Polar Vortex

AND IT BEGINS

Last year it was the polar vortex that caused retail sales to be terrible at Christmas. This year it was too warm. How come it can never be just right? What a load of bullshit. If Macys really believed their bad sales was due to warm weather, why the fuck would they announce the closing of 36 more stores and the firing of 3,000 more employees? Who does that because of weather?

This is just the beginning. It is only January 6. Over the next month dozens of retailers will report atrocious results. Some might report positive sales, but they needed to slash prices to achieve any sales gains. Profits will be non-existent. Sears, JC Penny, and numerous other bricks and mortar retailers will announce the closings of hundreds more stores. There will be 5 to 10 retail bankruptcies in the next few months. Ghost malls will become spookier.

This always happens when the economy is recovering. Right? The consumer doesn’t have a pot to piss in. They can’t handle a $500 emergency expenditure. They’re up to their eyeballs in auto, student loan and credit card debt. An economy built upon people buying shit they don’t need with money they don’t have has hit the wall. I wonder who could have foreseen the collapse of retail in America.

Oh yeah. That was me.

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Macy’s cuts costs, and thousands of jobs

By Chelsey Dulaney

Published: Jan 6, 2016 4:45 p.m. ET

Shares of Macy’s, down 44% over the past year through the close Wednesday, rose 3.4% to $37.38 in after-hours trading.

Macy’s, which called its 2015 performance “disappointing,” said it expects to cut about 3,000 associate jobs across its stores and implement a “voluntary separation opportunity” for about 165 senior executives. It also will cut 600 back-office jobs and eliminate 750 jobs by consolidating call centers.

Continue reading “AND IT BEGINS”

DECEMBER RETAIL SALES – UNEQUIVOCAL DISASTER

In case you hadn’t noticed, the MSM storyline was obliterated this morning with the December retail sales report. There is absolutely no way for the shysters and charlatans in the media, Wall Street or government to spin this data in a positive manner. The shit is hitting the fan. A recession for the average American is confirmed. Plunging gas prices haven’t done shit to motivate people to spend money they don’t have.

And guess what you won’t hear from CNBC or any of the corporate media?

You see, that was the storyline last year to explain the terrible December and January retail sales. So let me get this straight. Last December the country was buried under snow in sub-zero temperatures versus a tranquil, calm, non-snowy December this year. Not a peep from The MSM about last December’s Polar vortex

Shouldn’t this great weather, “fabulous” plunge in the unemployment rate, and billions of dollars put back into pockets by collapsing gas prices, have spurred an awesome retail sales surge this year? The Wall Street shysters drove the stock market to record highs in December based on this false storyline. The decline in real wages in November revealed the falsehood of the jobs recovery. Any savings from lower gas prices is being used to pay down credit card debt and pay for the dramatically higher healthcare costs caused by Obamacare.

This economy is in the tank and headed lower. The GDP numbers are a sham. The employment numbers are a sham. You know it. I know it. And now the sheep are waking up and realize they have been lied to. Stock market records are meaningless to people trying to get by on a daily basis.

After perusing the data on the Census Bureau website, here are my observations:

Year over year retail sales only rose 3.2% in December. That is before inflation, which the BLS says was 1.7% and I say is above 4%. Either way, real sales sucked. Then take into consideration there were 3 million less employed people and a polar vortex last December.
The MSM said consumers had a windfall from the $6.5 billion decrease in gasoline sales. We were all supposed to buy a new HDTV or iGadget with our newly found riches. Oops. Electronics and appliance sales FELL in December versus November.
Retail sales simply don’t fall in December versus November unless you are in recession or headed into recession.
It seems even the subprime auto loan scheme is petering out. Auto sales (7 year rentals) declined in December. Maybe the fact that auto loan debt delinquencies are approaching 2008 levels is giving them pause in selling autos to people without the means or inclination to make the payments.
Anyone looking for a JC Penney, Sears, Macy’s led department store revival is sad. Clothing store sales dropped. Department store sales dropped. Sporting goods store sales dropped.
And drum roll please. On-line store sales DROPPED. The Amazon revolution is dead.

It seems the markets don’t like it. The pain has just begun. A global recession is underway. It’s a deflationary unwinding of debt and mal-investment. There is no cure except for collapse. Central bankers have shot their load. Their credibility is shot. No one believes more debt will cure a debt problem – except for a few Ivy League educated economists. A shitstorm is a brewing. Get ready.

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ARE YOU A GLOBAL COOLING DENIER?

The normal temperature in Philly on this date is 56 degrees. It’s currently 23 degrees, going to a high of 29 degrees. The low tonight will be 18 degrees. I froze my balls off walking to my office this morning. When oh when will I ever reap the benefits of global warming? Could one of you global warming numbskulls please let me know when Philly winters will become warmer?

For fuck sake, how could it be below freezing in Hawaii?

I guess I’ll have to wait for Time Magazine to be wrong again.

I’m still waiting for all those hurricanes created by global warming.

Climate Model Predicts Very Cold Winter in Northern Hemisphere; Another Record Breaker?

Guest Post by Mike Shedlock

There is a huge buildup up snow in Siberia this year like last. Meteorologists believe that portends another brutal winter.

Bloomberg reports Climate Model Predicts Very Cold Winter in Northern Hemisphere.

About 14.1 million square kilometers of snow blanketed Siberia at the end of October, the second most in records going back to 1967, according to Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab. The record was in 1976, which broke a streak of mild winters in the eastern U.S. In addition, the speed at which snow has covered the region is the fastest since at least 1998.

Taken together they signal greater chances for frigid air to spill out of the Arctic into more temperate regions of North America, Europe and Asia, said Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts, who developed the theory linking Siberian snow with winter weather.

“A rapid advance of Eurasian snow cover during the month of October favors that the upcoming winter will be cold across the Northern Hemisphere,” Cohen said in an interview yesterday. “This past October the signal was quite robust.”

Cold air builds over the expanse of snow, strengthening the pressure system known as a Siberian high. The high weakens the winds that circle the North Pole, allowing the cold air to leak into the lower latitudes. The term Polar Vortex actually refers to those winds, not the frigid weather.

Cohen said he first noticed the relationship between the Eurasian snow cover and larger weather patterns while doing post-doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1990s.

It came about by chance because the original assignment was to look at the North American snow cover, Cohen said. He changed it to Eurasian and “when we investigated further it turned out it was Eurasian snow cover that was the dominant influence.”

Last year, 12.85 million square kilometers covered Eurasia at the end of October. By January, waves of frigid air were pummeling the U.S. Prices for natural gas, a heating fuel used by half of American households, rose to a five-year high in February.

“The big early snowbuild will definitely set things up for a cold back half of the winter,” said Todd Crawford, a meteorologist at commercial forecaster WSI in Andover, Massachusetts.

Another Record Breaker?

Model theory makes sense to me. And if so, this winter could be as bad as last year’s record breaker (or worse).