...and sure enough it was, while again confirming what we have been saying for month: any excess savings accumulated by the US middle class are long gone, and in their place Americans have unleashed a credit-card fueled spending spree ...and sending total revolving consumer credit back to new all time highs at just over $1.1 trillion, erasing all the post-covid credit card deleveraging just in time for those credit card APRs to start moving much higher, first slowly and then very fast. As an aside, and while not at all surprising, both auto and student loans hit a new all time high at the end of the first quarter.

Here is a list of products reduced in size but not in price.

• Haribo Goldbears candy dropped from 5 ounces to 4 ounces
• Arm & Hammer laundry detergent fell from 75 ounces to 67.5 ounces
• Folgers Classic ground coffee dropped from 51 ounces to 43.7 ounces
• Kleenex reduced the count of tissues from 65 to 60
• Angel Soft toilet tissue drop from 425 sheets to 320 sheets per roll
• Honey Bunches of Oats dropped from 14.5 ounces to 12 ounces per box
• Charmin Mega Roll toilet tissue dropped from 264 to 244 sheets
• Crest toothpaste dropped from 4.1 ounces to 3.8 ounces per tube
• Bounty paper towels dropped from 165 sheets to 147 sheets per roll
• Gatorade Zero dropped from 32 ounces to 28 ounces per bottle
• Quaker Oats instant oatmeal dropped from 10 to 8 pouches per box
• Ziploc bags dropped from 54 bags to 50 bags per box
• Dial body wash dropped from 21 ounces to 16 ounces per bottle
• Wheat Thins crackers dropped from 16 ounces to 14 ounces per box

These size reductions in products have not reflected a change in pricing, further evidence of the profound impact of inflation on manufacturers, suppliers, and consumers.

Braml is a recognized and well-connected political scientist. He has worked for the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) since 2006, where he heads its Americas program. For the past two years, he has also been Secretary General of the German Group of the Trilateral Commission. Previously, he worked for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), the Brookings Institution, and as a legislative aide in the US House of Representatives, among others. So, he is not writing as an outsider.

In the media, his book has garnered nothing but praise. His “far-sighted recommendations for comprehensive ‘European sovereignty’ are more topical than ever in view of the Ukraine war,” wrote the Süddeutsche Zeitung. And the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung called his book “an anticipation of the 100-billion retrofit program now announced by the coalition government.” Russia plays only a secondary role in Braml’s book.

That is why he urges Germany be upgraded not only to Europe’s greatest military power, but also to a nuclear power. He favours German participation in the French nuclear force, the “force de frappe.” Braml also attaches great importance to “the closest possible collaboration between the defence industries,” especially the planned Franco-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS), with which “the Europeans would reduce not only their military but also their technological dependence on the United States and assert their own sovereignty.”

German imperialism is again confronted with the same contradictions that made it the most aggressive war party in the First and especially in the Second World War. Wedged in a tightly knit Europe and equipped with a dynamic export industry, it must dominate Europe and have access to large parts of the world to satisfy its hunger for raw materials, markets, and investment opportunities.

In both world wars, this had brought Germany into conflict with the United States. In World War I, the Kaiser sacrificed two million young men in the trenches to achieve these goals. In World War II, Hitler had 30 million Jews, Poles, Soviet citizens and prisoners of war brutally murdered. Large parts of Germany also lay in ruins at the end of the war. A third world war would leave nothing of Europe and large parts of the world.

The country has a tight labor market — partly because of Brexit, which took away a large European labor pool, and partly because long-term sickness has kept hundreds of thousands out of work — and is at the mercy of Europe’s energy crisis.

Disposable household incomes are expected to drop 1.75 percent this year, and, as of April, consumer confidence was at a 14-year low. Businesses are making complicated calculations about how high they can push their prices to compensate for their own rising costs without driving away customers.

Rising costs: Companies that import goods from the EU have complained that extra red tape is increasing their costs. Economists say Brexit has pushed food prices up 6 percent. In October, household energy bills are expected to rise by £800, to £2,800 a year.

Politics: With a fresh electoral challenge looming and Britain’s economy in a downward spiral, there are few easy ways for Boris Johnson, Britain’s weakened prime minister, to reverse his fading fortunes.

While the all items CPI for April was 8.3%, food alone increased by 9.4%, according to the USDA. Food consumed at home also increased more than the price of food away from home. Grocery store and supermarket purchases rose 10.8% year over year in April. The USDA’s forecast for May predicts the cost of food will increase again and significantly by fall.

All of the crises the Biden administration created are converging and could cause food insecurity for the first time in the living memories of many Americans. Issues beyond the control of the administration are compounding the problems it has caused. For example, a highly pathogenic avian flu has affected approximately 38 million chickens. The price of eggs increased 10.3% in April. The UDSA predicts an increase between 19.5% and 20.5% year over year in 2022. That could mean $1.00 an egg. Poultry prices will rise as much as 9.5%.

The air around Salt Lake City would periodically turn toxic, which was particularly concerning. Wind storms bring significant quantities of arsenic from the lake bed into the lungs of adjacent individuals, who make up three-quarters of Utah's population.

According to Robert Gillies, a professor at Utah State University and Utah's state climatologist, the other shift is climate change. Higher temperatures cause more snowfall to convert to water vapor, which escapes into the sky instead of becoming liquid and flowing into rivers. More heat implies more demand for water for lawns and crops, limiting the quantity that reaches the lake even further.

A diminishing lake also implies less snowfall. Storms suck part of the moisture from the Great Salt Lake, which subsequently falls as snow in the mountains. A disappearing lake jeopardizes that pattern. "If you don't have water, you don't have industry; you don't have agriculture, you don't have life," Dr Gillies explained.

Ask the smartest billionaires in America. Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, just warned that an “economic hurricane” is about to hit America. Then John Waldron, the President of Goldman Sachs, added that he has never seen so many major “shocks to the system” facing our economy at one time. The richest man on the planet Elon Musk said this week he has “a super bad feeling about the economy” and asked his top executives to stop all hiring worldwide.

What are these nonstop “shocks to the system” all these brilliant billionaires and Wall Street titans are talking about?

• GDP (economic growth) is collapsing.
• Interest rates are rising.
• Inflation is exploding.
• Home sales are cratering.
• The stock market has just suffered the worst few months since the 1929 stock market crash - which of course led to The Great Depression.
• Gas is headed for shortages, gas lines and $10 per gallon.
• Grocery prices are exploding to unimaginable levels.
• The supply chain is ruined.
• Massive food shortages are coming.
• Baby formula shortages are getting worse. There are one-mile lines across America when government airlifts in baby formula. Airlifts? America now looks like “the Fall of Saigon.”
• Energy experts are promising mass blackouts of the electric grid across America this summer.
• Then there’s the massive crime and theft wave enveloping America’s Democrat run big cities.
• Don’t forget open borders. Biden is desperate to open the floodgates and allow the whole world in.
• Forced experimental vaccines also remind me of the Nazi regime. And just in time for the midterm elections, I predict we’ll see attempts to bring back lockdowns, vaccine mandates and vaccine passports. What a perfect time for crisis!
• Add in censorship, banning, intimidation and persecution of conservatives, patriots and even parents at PTA meetings by government agencies like the DOJ and FBI.
• Then there’s the education system trying to brainwash and indoctrinate our children with communist, anti-American, anti-white, transgender and sex identity ideology.
• And don’t forget Biden’s provoking Putin again and again - daring him to start World War 3.

This is a total decline, destruction and collapse of America - happening at a speed none of us has ever seen.

“Among the heads of state, there is only one who is standing up to the forces of evil. Don’t count on Boris Johnson in England. Don’t count on Macron in France. Don’t count on Draghi in Italy. It’s Vladimir Putin who may be no angel and no saint, but nevertheless, he is a man of intelligence and great courage. And at the head of Russia, he has the means of standing up against the One World government,” said Bishop Williamson, addressing the parishioners of one of the Warsaw churches.

According to the Bishop, “the Russians are fighting in Ukraine, but not in such a way to smash or crush and destroy Ukraine.” In this regard, Williamson recalled the purpose of the special operation, voiced by Putin: the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. “But foolish Europe,” the Bishop continued, “follows the orders of the United States in their attempt to crush Russia.”

“They played the trick of Covid; they played the trick of Ukraine, which has been provoking Russia since 2014. Russia had to defend itself. The real aggressor is not who he looks like. US agents have been provoking Russia from Ukraine for several years,” said the Bishop. Williams lamented that for many Americans, who were mostly Christians, their real religion is now politics, and “many of them out of patriotism want to destroy Russia because Russia is the last obstacle to a United World Order.”

"We all know the huge benefits that sports can offer, and we all, I'm sure, want to ensure trans athletes can participate in sport. But what we don't want is a situation where we're trying to be so inclusive that it is to the detriment of a particular group. We have a situation where women athletes are so disheartened that they are pulling out of their own female categories because they say that trans women taking part in a female category have a male-puberty advantage.

"I'm sure that we'll agree above all that it is of paramount importance that we ensure fairness in sport. It is fundamental to sport. First Minister, do you believe that trans athletes should compete in female sports? As, however you feel on this issue, to resolve it, it is fundamental that one can define a woman. So, First Minister, can you do something that many other Labour politicians have failed to do so far, which is define a woman?"

The First Minister responding, telling Ms Jones: "My starting point is the same as Penny Mordaunt, the UK Minister responsible at the time, who said that the UK Government's starting point was that transgender women are women, and that's my starting point in this debate and, look, it is a difficult area where people feel very strongly on different sides of an argument, and an argument that divides people who agree on most other things. I do not understand the point that the member makes: that you can be too inclusive."