Tag Archives: recession

The Bright Shiny Service Economy

01 Tuesday Oct 2019

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The recession is becoming palpable, moving out of bond curve graphs and into the factories.

A gauge of U.S. manufacturing showed the lowest reading in more than 10 years in September as exports dived amid the escalated trade war.

The U.S. manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index from the Institute for Supply Management came in at 47.8% in September, the lowest since June 2009, marking the second consecutive month of contraction. Any figure below 50% signals a contraction.

The new export orders index was only 41%, the lowest level since March 2009, down from the August reading of 43.3%, ISM data showed.

“We have now tariffed our way into a manufacturing recession in the U.S. and globally,” said Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer at Bleakley Advisory Group.

The Bleak Advisor is likely a liar or an idiot. Other lies are told. Amazingly, about the only authority figure hitting on a little truth is the Trump. Thank God for the impeachment hoax! Otherwise, with a severe downturn coming, he might not be re-electable. And anyway, why does this matter??? I recall, some 30 years ago during my third-rate government high school “education,” someone telling us that in the happy future of tomorrow all employment would be in the easy, computerized service sector. Nothing produced, a shame since everyone would have tons of spending money from their high-tech fantasy jobs.

If we had an Index of Official Lies, the baseline would be a hockey stick curve in perpetuity.

The BBQ Barometer

02 Friday Aug 2019

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Outsourcing, along with obesity, usury, and sodomy, is one of those Amerikan values we keep hearing about. One more desperate way to wring a little more out before the end. This time, with Lowes.

Lowe’s Co LOW -1.88% s. told thousands of store workers this week their jobs were being eliminated as the company outsourced tasks such as assembling barbecue grills and janitorial services.

The home-improvement chain notified maintenance staff and assemblers that put together grills, wheelbarrows and other products that they were being laid off, according to the company and employees. Those roles will be taken over by third-party companies.

Each of Lowe’s roughly 1,800 U.S. stores has several staff members doing these jobs. Laid off employees, including full-time staff with years of service, aren’t being paid severance. Instead they are being offered “transition pay” totaling up to about two weeks for full-time workers, one employee said. All workers are able to reapply for open positions with the company, employees said, but aren’t guaranteed the same hourly pay.

Lowe’s employed 190,000 full-time and 110,000 part-time workers as of Feb. 1.

“We are moving to third-party assemblers and facility services to allow Lowe’s store associates to spend more time on the sales floor serving customers,” said a spokeswoman for Lowe’s.

Really? This one caught my eye because, a year to two back, I bought a pre-assembled floor model BBQ grill from Lowes. The guy who helped me, the customer, ON THE FLOOR, was the same dude who had assembled the grill. Now, he’s competing for another job? Who’ll do his? Robots? Illegals? Calling BS on this one. BBQ-S.

Recession: Confirming What I’ve Been Saying

26 Wednesday Jun 2019

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Gary Shilling thinks the US is already in a mild recession. I’ve been saying we hit the first phase of a narrow double-dip a few months ago. The rest is coming.

Gary Shilling, an economist and financial analyst who is credited with predicting several recessions over the past 40 years, thinks the U.S. is in a relatively mild slump.

“I think we’re probably already in a recession but I think it will probably be a run-of-the-mill affair, which means real GDP would decline 1.5% to 2%, not the 3.5% to 4% you had in the very serious recessions,” Shilling, president of economic and financial research firm A. Shilling & Co., said in a recent interview broadcast this week by Real Vision.

…

Shilling points to:

• Declining industrial production, a result of a weak global economy and the Trump administration’s trade war with China.

• Feeble job growth of 75,000 in May, along with downward revisions to prior months.

• The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s recession probability chart, which shows about a 30% chance of a downturn the next 12 months, up from about 10% early this year. That data is based on an inversion of the yield curve, which has shown rates on 3-month Treasury bonds topping 10-year notes recently – a sign that investors don’t have much faith in the longer-term outlook. Inversions do herald recessions but often two years in advance.

• The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s leading economic indicators, which has edged down since last year.

• Shilling also cites weak housing data, though he notes falling mortgage rates have bolstered home sales in recent months.

Funny, when one looks at real metrics and tangibles how the story changes from the boom-boom-boom narrative. The DOW and the newsmen salesmen on CNBC are not the final authorities. And, remember, statistically, this is all overdue.

Some Recovery

14 Friday Jun 2019

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How could there have been a recovery when half the country still suffers?

The median family income, after accounting for inflation, was $59,039 in 2016, little different than it was in 2000 ($58,544). During the same time, medical, childcare and college costs have ballooned.

B-b-but the banks and Wall Street are doing better…

…the next economic slump, whenever it occurs, could be particularly damaging. “Many Americans are still digging out from the recession,” he said. “Even a modest downturn is going to cause further harm to Americans’ personal finances.”

We had a modest downturn and the effects help fuel this survey. The next one won’t be so modest. This is the end result of an entire economy based on fake money, fake debt, financialized sorcery. For many (most), the only thing real is the losses and the suffering.

Ten Years After the Last Recession,

15 Wednesday May 2019

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And, just in time for the next one (overdue), confirmation of what many Americans have known for, well, the past ten years.

40 percent of U.S. families, including middle-class households, sometimes struggle to afford housing, utilities, food or health care, according to the Urban Institute.

Nearly 1 in 5 families said they had experienced difficulty paying for food or medical care.

About 60 percent of low-income people surveyed by the nonpartisan think tank said they couldn’t pay their bills at times.

Four in 10 Americans sometimes face what economists call “material hardship,” struggling to pay for basic needs such as food and housing, according to a new study from the Urban Institute. Even middle-class families routinely struggle financially and are occasionally unable to pay their bills.

The finding is striking given the U.S. has experienced a decade of economic growth in the decade since the recession ended. The unemployment rate is at its lowest in half a century, and the stock market has enjoyed a decade-long bull run. But for many Americans, incomes haven’t kept up with the rising cost of necessities such as housing and health care, resulting in financial anxiety.

Financialization = financial anxiety = a lost decade in advance of the next downturn.

Those “green shoots” must have dried up or something. The price of the sorcery is becoming obvious. It will be made even more so in the next few years.

Remember This Headline

27 Saturday Apr 2019

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Not mine. But this op-ed from the WSJ.

Screenshot 2019-04-27 at 8.04.11 AM

How do you cancel something that hasn… Nevermind. While it’s just as likely the 3.2 and other numbers have been manipulated, it’s possible that the recession we were in (that I called months ago) is over. If so, then it was the first, minor phase of a double dip. The second phase will be harder to cover up or ignore.

Let the paper times roll.

Resolutions and the Economic Landscape, Circa 2019 – From TPC

02 Wednesday Jan 2019

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Happy new year, one and all. Anno Domini Two Thousand, Nineteen is upon us!


John Maynard Keynes, as part of his general theory, held that when the economy was down, the government should close the gap via excessive spending, through debt if necessary. He also posited that when the bad times were over, the government should cut back and pay off the incurred debts. This was a theory, not Holy Writ.

 

For their sleazy part, the politicians heard the first step loud and clear. The second part, to Keynes’s dismay, they deemed irrelevant and unnecessary. Their game of reality became constant spending, ever-increasing debts, and deficits as cause celebre. A ministerial Icarus taunted the sun with predictable results.

 

We, the Living, pay the price for this stupidity. Most people drift along, concerned only with immediately proximate affairs, relying on someone of importance to tell them of things like recession. By the time the elites notice a downturn, or speak openly of one, it has usually been in progress for some time.
…

READ IN FULL AT TPC

By the Time They Notice…

26 Wednesday Dec 2018

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It’s already started. Summers speaks concern:

The markets aren’t looking good, but former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers says not to panic … yet.

Amid a month of falling stocks, Summers cautioned that “weak markets” don’t necessarily mean “economic disaster is around the corner.” Still, he’s increasing his prediction of a recession from “a bit less than 50 percent” to 60 percent, he tweeted Wednesday.

Not yet… When it’s been noticeably in progress for six to nine months, then they’ll admit it.

Allegedly, we’ve been in a recovery, a boom market for many years now. According to Keynes, this was the time to pay off debts used to jump out of the last downturn. That didn’t happen. As-is, Fed-Gov has been spending the funny money like there’s no tomorrow.

The federal government has added another $1,370,760,684,441.54 to the debt since last December 25, according to numbers published by the U.S. Treasury.

On Dec. 25, 2017, the federal debt was 20,492,874,492,282.58, according to the Treasury.

According to the latest numbers published by the Treasury, which show where the debt stood on Dec. 20, 2018, the federal debt was $21,863,635,176,724.12.

Almost back on track for $40 T by 2024. Not that that really matters anymore.

 

Still On Schedule

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

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The next MAJOR recession/depression should ramp the already disastrous federal debt up, heading towards my prediction of $40 Trillion by 2024. Well on the way, now:

According to the U.S. Treasury, the debt of the federal government is currently sitting at $21,854,296,172,540.94, and at our current pace we will likely hit the $22 trillion mark next month. This is a horrifying national crisis, and yet nothing is being done about it. When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2008, the U.S. was $10.6 trillion in debt, and so that means that we have added 11.2 trillion dollars of new debt to that total in less than 11 years. Needless to say, it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt for more than a decade. But instead of getting our insatiable appetite for debt under control, Congress is actually accelerating our spending. At this point, there is no possible scenario in which this story ends well.

Meanwhile, the global financial elite are really starting to talk up the possibility of a new financial crisis.

By the time the “elite” start lying talking about a crisis, it’s already started.