“There Are Big, Big Problems” – The Shocker Crushing The Economy Revealed
We are grateful to Alexander Giryavets at Dynamika Capital for pointing us to something which is far more troubling than even the Atlanta Fed’s collapse in Q1 GDP tracking: namely the latest Credit Managers Index for the month of March which “deteriorated significantly over the last two months and current readings stand at the recessionary levels not seen since 2008.”
To be sure, we have previously shown the collapse in consumer debt as reported by the Fed, which as we noted, just suffered its worst month for revolving credit since December 2010 and explains “why the consumer has literally gone into hibernation – it has nothing to do with the weather, and everything to do with the unwillingness to “charge” purchases, which in turn is a clear glimpse into how the US consumer sees their financial and economic future.”
It turns out it may not have been just a matter of demand: apparently something very dramatic has been happening in February and especially in March. Instead of spoiling the punchline, we will leave it to the National Association of Credit Managers to explain what happened:
From the latest NACM Credit Managers Index:
We now know that the readings of last month were not a fluke or some temporary aberration that could be marked off as something related to the weather. There is quite obviously some serious financial stress manifesting in the data and this does not bode well for the growth of the economy going forward. These readings are as low as they have been since the recession started and to see everything start to get back on track would take a substantial reversal at this stage. The data from the CMI is not the only place where this distress is showing up, but thus far, it may be the most profound.
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