn’t go anywhere. But if so, you would think they wouldn’t have put them out there just to not have them continue. It’s been rather weird, like an electrical storm you see on the horizon with its threatening lightning strikes, but it never gets close enough to warrant closing the cellar door.

How about CBDCs? And the Digital IDs? You hear a lot about these, but nothing that is concretely happening to implement them. Is it happening in other places? Australia? Germany? The UK? Of course, a lot is said about it, on YouTube, and in alt media. Lots of talking heads, but how imminent is it? Actually, I won’t dwell on this, I have no doubt all of this is coming, but has the dragon been wounded? Even a little bit? Has this march into oblivion been slowed down?

Maybe there is no wounding of the general juggernaut of world rule by the schmucks who are claiming power. Although even that sacrosanct organization may have suffered from shell damage. Wasn’t DAVOS not all that they expected this past year? Hasn’t there been some pretty obvious whiplash from some leaders in their little club? How about the UN and the “sustainable development” circus? How is that going?

Anyway, I digress. Although the health of the world agenda, including all of these projects I mention, are all part of it, Covid, and pandemics in general, are the specific topics of this article.

I don’t buy any of this talk of victory for a New York minute. This is like cancer, you can’t claim victory until it is ALL gone, every last scrap of it. Remissions are nice, but if you’ve still got cancer in your body somewhere, it is only a time-out. I feel that this is similar. Even if one cell survived, it would start multiplying again and wouldn’t stop until it was big and gnarly and spitting out all the garbage this monster has been known to spit out. So, I don’t buy it…but…

Is it possible that at least one battle was won? Maybe, but just because they have pulled the troops back doesn’t mean they didn’t still take the city and got essentially what they stormed in for. I may still say that is a possibility. I mean, what did they want as a consequence of their Covid campaign? Did they want 100% compliance, with billions of sheep bowing down to them? Did they want everyone locked up in their own little cage, ala 1984, each of us in a squalid apartment with just a giant TV in the middle of it so Big Brother could blab at us all day long? If that is true, then indeed the psyop failed, because they didn’t get that—at least not yet.

But what if they got this: a toxic injection placed in billions of people worldwide that will kill untold millions over the course of about 20 years? Not only that, but the injection will render another untold millions sterile. Do the math here: how many people would need to be sterilized over 20 years to reduce the population worldwide by 1 billion? 2 billion? What other havoc could such a death jab wreak? What untold horrors are yet to overcome us? Your guess is as good as mine. Think zombies here, think soulless ghouls, think humans with no empathy, think lost humanity.

And that’s just the physical consequences. What about the psychological success they have had with the Covid campaign? Sure, many participants have shot them the bird regarding more boosters, and have ignored more threats of losing jobs over vaccine resistance. Sure, the courts have ruled in Canada that the illustrious leader here performed a no-no with his reckless enactment of the Emergency Act, and as a result, lawsuits are flowing into the courts. Does all this mean that no one fell for the psychological operation? That no one was mentally affected by the lockdowns, the masks, the closure of schools, churches, and other institutions? Does it mean that we have all recovered from the trauma of those three years, and mentally and emotionally we are just back to square one—all normal again?

If anyone reading this knows anything about hypnosis, they probably understand what hypnotic suggestion is all about. It is real, folks. What has been altered subliminally in our unconscious minds could be quite formidable. We are being programmed for better performance in future projects the agenda has in store for us. Most of the shrews reading this are safe from this brainwashing (hopefully) because we closed our eyes during the deadly meteor storm perpetrated by the fear-mongering agenda (watch The Day of the Triffids to understand that reference!) But those out there who got caught up in it and drank the delayed-reaction Kool-Aid—are all like sleeper spies from the Cold War, soon to be re-activated at some future date to continue complying with TPTB’s bidding.

Here I go again. I am supposed to be entertaining the possibility that the Covid psyop failed, not suggesting evidence to prove its great success. Sorry. Well, maybe it didn’t go as well as they wanted it to go. It does seem there was a lot more gas in the tank and that they could have pushed it a bit further than they did. They were doing pretty well, but they just fizzled out. Maybe they did expect more people to get vaxxed, maybe that was a disappointment. They sure looked like they were going for the whole enchilada with all their “you’ve GOT to get vaccinated!!” hoopla. Maybe they got too much pushback from us shrews. So many angry shrews showed up pretty quickly. And the shrews that were already on the scene, who were not surprised with all these shenanigans to begin with, just got louder and louder. Sure, not many sheep flipped, but some did. Their booster campaign is floundering (in my opinion, only because they turned the heat down, or off entirely).

So maybe they did get nicked a bit. Maybe a few arrows penetrated the armour, and they backed off a step or two. Maybe we did surprise the bastards with our resolve, tenacity, wit, and refusal to play the game.

But then again, maybe not.

By Dhaval Joshi, Chief Strategist at BCA Research

Summary

• The US economy is highly unusually ‘inverted’. The constraint on the economy is not labor demand, it is labor supply.

• Hence, the US economy has highly unusually entered a labor demand recession without entering a GDP recession.

• Nevertheless, for the stock market, a labour demand recession implies a profits headwind, because it is only when profits come under pressure that labour demand goes into recession.

• Against this, wage disinflation would allow long-duration bond yields to fall, which would provide a countervailing valuation tailwind.

The pandemic might seem like a distant memory, but for the US economy the pandemic’s legacy is still the big story. For the first time in at least fifty years, US labor supply is running well below labor demand. The big story is that the US economy is ‘inverted.’

Therefore, we must analyze the post-pandemic inverted economy very differently to the pre-pandemic economy. Normally, labor demand – being less than labor supply – is the constraint on economic output and thereby drives the cycle. But in an inverted economy, labor supply – being less than labor demand – is the constraint on output and thereby drives the cycle.

Before the pandemic, all downswings caused labor demand to fall well below labour supply. In the subsequent upswings, labor demand gradually caught up with supply…until the next downswing caused a fresh slump in labor demand. And the cycle repeated. Importantly though, all pre-pandemic cycles were driven by the demand side.

Then came the pandemic, and the longstanding pattern inverted. Labor supply suffered the more protracted slump, from which it has gradually caught up with labor demand. Meaning that in the last couple of years, the cycle is being driven not by what is happening to labor demand,  but by what is happening to labor supply.

Interest rate hikes work by choking demand, which is exactly what has happened recently. US labor demand is tipping into recession. Jobs plus job openings today are less than they were a year ago. Whenever this happened pre-pandemic, the economy tipped into recession too. But for the first time in at least fifty years, the economy is entering a labor demand recession without entering a GDP recession.

This is because in an inverted economy the constraint on the economy is not labor demand, it is labor supply. Despite weaking
labor demand, labor supply has played catch up to demand and thereby driven economic growth.

As labor supply has caught up with labor demand, it has narrowed the gap between demand and supply. This has created the perfect macro backdrop of robust economic growth with wage disinflation, a Goldilocks setup for financial assets. The pressing question for the coming 6-12 months is, what happens next to labor supply, labor demand, and their interplay?

Why The US Economy Inverted

But first, let’s tackle the obvious question. Why is US labor supply running well below labor demand?

There are two reasons: after the pandemic, prime aged (25-54) workers left the labor force; and older aged (55+) workers retired early, generating millions of so-called ‘excess retirements.’

The economically inactive make no contribution to labor supply. Yet they still consume the goods and services that generate labor demand. This they do by using savings or, in the case of early retirees, by tapping into their retirement assets and income early. Thereby, the plunge in prime-aged labor participation combined with excess retirements caused labor supply to fall well below labor demand.

Subsequently, the plunge in prime-aged labour participation has fully reversed, causing labor supply to recover strongly. But the excess retirements have not reversed and are unlikely to reverse

This means that the strong recovery in labor supply is now exhausted, with labor supply still several million people below labor demand. The economy is still inverted.

US Labour Demand Is Already In Recession, But GDP May Dodge The Bullet

To repeat, US labor demand has already tipped into recession. But in the inverted economy – where labor supply is the constraint on output – labor supply is driving the GDP cycle.

It follows that a GDP recession would require one of two things:

• Labor supply must outright contract. However, with the recent surge in illegal migration – most of which does eventually get counted in the survey-calculated labor supply – a sustained contraction in labor supply seems unlikely. Of course, this could change under a new Trump administration, or...

• Labor demand must contract so sharply – by about 3.5 million jobs – that the economy would ‘un-invert’. Once un-inverted, contracting labor demand would once again drive GDP into recession, as in all pre-pandemic cycles.

But if labor demand contracts more gently – as now – then the US economy could experience a sustained labor demand recession without a GDP recession, making it difficult for the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to designate it an official recession.

This ‘halfway house’ in which GDP is not in recession, but labor demand is in recession and gently ‘catching down’ with labor supply is a distinct possibility – because it is the least painful way for the Federal Reserve to steer wage inflation back down to the 3 percent rate that is needed for price inflation to stabilise at 2 percent (Chart 5 and Chart 6).

Yet though the economy could dodge the ‘NBER official recession’ bullet, a labor demand recession combined with stagnant per capita real incomes would very much feel like a recession.

For the stock market, a labor demand recession implies lower profits because it is only when profits come under pressure that labor demand goes into recession. Against this, wage disinflation would allow long-duration bond yields to fall, which would provide some countervailing support to stock valuations. In combination this would imply the stock market was rangebound while high-quality bonds rallied.

But there is another factor to consider. The euphoric pricing of anything AI-related is a separate and independent risk to the stock market. Absent this risk the macro backdrop would imply a neutral allocation to stocks versus cash. But this additional risk ratchets down my 6-12-month allocation to mildly underweight.

For those who can time this, go underweight stocks when the ‘Joshi rule’ is triggered. Or, when the rally reaches a  collapsed complexity that presages an imminent reversal.

More in the full note available to pro subscribers.

Authored by Douglas French via The Mises Institute,

Yeah, the other night I laid sleeping

 And I woke from a terrible dream

 So I caught up my pal Jack Daniel's

 And his partner Jimmy Beam

 And we drank alone, yeah

 With nobody else

 Yeah, you know when I drink alone

 I prefer to be by myself 

~George Thorogood

I poured hundreds of “Jack and Cokes” when I tended bar from the late 70’s to mid 80’s. It was beyond me how anyone could tell the difference between Jack Daniels Old No. 7 and anything else when mixed with coke or whatever carbonated cola was coming out of the gun. 

Turns out Dr. Fauci and the Center for Disease Control did Brown-Forman, the makers of Jack, a solid by shutting down America and cooping everyone up. More than some whiled away the hours with their old pal Jack Daniels. People may have had to work from home, but without the boss breathing down their necks plenty figured “why not have snoot-full and have fun.” It’ll make the day go by faster. Besides, no customers would be banging on the door. No one will know the difference.

“The phenomenal sales growth we saw during the pandemic was unprecedented and unpredictable but also unsustainable, and now, the spirits market is recalibrating,” Chris Swonger, the president of the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said last month. Those stimulus checks could buy a lot of Jack Daniels, or cause the more frugal drinker to pay more for Jack, instead of cheaper brands. 

Jennifer Maloney writes for the Wall Street Journal, “Some drinkers of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 - often used to make the cocktail Jack and Coke - are trading down to cheaper alternatives while others are trading up.”

Price inflation affects consumers differently. For those drinking their whiskey with Coke, just about any will probably do, but for those imbibing theirs neat or on the rocks may spend a few more cheaper bucks for smoothness. 

Even Jack and Coke drinker Brian Moran, a tile-setter who lives in the Chicago suburbs, told the WSJ that a client paid him to tile a kitchen backsplash with five pricier bottles of bourbon, including Stagg, Eagle Rare and E.H. Taylor. “From his first sips, Moran was enthralled,” writes Maloney.

“I don’t know anyone who even drinks it anymore,” he said of Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7, which has a national average price of about $22. “You spend an extra $10 and you get something that’s so much better.”

Brown-Forman reported dismal sales over the winter holiday season and the hangover has lasted into 2024. “Christmas stunk,” Chief Executive Lawson Whiting said on a call with analysts in early March. 

Brown-Forman is trying to entice younger legal-age drinkers to Jack Daniel’s Old No. 7 with a TV commercial set to the AC/DC song “Back in Black.” However, that song was a hit more than 40 years ago. Also the company is selling Jack and Coke in a can, attempting to appeal to young drinkers and females. The canned cocktail contains about 5% alcohol depending on the market. Reportedly there is a no sugar version. Which hardly seems possible. 

Chairman Campbell Brown, a great-great-grandson of founder George Garvin Brown, told investors that the company has weathered Prohibition and the Great Depression, steadily building the Jack Daniel’s brand since acquiring it nearly 70 years ago. 

It was not reported whether he has thanked Dr. Fauci.