TASTES LIKE CHICKEN

Submitted by Hardscrabble Farmer

Via ZeroHedge

“Third Straight Month Of Good News On Inflation”: Wall Street Reacts To The CPI Report

Below is a snapshot of several Wall Street kneejerk reactions to today’s CPI report which came in right as expected, and absent a bizarrely high, and 12 month-delayed shelter/rent print which rose 0.8%, or the highest since at least 1990…

… would have been  flat M/M instead of the 0.3% reported.

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The Fed Just Guaranteed a Stagflation Crisis in 2022 – Here’s How

Via Birch Gold Group

The Fed Just Guaranteed a Stagflation Crisis in 2022 - Here Is How

From Brandon Smith

I don’t think I can overstate the danger that the U.S. economy is in right now as we enter 2022. While most people are caught up in the ongoing drama of Covid-19, a real threat looms over the nation in the form of a stagflationary tidal wave. The mainstream media is attempting to place the blame on “supply chain disruptions,” but this is a misrepresentation of the issue.

The two factors are indeed intertwined, but the reality is that inflation is the cause of supply chain disruptions, not the result of supply chain disruptions. If we look at the underlying stats for price rises in essential products, we can get a clearer picture.

Before I get into my argument, I really want to stress that this is a truly dangerous time and I suggest that people prepare accordingly. In just the past few months I have seen personal expenses rise at least 20% overall, and I’m sure it’s the same or worse for most of you. Safe-haven investments with intrinsic value like physical precious metals are a good choice for protecting whatever buying power your dollars have left…

Higher prices everywhere

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is officially at the highest levels in 40 years. CPI measurements often diminish the scale of the problem because they do not include things like food, energy and housing which are core expenses for the public. CPI calculations have also been “adjusted” over the past few decades by the government to express a more positive view on inflation. If we look at the inflation numbers at Shadowstats, calculated according to the same methods they used in the 1980’s, we see a dramatic increase in CPI which paints a more dire (but more accurate) picture.

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BLS SAYS INFLATION IS 1.4%

Your friendly government drones at the BLS are telling you inflation over the last year is 1.4%. The charts below, based on actual prices, beg to differ. In addition, they say the owner’s equivalent rent is only up 2.2%, while the real prices for houses is up 14% over last year. Are Americans so obtuse they do not realize actual inflation is 5 to 10 times higher than their government is telling them it is? And the government uses this 1.4% bullshit number to increase senior citizen SS payments every year. The shit is so deep, you need to wear hip boots.

Oil

Heating Oil

Natural Gas

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US vs. THEM (PART II)

In Part I of this article I discussed why the “Us versus Them” mindset permeates society and how Trump has become a lightning rod for hate. Now I will assess his progress in fighting the Deep State and try to peer into a murky future.

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In addition to not being Hillary, the main reasons I voted for Trump was he promised to build the wall, he promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, he promised to end our foreign military interventions, he said he would bring fiscal sanity to the budget, he said the Federal Reserve had blown an immense stock market bubble, he questioned the fake economic data spouted by government drones, and he called out the fake news bullshit media. When I regularly assess his progress on these issues, the standard response from Trump acolytes is “Would you rather have Hillary?”. No, I would not. But that doesn’t get Trump off the hook for his failures in my book.

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GOLDILOCKS IS DEAD

“Once you strip out the effects of the debt binge, the artificial stimulus via currency depreciation, and the fabled ‘wealth effect’ from the equity market runup, real GDP growth stripped-down to its core was the grand total of 0.7% last year. Potemkin would be proud.” David Rosenberg

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It appears every president finds the religion of false economic narrative once they ascend to power. Trump never stops babbling and tweeting about the fantastic economy and raging jobs market since his election. He has embraced the stock market bubble as proof of his brilliant leadership, rather than the tens of trillions in debt propping up the most overvalued market in world history. Every president takes credit for any good news, spins bad news as good news, or blames the previous president for bad news that can’t be denied. The president has absolutely zero impact on the economy or stock market over the short term. It’s like taking credit for the sun rising in the east each morning.

The Big Lie method works wonders when you have a willfully ignorant, mathematically challenged, easily manipulated populace. I spent the entire Obama presidency obliterating the fake economic data perpetuated by his BLS, BEA and every other government agency trying to paint a rosy economic picture. I voted for Trump because the thought of Crooked Hillary as the president made me ill. Despite disagreeing with many of his economic, budgetary, and military policies during his first year in office, I’d vote for him again over Hillary in an instant. The thought of having that evil shrew running the country gives me chills.

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NAVIGATING THROUGH THE STORMS

Several weeks ago I had to drive west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to pick up my son after his sophomore year at Penn State. I’ve made this trip a dozen times over the last few years, since this is my second son attending Penn State, with a third starting in the Fall. It’s a tedious, boring, protracted, four hour trek through the rural countryside of the Keystone State. During these trips my mind wanders, making connections between the landscape and the pressing issues facing the world. I can’t help but get lost in my thoughts as the miles accumulate like dollars on the national debt clock.

More often than not I end up making the trip in the midst of bad weather. And this time was no different. The Pennsylvania Turnpike is a meandering, decades old, dangerous, mostly two lane highway for most of its 360 mile span. Large swaths of the decaying interstate are under construction, as the narrative about lack of infrastructure spending is proven false by visual proof along the highways and byways of America.

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Stagflation Strikes As US Consumer Prices Surge At Fastest Pace In 5 Years

Tyler Durden's picture

After the hotter-than-expected PPI print, Consumer Prices confirmed that inflation is running hot with the fastest rise since Feb 2012.

Notably core CPI (at 2.2%) has been above The Fed’s mandated 2% ‘price stability’ level for 15 months in a row.

 

Of course, one of the big drivers of this price surge is in shelter and rent inflation…

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WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I exposed the establishment narrative of a strong economy as rubbish by providing hard data regarding imploding gasoline usage, failing bricks and mortar retailers and plunging restaurant sales.

“Inflation may indeed bring benefits for a short time to favored groups, but only at the expense of others. And in the long run it brings ruinous consequences to the whole community. Even a relatively mild inflation distorts the structure of production. It leads to the overexpansion of some industries at the expense of others. This involves a misapplication and waste of capital. When the inflation collapses, or is brought to a halt, the misdirected capital investment—whether in the form of machines, factories or office buildings—cannot yield an adequate return and loses the greater part of its value.Nor is it possible to bring inflation to a smooth and gentle stop, and so avert a subsequent depression.” – Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson

Inflation is the opium of the masses. The establishment’s interest in dumbing down the masses through government controlled public school indoctrination couldn’t be clearer than examining the chart below. The average non-thinking, math challenged, iGadget distracted, media controlled pawn thinks their household income has risen by $6,000 since 2008 because they have no understanding of Fed created inflation.

Continue reading “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON? (PART TWO)”

Consumer Prices Surge At Fastest Pace In 5 Years As Real Wages Tumble

Tyler Durden's picture

Stagflationary trouble looms.

As prognosticators ohh and aah over the soaring consumer price index (up 2.5% YoY – the most since March 2012), driven by a 14.2% YoY spike in gasoline prices, it appears they missed the fact that real average weekly earnings  plunged by 0.6% YoY – the biggest wage collapse since November 2011.

After Germany and China’s inflation-a-palooza, US consumer prices are soaring too.

Some details from the report:

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IT’S CALLED STAGFLATION

Two posts on ZH this morning tell you everything you need to know about Obama’s economy. Real wages are stagnant, just as they have been for the last eight years. In addition, the BLS drones are no longer able to hide the true inflation affecting average households across the nation. Even their “fake numbers” show inflation at 3.6% over the last four months. We know that is bogus, and the true number is in the 5% to 7% range for real Americans paying rent, health insurance premiums, heating their homes, and filling up their gas tanks. 

But the Fed continues to keep rates near 0% so Goldman Sachs can report record earnings and average pay of $338,000 for their “doing God’s work” bankers. When you have no wage growth, while your expenses are rising rapidly, you’ve got STAGFLATION. It’s the worst possible economic situation for deplorables living in the real world outside the bastions of the elite in NYC, DC, LA and SF.

Numerous low, middle and high end retailers have reported atrocious holiday sales and earnings. This contrasts with the bullshit reports from the National Retail Federation and the US government saying holiday sales were solid. Kohls, Macys, Sears, and now Target have admitted their business absolutely sucks. They are closing stores, laying off employees, and slashing their earnings estimates. Does that happen when an economy is booming, as our esteemed president has been crowing about on his farewell tour?

Do you trust your government or do you trust the reality of your bank account and what real businesses operating in the real world are saying?

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A BIASED 2017 FORECAST (PART ONE)

“The idea that the future is unpredictable is undermined every day by the ease with which the past is explained.”Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow

 

A couple weeks ago I was lucky enough to see a live one hour interview with Michael Lewis at the Annenberg Center about his new book The Undoing Project. Everyone attending the lecture received a complimentary copy of the book. Being a huge fan of Lewis after reading Liar’s Poker, Boomerang, The Big Short, Flash Boys, and Moneyball, I was interested to hear about his new project. This was a completely new direction from his financial crisis books. I wasn’t sure whether it would keep my interest, but the story of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky and their research into the psychology of judgement and decision making, creating a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, was an eye opener.

In psychology, heuristics are simple, efficient rules which people often use to form judgments and make decisions. They are mental shortcuts that usually involve focusing on one aspect of a complex problem and ignoring others. These rules work well under most circumstances, but they can lead to systematic deviations from logic, probability or rational choice theory. The resulting errors are called “cognitive biases” and many different types have been documented.

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SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES

I stopped trying to predict markets back in 2008 when the Federal Reserve, Treasury Department, Wall Street bankers, and their propaganda peddling media mouthpieces colluded to rig the markets to benefit the elite establishment players while screwing average Americans. I haven’t owned any stocks to speak of since 2006. I missed the the final blow-off, the 50% crash, and the subsequent engineered new bubble. But that doesn’t stop me from assessing our true economic situation, market valuations, and historical comparisons in order to prove the irrationality and idiocy of the current narrative.

The proof of this market being rigged and not based upon valuations, corporate earnings, discounted cash flows, or anything related to free market capitalism, was the reaction to Trump’s upset victory. The narrative was status quo Hillary was good for markets and Trump’s anti-establishment rhetoric would unnerve the markets. When the Dow futures plummeted by 800 points on election night, left wingers like Krugman cackled and predicted imminent collapse. The collapse lasted about 30 minutes, as the Dow recovered all 800 points and has subsequently advanced another 1,500 points since election day. Krugman’s predictive abilities proven stellar once again.

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INFLATION ABOUT TO EXPLODE HIGHER

“Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” ― Lysander Spooner

http://www.gloucestercitynews.net/.a/6a00d8341bf7d953ef014e8ae500da970d-320wi

We all know the BLS artificially suppresses the CPI through bullshit substitution adjustments, quality adjustments, and various other incomprehensible hedonic adjustments made by government apparatchiks at the behest of their politician bosses. Some obscure theoretical academic  calculation called owners equivalent rent accounts for almost a quarter of the CPI weighting.

It has no relation to reality as it has increased by only 12% since 2012, while the Case Shiller Housing Price Index is up 52% over the same time frame. The median price of existing home sales is up 30% over the same time frame. It also has no relation to rent increases, as they have gone up 22% nationally since 2012. It’s essentially a made up number by goal seeking bureaucrats doing the bidding of their establishment masters.

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Core CPI Highest Since Lehman (Above Fed Mandate) As Rent, Healthcare Costs Soar

Even the world class data manipulators at the BLS can’t hide the crushing inflation impacting middle class Americans as home price soar due to Wall Street schemes, rent skyrockets because people can’t afford homes anymore, and healthcare cost are driven ever higher by the Obamacare disaster. And you wonder why the middle class is supporting Trump?
Tyler Durden's picture

“This is stagflation: the Fed is increasingly f#*ked,” exclaimed one veteran trader as Core CPI – among The Fed’s favorite inflation indicators after PCE – surged to +2.3% YoY, the highest since Sept 2008. This is the 10th month in a row above the Fed’s mandated 2% ‘stable’ growth as shelter and healthcare costs continue to surge.

Core CPI growth above Fed mandate for 10th month in a row.

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THE ANTI-CINDERELLA MAN (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I made a fact based case that most Americans are experiencing an economic depression on par with the Great Depression of the 1930’s. In Part Two I will compare and contrast two very different men who raised the spirits of the common man during difficult economic times. As we approach the perilous portion of this Fourth Turning, it will take more than hope to get us through to the other side.

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Cinderella Man

Likening Braddock to Trump might seem far-fetched, until you think about parallels between the economic conditions during the 1930’s and today, along with the deepening mood of crisis, despair and anger at the establishment. Braddock’s career coincided with the last Fourth Turning. James J. Braddock was born in 1905, to Irish immigrant parents Joseph Braddock and Elizabeth O’Toole Braddock in a tiny apartment on West 48th Street in New York City. His life personified that of a GI Generation hero. One of seven children, Jimmy enjoyed playing marbles, baseball and hanging around the old swimming hole on the edge of the Hudson River as a youngster. He discovered his passion for boxing as a teenager.

Braddock refined his skills as an amateur fighter and in 1926 entered the professional boxing circuit in the light heavyweight division. Braddock overwhelmed the competition, knocking out multiple opponents in the early rounds of most fights. As a top light heavyweight, he stood over six feet two inches, but seldom weighed over 180 pounds. But his powerful right hand was no match for opponents that weighed close to 220 pounds. His star was ascending. He earned a shot at the title in 1929. On the evening of July 18th 1929, Braddock entered the ring at Yankee Stadium to face Tommy Loughran for the coveted light heavyweight championship. Loghran avoided Braddock’s deadly right hand for 15 rounds and won by decision. Less than two months later the stock market crashed and the country plunged into the Great Depression.

Continue reading “THE ANTI-CINDERELLA MAN (PART TWO)”

THE ANTI-CINDERELLA MAN (PART ONE)

There are several movies I will watch every time they are aired on one of my generally useless 600 cable channels. They all have the same thing in common – a compelling character portrayal which keeps you riveted and mesmerized by how the protagonist deals with adversity and circumstances beyond their control. The movies I can’t resist include: The Godfather I & II, The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, Apocalypse Now, and Patton. Another captivating movie, which didn’t do well at the box office, is Cinderella Man. The portrayal of Depression era heavyweight boxing champion James J. Braddock by Russell Crowe is inspirational, with a rousing and improbable victory by the champion of the common man. While watching this great movie a few weeks ago I found myself equating the themes to the current presidential campaign.

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The Greater Depression

Braddock was an inspiration to all downtrodden demoralized Americans during the Great Depression. The parallels between the 1930’s Great Depression and today’s Greater Depression are uncanny, despite the propaganda emitted by the establishment politicians, media and banking cabal that all is well. The corporate mainstream media faux journalists scorn and ridicule anyone who makes the case we are currently in the midst of another Great Depression. They are paid to peddle a recovery narrative to keep the masses ignorant, sedated, and distracted by latest adventures of Caitlyn Jenner and the Kardashians. An impartial assessment of the facts reveals today’s Depression to be every bit as dreadful for the average American as it was in the 1930’s.

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