Heating Your Greenhouse in Europe This Winter

[David Pilling]

Eggs... 6 very large eggs from Sainsbury's were £1.50 a year ago, now £2.00, 68 gm per egg, that's 2.4 ounces.

You can get 6 mixed size eggs, 55 gm per egg from Marks and Spencer for £1.00

Prices at Lidl/Aldi will be significantly lower. Those two are taking salad off ration on Monday morning. Chip lovers will be looking sad.

The one egg cake. Take quantities of sugar, butter and self raising flour equal in weight to an egg. Throw in a couple of big spoon fulls of ground almond, and you have a cake.

[Leo]

Hi Leo,

...nomenclature changes... of the palo verde trees.

Is your property ever visited by javelinas?  Do you ever encounter rattlesnakes or coral snakes on your property?  Do you ever have problems with scorpions getting inside your house?  I'm fairly sure that the stories of scorpion infested homes in Phoenix that I've occasionally heard here on the East Coast are overblown....

Sorry, I'm a bad biologist. These legume trees are all supposed by name changers to be Parkinsonia now, even trees in Africa. I began ignoring DNA work when Asclepiadaceae was sunk into Apocynaceae because of 1,500 base pairs total and I confirmed my intransigence when the type species of Acacia together with its closest relatives were moved into a brand new genus.

Javelina visit all the time. They are terrible pests. Imagine an animal that uproots things with aerial parts too spiny to eat. They will attack and injure severely if they feel threatened. Their stench is so foul they are almost always smelled before seen. I keep rocks and concrete blocks near doors to throw at them.

My neighborhood has king snakes (Lampropeltus getulus californicus), which eat rattlesnakes (Crotalus spp.) Rattlers are very common in the more desert areas but not in very urban areas. Our female rattlers seldom venture more than 6 feet / 2 meters from the burrow they were born in, so dense building extinguishes them. They lie in wait for prey to wander by. Males go out prowling widely, seeking food and cloaca.

Coral snakes are found almost only in the mesic southeastern corner of Arizona.

Scorpions are everywhere. For years I had none because it was such a dry neighborhood. Numerous neighbors have moved here from the lunatic asylum to the west and installed lush grassy landscapes, attracting plenty of scorpion food, so now we have scorpions. They fit through tiny cracks so it is almost impossible to exclude them from houses. A friend did his PhD work on their exoskeleton proteins, which effectively protect scorpions from contact pesticides. I have only seen a few in my house. Friends encounter them weekly or more frequently. One way to decrease the population is to go out in the dark with an ultraviolet light. They fluoresce brightly and can be squashed.

[CG100]

One way to decrease the population is to go out in the dark with an ultraviolet light. They fluoresce brightly and can be squashed.

I don't know what species you have, but just like snakes, and much besides, most are harmless, or no more dangerous than a honey bee or mosquito.

[Bern]

Meanwhile my YouTube subscriptions is full of videos predicting a US stock market crash at any moment.

I wonder if your YouTube channels had information about the banking situation in the US? As of this morning, three US banks have been shuttered in the last three days.  Of course, the chatter from on the media is mostly "nothing to see here; everything is OK; move along and just purchase a bunch of stuff on credit, etc." 

Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate Bank, and Signature Bank are the three failures so far.

"The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery."  Quote from Jesse's Cafe Americain website and he's been saying it forever.

Regulators seize Signature Bank in third-largest US bank failure

Regulators seized New York regional bank Signature Bank (SBNY) two days after shutting down Silicon Valley Bank as overseers of the banking system try to restore calm before markets open Monday.Signature becomes the third-largest bank to ever fail in the U.S., behind Silicon Valley Bank and Washington Mutual in 2008, if its assets haven't changed significantly since the end of 2022. Signature had $110 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, ranking 29th among U.S. banks. It had $88 billion in deposits as of that date, and approximately 89.7% were not insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.

All of those deposit holders will get their money back, according to a joint statement from the Treasury Department Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg, who cited a "systemic risk exemption" that is also being applied to all Silicon Valley Bank deposit holders. Shareholders and certain unsecured debt holders will not be protected, they added, and senior management had been removed.

You can read the rest of the article here.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/regulators-seize-signature-bank-in-third-largest-us-bank-failure-231404695.html

Breaking News with Financial Advice for Savvy Investors:  'Buy the Dip in Bank Stocks,' Goldman Sachs Says.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/buy-dip-bank-stocks-says-013508390.html

I'll pass for now thank you.

More Breaking News: Banking crisis: President Joe Biden says taxpayer funds won't be used to bailout SVB, Signature bank

Now it's a "banking crisis" and taxpayers won't be held liable for the bailouts.  LOL!

[David Pilling]

I wonder if your YouTube channels had information about the banking situation in the US?

Oh yes, been hysterical all weekend:

"What's Coming Is WORSE Than a Recession" — Gerald Celente's Last WARNING
"Robert Kiyosaki Predicts MAYHEM Next Week"
"Market Catastrophe *DESPITE* Fed Bank Bailout!! WARNING [Silicon Valley Bank]"

They work on the broken clock principle (always right twice a day).

Mainstream media, BBC etc has concentrated on SVB, I had not heard of the other banks above. UK business of SVB has been bought for £1 by HSBC.

What did catch my eye today is "In America, 40% of all dollars produced by the Fed were printed in the last two and a half years."

[Bern]

What did catch my eye today is "In America, 40% of all dollars produced by the Fed were printed in the last two and a half years."

Exactly. Most people in the US have no idea how money is created. Zilch! Even the most highly educated and intelligent people I've worked with over the years had no idea about the FED or money creation.  It's not taught in schools and it's not covered responsibly by the news media.  Hmmm.........

And remember, they aren't really dollars, they are Federal Reserve Notes - a DEBT obligation of the Federal Reserve Bank, the USA's money monopolist.

Anyway, here's the latest FED chart on the M2 money supply. "M2 is a measure of the money supply that includes cash, checking deposits, and other types of deposits that are readily convertible to cash such as CDs."

The explosion of money creation from 2008 to 2020 and from 2020 on is plain to see.  The result is INFLATION, of course.



This chart should scare the heck out of any sane person.

[Leo]

We could rewrite posts for Instagram.

THESE THREE THINGS PREVENT DEER MAYHEM IN YOUR BULB GARDEN SAY MARK & ARNOLD

[David Pilling]

Hi Bern, amazing chart. Here are the ones for the UK and the Eurozone - no inflation in the Eurozone...

[Bern]

Hi Bern, amazing chart. Here are the ones for the UK and the Eurozone - no inflation in the Eurozone...

Clearly, there has been close coordination between the various, unelected central bank politburos on inflating the monetary supply since the 1980s.

[Bern]

UK business of SVB has been bought for £1 by HSBC.

It is sad to see HSBC pay such an inflated price for SVB!

[Bern]

Here's a great article about the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.  The current estimate to bailout the uninsured depositors is about $230 billion.  Silvergate Bank also failed but I don't have bailout numbers yet.

"To put it bluntly, this was a Wall Street IPO machine that enriched the investment banks on Wall Street by keeping the IPO pipeline moving; padded the bank accounts of the venture capital and private equity middlemen; and minted startup millionaires for ideas that often flamed out after the companies went public. These are the functions and risks taken by investment banks. Silicon Valley Bank – with this business model — should never have been allowed to hold a federally-insured banking charter and be backstopped by the U.S. taxpayer, who was on the hook for its incompetent bank management."

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/03/silicon-valley-bank-was-a-wall-street-ipo-pipeline-in-drag-as-a-federally-insured-bank-fhlb-of-san-francisco-was-quietly-bailing-it-out/

"The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery."

[David Pilling]

"The translation of the above is as follows: to prevent banks from further panicking the markets by taking massive losses on their underwater Treasury securities by selling them in order to meet depositor withdrawals, we're going to accept these Treasury securities as collateral for one-year loans and pretend that their market value is par (the full face amount at maturity)."

A bit like what happened in last October's events in the UK (pound fell, Prime Minister lost her job).

Consequence of high interest rates - does this mean there won't be any more interest rate rises and inflation will not come down as fast.

[Bern]

Consequence of high interest rates - does this mean there won't be any more interest rate rises and inflation will not come down as fast.

Very good observation. They are in a very bad situation of their own making and their policy options going forward will have negative consequences for various constituencies.  But, if inflation begins to wipe-out the poor and severely affect the middle class, then there will be political consequences in the upcoming elections in 2024.  And there may me a lot of political unrest about it before that if it is perceived that all of the policy decisions benefit only the wealthy.  How will it look to citizens if there's a 20 percent year over year inflation and the stock market goes to record highs again?  That could get very ugly, very fast.

"One of the great truisms of economics is that the state cannot regulate its way out of bad money."  David Stockman

The were great fools to have kept ZIRP around for so long, and perhaps even greater fools for starting it in the first place.  And don't forget the unprecedented expansion of the monetary base also plays a big factor here.

I remember watching an interview with a man who lived near the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant after the reactor explosion.  He was very poor, and could not relocate to escape the radioactive fallout.  In tears, he described his predicament as being the victim of an experiment.  Very apt words.

So, we're all going to be experimental subjects with inflation going forward, at least here in the US.  Let's hope for the best, and hopefully be able to cope with the worst. Time will tell and it won't take long to see how things are going.

[David Pilling]

(ZIRP == Zero interest-rate policy)

The losers from inflation are savers, but the winners will be borrowers (including the government), anyone with a mortgage as long as they can hang on whilst their wages catch up. The 70's inflation was not good for stock markets.

[Bern]

How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline

Seymour Hersh, the journalist who uncovered the Mỹ Lai Massacre and torture at Abu Ghraib says America detonated the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

"Last June, the Navy divers, operating under the cover of a widely publicized mid-summer NATO exercise known as BALTOPS 22, planted the remotely triggered explosives that, three months later, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, according to a source with direct knowledge of the operational planning.

Two of the pipelines, which were known collectively as Nord Stream 1, had been providing Germany and much of Western Europe with cheap Russian natural gas for more than a decade. A second pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet operational. Now, with Russian troops massing on the Ukrainian border and the bloodiest war in Europe since 1945 looming, President Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehicle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize natural gas for his political and territorial ambitions."

Here's the link to Hersh's article. The story seems to be getting more corroboration as time goes be. 

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

One more quote and link.

"And so Biden gives the order to bomb it, and it's destroyed on September the 26th, months after the... And these guys had, I don't know whether they had just backed off when he, I don't know whether they had to go back and put everything online, but they thought it was a dead letter issue. So he does it, and on his command – That's what people in the CIA do, they respond to the crown and not to the Constitution."

https://therealnews.com/did-the-us-navy-destroy-the-nord-stream-pipelines

Is there any hope of a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine?