Global Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Megathread - A cozy thread for watching the supply chain fall apart just in time for the holidays

[Sped Xing]

this is going to sound so fucked up

You were right.

 

[FatalTater]

Last week Amazon Fresh didn't have the kind of ground beef I wanted, and this week they have it but it's $10 per pound.
Am I going to have to get off my lazy Midwest American ass and actually go to the grocery stores in search of cheaper prices?

Is 90% lean ground beef really that difficult to produce?

Am I going to have to go back to getting 80% lean and then rendering the fat for soap? (Okay I only did that once but I could do it again.)

I guess I could render the fat and use it to make French fries.

I hate spending a ton of money on food and I hate being wasteful. This chapter of Clown World is annoying.

 

[Beavis]

Muh cold brew tea is now $20 for a 4 pack. It was $15 a few months ago.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

@Kramer on the phone

to be fair the country is fairly small, obviously i don't expect everyone to use horses, but electric scooters or bikes could get you a decent way, you could drive around the place in like 3 hours, if you went as fast as people do on US highways.

Electric scooters are only viable inside cities, not between them. Plus they're pretty gay and dangerous (with the average Israeli driving) so I just walk everywhere within Tel Aviv.

Edit: The big problem with the claim of an incoming hyperinflation is that what's exactly the alternative to dollar or ching chong coin? I highly doubt the Euro isn't equally fucked, ditto for the pound. No one will invest in Russia and crypto is way too scary and complicated for the majority of the population.

 

[Neanderthal Guru]

Posted on the bloombergbusiness instagram about an hour ago:

Text reads:

Consumers around the world are about to get socked with even higher prices on everyday items, multiple companies warned this week.

Unilever, the maker of Dove soap and Magnum ice-cream bars, jacked up prices by more than 4% on average last quarter, the biggest jump since 2012, and signaled elevated pricing will continue into next year. A similar refrain came from Nestle, Procter & Gamble and Danone, whose products dominate supermarket aisles and kitchen cupboards.

“We’re in for at least another 12 months of inflationary pressures,” Unilever CEO Alan Jope told @BloombergTV. “We are in a once-in-two-decades inflationary environment.”

You might have to get used to it, at least for a while. Tap the link in our bio to read more.

Archive.today isn't loading its captcha for me so I can't archive it at the moment.
Link to instagram post.

Remember - we don't want to encourage panic buying. Also, here's a pic of empty shelves and an ominous message about the future looking even worse.

 

[Ancient Pioneer]

What blows my brain is why people are shocked about this. People have been warning for 30 years it was batshit insane to centralize so much manufacturing in one place and then rely on a massive logistics chain. It led to insanity like Canadian seafood being harvest in Canada, shipped to China for packing and processing and then shipped back to Canada. It ultimately shaved a few percentage points off the cost, while decimating local fishing economies and simultaneously making the industry reliant on a long supply chain with a few key failure points.

That last part is the real kicker. People are asking why the boats are waiting 4 weeks sitting outside LA instead of just heading through the Panama Canal and then to a port on the Gulf Coast. The answer is twofold. One, the Panama Canal was built more then a century ago. It cannot accommodate the types of shipping haulers that were designed to make this insane "make everything in China" model economical. These boats are huge. If they wanted to go to the Gulf, they need to go all the way around.

That would cost the shipping companies way more then just waiting a month outside LA. For that matter even if they could go through the Canal it would still cost them more then they would want to pay. These freight haulers pay a bunch of Bangladeshi slaves in Rice and burn just enough fuel to get to where they need to be. Rice costs nothing. Fuel costs everything. Especially right now.

I don't understand the shocked Pikachu face on our economic elites and political leaders. They've been told for decades this was going to happen.

You're getting myopic on requiring the port being in the US, these ships could sail to Canada or Mexico and offload and hurl the containers onto the rail lines into the US. Its an artificially induced crisis because nobody is capable or willing to solve the problems. There is no reason they can't offload at Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Ensenada, Manzanillo, or Lazaro Cardenas. All of these ports are under the NAFTA shroud and Mexico isn't some dystopia where peasants live in the stone age. Ensenada is only a 3 hour drive from San Diego which has decent rail connections.

Its fucking laziness on the management of these companies, not truckers, stevedores or rail lines. They just REFUSE resolve the situation.

 

[Sped Xing]

You're getting myopic on requiring the port being in the US, these ships could sail to Canada or Mexico and offload and hurl the containers onto the rail lines into the US. Its an artificially induced crisis because nobody is capable or willing to solve the problems. There is no reason they can't offload at Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Ensenada, Manzanillo, or Lazaro Cardenas. All of these ports are under the NAFTA shroud and Mexico isn't some dystopia where peasants live in the stone age. Ensenada is only a 3 hour drive from San Diego which has decent rail connections.

Its fucking laziness on the management of these companies, not truckers, stevedores or rail lines. They just REFUSE resolve the situation.

You're overestimating how much wiggle room they give themselves.

 

[George Lucas]

@Kramer on the phone

Electric scooters are only viable inside cities, not between them. Plus they're pretty gay and dangerous (with the average Israeli driving) so I just walk everywhere within Tel Aviv.

Edit: The big problem with the claim of an incoming hyperinflation is that what's exactly the alternative to dollar or ching chong coin? I highly doubt the Euro isn't equally fucked, ditto for the pound. No one will invest in Russia and crypto is way too scary and complicated for the majority of the population.

I’m pretty sure hyperinflation leads to straight up bartering. It’s a breakdown of the monetary system.

 

[mindlessobserver]

I’m pretty sure hyperinflation leads to straight up bartering. It’s a breakdown of the monetary system.

Or fleeing to other national currencies that might be more stable. You eventually see a stampede of national currency moving towards a more stable currency and then just using that. Traditionally that has always been the US dollar. Now a part of me wonders if at least for the NAFTA bloc it will end up the Mexican Peso, which for all that countries problems has been remarkably stable for years now. Don't see that crazy outcome happening any time soon. It would be the world turned upside down.

A good sign its the apocalypse is if the Mexican Central Bank decouples the Peso to USD Peg. That means they no longer trust USD stability.

 

[Thirsty Kitty]

Fellas I've gotta be totally transparent, i think things r kinda fucked

 

[Sped Xing]

I know it's a desd horse, but this is what the fall of the Roman Empire looked like.

The Goths didn't destroy Rome. They were just the first thing that was so bad the Roman public couldn't help but notice. Things had been getting shittier and shit had been breaking down for more than a Century.

 

[Without A Gout]

I know it's a desd horse, but this is what the fall of the Roman Empire looked like.

The Goths didn't destroy Rome. They were just the first thing that was so bad the Roman public couldn't help but notice. Things had been getting shittier and shit had been breaking down for more than a Century.

Severe unemployment, instability in government, mercenaries in the military, lack of goods to buy and sell, and a dilapidating infrastructure?

Checks out. Who are the barbarians at the gates?

 

[Basic Bleach]

Hell, I’ve had frog legs and gator tail (not a fan of the former, but the latter is pretty good).

Last time I had alligator (which mind you was over 20 years ago now and it was a luxury) I classified it as extra-dense chicken. Dunno if that still holds true, but hey...gators aren't endangered in the South anymore.

Store shelves being barren are being exacerbated by online shopping. Source: am in fulfillment. And I can honestly tell y'all, at risk of minor power levelling, that the way Wommart works is:

Orders cascade. First it goes to the most local store, and if they don't have whatever it is, the order will get bumped along from region to region. It's no huge surprise (but a major annoyance to me personally) that we periodically get orders for things like paper plates, random basic food items, and toilet paper going to the opposite end of the country in one direction or another.

So if you really wanna panic stock, be at your Wommart when it opens, because the fulfillment people start running an hour before that, and some asshole from Brooklyn or Fresno probably bought all the toilet paper already.

Stoop to store brand. Wommart in particular has been good at copying just about every name brand out there, so if it's hyper vegan gluten free nonfat nondairy antisugar superorganic cage free high grade edible chinesium, great value makes it in some form. Not that we're short of the actual medically necessary gluten free sugar free shit anyway.

Cold medication and vitamins, and all forms of melatonin, are consistently sold out and have been since last year. It goes from the truck directly to shopping carts, basically.

The way people are spending money around here you'd think there was no inflation at all. I'm just glad I have no life and only have to gas up once a month if I play my cards right. It's still almost $30 for ~7 gallons.

 

[The Big O]

Checks out. Who are the barbarians at the gates?

All the freeloading illegals pouring in through the border with Mexico.

 

[Sped Xing]

All the freeloading illegals pouring in through the border with Mexico.

How dare you sully the good reputation of Atilla the Hun.

 

[Info Player Start]

My store actually had a truck load sale and I saved a lot of money on food.

 

[LeChampion1992]

You're getting myopic on requiring the port being in the US, these ships could sail to Canada or Mexico and offload and hurl the containers onto the rail lines into the US. Its an artificially induced crisis because nobody is capable or willing to solve the problems. There is no reason they can't offload at Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Ensenada, Manzanillo, or Lazaro Cardenas. All of these ports are under the NAFTA shroud and Mexico isn't some dystopia where peasants live in the stone age. Ensenada is only a 3 hour drive from San Diego which has decent rail connections.

Its fucking laziness on the management of these companies, not truckers, stevedores or rail lines. They just REFUSE resolve the situation.

I mean the supply chain shortages are caused by government incompetence ultimately. But here is some reasons why we have the shortages quickly summed up.

A. Most logistics/shipping companies are being hampered by covid restrictions. In the land down under everyone needs to be vaxxed and at reduced capacity. In the United States bidens brilliance to force all essential workers to get the jab or else lose their jobs has caused alot of unionized employees to strike. Because of this ports are operating at reduced Capacity.

B. In north America 40-60% of all goods that come into the United States come in either from the ports in Los Angeles or San Diego. Those ports are operating at like 25% capacity.

C. China is still punishing us for wanting to decouple from the arrangement and holding back key supplies from the us.

D. Despite many cities that can be used as port cities most of them are either on the other side of the country ie Atlantic or do not have the ability to handle things. Also why not Canada some might ask well hate to break it to you. But Canada has even more ridiculous restrictions then the us. As for Mexico they simply just don't have the capacity to take all of the traffic that goes through the ports of San Diego and LA despite them not having ridiculous restrictions.

 

[Stoneheart]

C. China is still punishing us for wanting to decouple from the arrangement and holding back key supplies from the us.

China is just fakeing their numbers. they dont have power half the week and i have very good intel that their imports are not matching their output numbers.
Be ready for alot of fake chips, they arent importing enough basic goods to produce the real chips...

 

[Clockwork_PurBle]

There are a lot of Great Value (Wommert brand) products that I find very pog and on par if not better than name brand.

 

[LeChampion1992]

China is just fakeing their numbers. they dont have power half the week and i have very good intel that their imports are not matching their output numbers.
Be ready for alot of fake chips, they arent importing enough basic goods to produce the real chips...

Depends where in some mainland place sure but for most of the coast I dunno about that. All I know is that the stable geniuses who want a return back to normalcy with everyone tripple jabbed and masked are highly incompetent at understanding things like supply chains and are really exceptional people.

As for china they're playing tit for tat and aggravating an already shitty situation.