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The Coming Inflation Threat: The Worst Of Both Worlds

October 20, 2018

Sandusky Register

The Coming Inflation Threat: The Worst Of Both Worlds

Expect falling asset inflation, but rising cost inflation

Historically, 2.5% is about as low as inflation gets in a mass-consumption economy like the U.S. that depends on the constant expansion of credit.

But even 2.5% annually can add up if wages are stagnant. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), what cost $1 in January 2009 now costs $1.19. https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

That 19% decline in the purchasing power of dollars is tolerable as long as wages go up by 20% over the same period, but for many American households, wages haven’t kept pace with official inflation.

While the nominal hourly wages keep rising, adjusted for inflation, wages have stagnated for decades. Here’s a chart based on BLS data that shows median weekly earnings adjusted for official inflation rose $6 a week after five years of decline:

But stagnant wages are only part of the inflation picture: official inflation under-represents real-world inflation on several counts.

First, the weightings of the components in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) are suspect. Many commentators have explored this issue, but the main point is the severe underweighting of expenses such as healthcare, which is only 8.67% of the CPI but over 18% of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Second, the “big ticket” components—rent/housing, healthcare and higher education—are under-reported for those who have to pay the unsubsidized cost. The CPI reflects minor cost decreases in tradable commodity goods such as TVs and clothing that are small parts of the family budget, while minimizing enormous expenses such as college tuition and healthcare that can cost $20,000 annually or more.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Amid Market Rout, Decade of “Financial Repression” Ends, Capital Preservation Suddenly is a Thing

October 12, 2018

Amid Market Rout, Decade of “Financial Repression” Ends, Capital Preservation Suddenly is a Thing

This will dog the stock market going forward.

Fixed-income investors – a financially conservative bunch buying Treasury securities, FDIC-insured CDs, and similar products that largely eliminate risk – have been getting crushed for a decade: Except for brief periods when inflation dipped to near zero or below zero, their minuscule returns have been eaten up by inflation, or worse, they lost money after inflation, as was the case with shorter-term Treasuries and just about all savings products. But it has ended.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.3% in September (2.27%), compared to September a year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. This was down from the 2.9% increase in July. These numbers are volatile, but the trend is pretty clear: Outside of the Oil Bust and a few quarters during the Financial Crisis, inflation is a fixture in the US economy:

The CPI without food and energy – “core CPI” – rose 2.2% in September. Cost of shelter rose 3.3%. Cost of transportation services rose 4.0%. So prices are going up as measured by CPI.

What has changed is that interest rates and yields are also going up, and they’re now higher than inflation as measured by CPI across nearly the entire spectrum of US Treasury securities – and if you shop around, across many CDs too.

This ends a decade of “financial repression” — a condition when the Fed repressed interest rates below the rate of inflation.

The chart below shows the US Treasury yield curve across the maturity spectrum, from 1-month to 30 years, at the close yesterday. The 1-month yield, at 2.18%, was the only yield still below the rate of inflation. The 3-month yield at 2.27% is right on top of CPI (green line). Every Treasury security with a maturity longer than three months is beating inflation.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Americans Live In A World Of Lies

August 6, 2018

Americans Live In A World Of Lies

The US government and the presstitutes that serve it continue to lie to us about everything. Today the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the unemployment rate was 3.9%. How can this be when the BLS also reports that the labor force participation rate has declined for a decade throughout the length of the alleged economic recovery and there is no upward pressure on wages from full employment. When jobs are plentiful, people enter the labor force to take advantage of the work opportunities. This raises the labor force participation rate. When employment is full—which is what a 3.9% unempoyment rate means—wages are bid up as employers compete for scarce labor. Full employment with no wage pressure and no rise in the labor force participation rate is impossible.

The 3.9% unemployment rate is not due to employment. It results from not counting discouraged workers who have ceased to search for jobs because there are no jobs to be had. If an unemployed person is not actively searching for a job, he is not counted as being in the labor force. The way the unemployment rate is measured makes it a hoax.

The government tells us that there is essentially no inflation despite the fact that prices have been rising strongly—the price of food, the price of home repairs, the price of drugs, the price of almost everything. Two years ago the American Association of Retired People’s Public Policy Institute reported that the average retail drug price has been increasing “at a worrying pace of 10 percent a year, and about 20 drugs have astoundingly had their prices quadruple since just December. Sixty drugs doubled over the same period. Turing Pharmaceuticals, headed by Martin Shkreli, is one of the most pronounced examples of this kind of behavior.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s Debt Dependence Makes It An Easy Economic Target

June 20, 2018

America’s Debt Dependence Makes It An Easy Economic Target

There is a classic denial tactic that many people use when confronted with negative facts about a subject they have a personal attachment to; I would call it “deferral denial” — or a psychological postponing of reality.

For example, point out the fundamentals on the U.S. economy such as the fact that unemployment is not below 4% as official numbers suggest, but actually closer to 20% when you factor in U-6 measurements including the record 96 million people not counted because they have run out of unemployment benefits. Or point out that true consumer inflation in the U.S. is not around 3% as the Federal Reserve and the Bureau of Labor Statistics claims, but closer to 10% according to the way CPI used to be calculated before the government started rigging the numbers. For a large part of the public including a lot of economic analysts, there is perhaps a momentary acceptance of the danger, but then an immediate deferral — “Well, maybe things will get worse down the road, 10 or 20 years from now, but it’s not that bad today…”

This is cognitive dissonance at its finest. The economy is in steep decline now, but the mind in denial says “it could be worse,” and this is how you get entire populations caught completely off guard by a financial crash. They could have easily seen the signs, but they desperately wanted to believe that all bad things happen in some illusory future, not today.

There is also another denial tactic I see often in the world of politics and economics, which is what I call “paying it backward.” This is what people do when they have a biased attachment to a person or institution and refuse to see the terrible implications of their actions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Real Inflation Rate May Signal That the U.S. Economy is in a Death Spiral

May 3, 2018

The Real Inflation Rate May Signal That the U.S. Economy is in a Death Spiral

real inflation us economy collapse

Just like a car with a bad cooling system, the U.S. economy may be overheating, and could break down soon. Why?

Aside from trade wars, geopolitical tension, and debt, inflation might stand center-stage as the final nail in the U.S. economic “coffin”.

According to Torsten Slok, the Chief International Economist at Deutsche Bank, inflation “is the mother of all risks here”.

You see, the floundering U.S. dollar, tight labor market, Quantitative Easing and trade wars have all paved the way for rising inflation. And, in a recent survey of global fund managers conducted by Bank of America, 82% expect the CPI index to keep climbing over the next year.

But the “inflation nation” might be overheating, as reported by CNBC:

Earlier this month, inflation numbers came in hotter than anticipated, signaling inflation pressures could be mounting. The Labor Department reported its CPI rose 2.4 percent year on year, its fastest annual pace in 12 months.

Even if you factor out energy and food — factors which the U.S. Government likes to leave out to make the CPI inflation rate more appealing — it’s still 2.1%.

That’s the fastest rise since February 2017, higher than the benchmark of 2%, and still rising. Which begs a serious question…

“What is the real inflation rate?”

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) is a set of methods that track the inflation rate, monitored by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS). us inflation higher matrix

It was designed to help businesses, individuals and the government adjust for the impact of inflation. It worked well until politicians started messing with the methodology in the 1990’s.

In 2011, John Melloy reported on the “real” inflation rate, calculated with the methodology used before 1980 (bolding ours):

Inflation, using the reporting methodologies in place before 1980, hit an annual rate of 9.6 percent in February, according to the Shadow Government Statistics newsletter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Do You Believe in BLS Unicorns

February 20, 2018

DO YOU BELIEVE IN BLS UNICORNS?

The chart below says there has been 55.6% inflation over the last 20 years. That is just less than a 2.4% annual level of inflation. What a load of bullshit. Let’s look at a couple of categories listed below and do a smell test. Everyone knows the prices of TVs have fallen dramatically, but 99% – I don’t think so. I was able to find the price of a 28 inch Samsung TV in 1997 – $750. The same size Samsung TV costs $200 today. That’s a 73% decrease. The good old BLS says the decrease is really 99% because the new TV does so much more. They call this a hedonic adjustment.

It gets better. The BLS shows the cost of housing up about 56% over the last 20 years. Here are a couple indisputable facts from the same government peddling this inflation drivel. The average new home cost $175,000 in 1997. The average new home in 2017 cost $380,000. For the math challenged, that is a 117% increase. The average monthly rent in 1997 was $576. In 2017 it was $1,021. That is a 77% increase. Housing is the biggest weighting in the CPI calculation. Since using actual cost increases would show at least a 90% increase in housing, the BLS drones created a fake calculation called owners equivalent rent which no one can question. That’s how you fake housing inflation.

And now for the funniest bullshit of them all. According to these fake news aficionados, the cost of a new car has not gone up by one dime in the last 20 years. It seems there is some non-government data that says otherwise. The average price of a new car in 1997 was $19,214. The average price of a new car in 2017 was $33,560. Does that strike you as a 0% increase? The actual increase for the average schmuck living in the real world has been 75%. But those good old hedonic adjustments get you back to 0%.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Food: What’s In Your Basket? How Fast Are Prices Rising?

January 12, 2018

Food: What’s In Your Basket? How Fast Are Prices Rising?

The BLS says the CPI rose 2.1% in December from a year ago. Food rose 1.6%. I called the BLS and filled in some numbers.

In CPI Up 0.1 Percent: How Much is the CPI Understated? I disputed the BLS’s year-over-year overall inflation figure of 2.1%, specifically citing housing and the cost of health insurance.

I found the reported food increase reasonable, others didn’t. Whether or not you find the food index believable depends on two things.

What you buy
How you shop

Reader AWC pointed out this BLS article from March of 2017: Prices for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs down 7 percent since August 2015 peak.

I downloaded the data and started plugging in numbers for December 2017. The index numbers did not match, so I called the BLS. The person directed me to data downloads which I also found on my own. I still could not match the downloaded numbers.

What happened is the data for the the preceding chart was indexed to 2007 but the main index is to 1982.

I asked the BLS agent for year-over-year increases of items and the percentages matched.

CPI Select Food Items

I calculated all but the last row from the March article after verifying percentages with the BLS. The last row was read to me over the phone.

I created the main graph from the above chart.

How Do You Shop?

Your percentages may vary substantially from the above chart.

Mine are cheaper because I buy items on sale and freeze them. Sale prices fluctuate less than non-sale prices.

Properly wrapped food will last a year or more.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New President–Same BLS Bullshit

January 6, 2018

NEW PRESIDENT – SAME BLS BULLSHIT

I spent most of Obama’s presidency obliterating the jobs recovery narrative every month, as millions supposedly left the workforce because their financial situation was so wonderful. The bullshit shoveled by the BLS was nothing but manipulated misinformation then and it is still bullshit now. Just because the president is now Trump, doesn’t make the false narrative about a strong jobs recovery now valid. After a disappointing December jobs report, the cackling and tooting of horns might die down a little, but the propaganda peddlers will somehow spin it as a positive. Buy Stocks!!!!

Candidate Trump railed against the fake data put out by the BLS. He railed about the ridiculously low interest rates manufactured by the Fed. He declared the stock market was a bubble ready to burst. That was over 5,000 points ago. As expected, now that he is el presidente, Trump embraces the fake data, low interest rates and the most overvalued stock market in history. He tweets about the great economy and stock market every day. GDP has risen at a scintillating 2.5% pace in 2017. This is up from 2% in the prior two years, driven by people going further into debt to survive or buy shit they don’t need.

The narrative being propagated by the corporate MSM was this was the best holiday retail season in years. Americans were back to spending like drunken sailors. Trump is making America great again, so why not spend money we don’t have using that little piece of plastic. Those future tax savings will more than pay the bill. Except for a couple nagging questions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yellen Was Right: “Transitory” Factors of “Low” Inflation Are Reversing, with Much More to Come

October 13, 2017

Yellen Was Right: “Transitory” Factors of “Low” Inflation Are Reversing, with Much More to Come

What’s Boiling Beneath the Surging Inflation?

Consumers are going to shell out more money for the same stuff, that’s for sure. Inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index jumped 2.2% in September compared to a year ago, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this morning. All fingers pointed at energy costs: the index jumped 10.1% year-over-year. Within it, “motor fuel” prices (gasoline and diesel) jumped 19.2%.

Food prices rose 1.2% year-over-year, kept down by prices for “food at home” – the stuff you buy at the grocery store – which inched up only 0.4% year-over-year in part due to the price war currently tearing into the supermarket sector.

In the chart below of CPI, note the dreadful “Deflation Monster” – one of those rare and brief occasions in the US when the purchasing power of wages actually rose just a tiny bit on a year-over-year basis. It was caused by the energy bust. And it was “transitory”:

In the chart, note how CPI jumped 2.8% in February and then retreated through June. This retreat was brushed off as “transitory” by Fed Chair Janet Yellen and other Fed governors when they vowed to continue raising rates. She had specifically pointed out a few of those “transitory” factors. And they’re now turning around.

One of these factors that Yellen had pointed out was telephone services, which includes the monthly costs that consumers pay for their smartphones. Those costs plunged as a price war among wireless carriers had broken out in 2016. This summer, the price index for telephone services was down around 9% year-over-year. The wireless component plunged as much as 13%. But that consumer bonanza could not last.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Lies, Lies & OMG More Lies

September 18, 2017

LIES, LIES & OMG MORE LIES

“There are three types of lies — lies, damn lies, and statistics.” – Benjamin Disraeli

Every month the government apparatchiks at the Bureau of Lies and Scams (BLS) dutifully announces inflation is still running below 2%. Janet Yellen then gives a speech where she notes her concern inflation is too low and she needs to keep interest rates near zero to save humanity from the scourge of too low inflation. I don’t know how I could survive without 2% inflation reducing my purchasing power.

This week they reported year over year inflation of 1.9%. Just right to keep Janet from raising rates and keeping the stock market on track for new record highs. According to our beloved bureaucrats, after they have sliced, diced, massaged and manipulated the data, you’ve experienced annual inflation of 2.1% since 2000. If you believe that, I’ve got a great real estate deal for you in North Korea on the border with South Korea.

“Lies sound like facts to those who’ve been conditioned to mis-recognize the truth.” ― DaShanne Stokes

CPI and Core CPI

Ignore that silly Shiller PE ratio far surpassing 1929 and 2007 levels. Ignore every historically accurate valuation method showing the stock market 70% to 129% overvalued. Wall Street shysters like Jamie Dimon, faux financial analysts, corporate media talking heads and even Donald Trump tell you this time is different. Tax cuts, amnesty for illegals, more wars, and eliminating the debt ceiling will surely spur massive economic growth. Trillion dollar deficits are always bullish. Making America Great with More Debt should drive the stock market to 30,000 in no time.

All is well. Real median household income just surpassed the level achieved in 1999. Think about that for a second. It took seventeen years for the average American family to get back to a household income of $59,000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Boomer Retirement Meme Is A Big Lie

April 4, 2016

THE BOOMER RETIREMENT MEME IS A BIG LIE

As the labor participation rate and employment to population ratio linger near three decade lows, the mouthpieces for the establishment continue to perpetuate the Big Lie this is solely due to the retirement of Boomers. It’s their storyline and they’ll stick to it, no matter what the facts show to be the truth. Even CNBC lackeys, government apparatchiks, and Ivy League educated Keynesian economists should be able to admit that people between the ages of 25 and 54 should be working, unless they are home raising children.

In the year 2000, at the height of the first Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 120 million Americans between the ages of 25 and 54, with 78 million of them employed full-time. That equated to a 65% full-time employment rate. By the height of the second Federal Reserve induced bubble, there were 80 million full-time employed 25 to 54 year olds out of 126 million, a 63.5% employment rate. The full-time employment rate bottomed at 57% in 2010, and still lingers below 62% as we are at the height of a third Federal Reserve induced bubble.

Over the last 16 years the percentage of 25 to 54 full-time employed Americans has fallen from 65% to 62%. I guess people are retiring much younger, if you believe the MSM storyline. Over this same time period the total full-time employment to population ratio has fallen from 53% to 48.8%. The overall labor participation rate peaked in 2000 at 67.1% and stayed steady between 66% and 67% for the next eight years. But this disguised the ongoing decline in the participation rate of men.

In 1970, the labor participation rate of all men was 80%, while the participation rate of women was just below 43%.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Earthquake Economics

January 16, 2016

Earthquake Economics

Beyond Human Capacity

“The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” said President Obama, in his State of the Union address, on Tuesday night. What performance metrics he based his assertion on is unclear. But we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

A collapsed building is seen in Concepcion , Chile, Thursday, March 4, 2010. An 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday, causing widespread damage. (AP Photo/ Natacha Pisarenko) Photo credit: Natacha Pisarenko / AP

Maybe this is so…right now. But it isn’t eternal. For at grade, hidden in plain sight, a braid of positive and negative surface flowers indicate an economic strike-slip fault extends below. What’s more, the economy’s foundation dangerously straddles across it.

1-gdpnow-forecast-evolution Actually, it probably isn’t so – the Atlanta Fed’s GDP Now measure, which has proven surprisingly accurate thus far, indicates that the US economy is hanging by a thread – and the above chart does now yet include the string of horrendous economic data released since January 8.

Something must slip. A massive vertical rupture is coming that will collapse everything within a wide-ranging proximity. It is not a matter of if it will come. But, rather, of when…regardless of what the President says.

Here at the Economic Prism we have no reservations about the U.S. – or world – economy. We see absurdities and inconsistencies. We see instabilities perilously pyramided up, which could rapidly cascade down. We just don’t know when.

Comprehending and connecting the infinite nodes and relationships within an economy are beyond even the most intelligent human’s capacity. Cause and effect chains are not always immediately observable. Feedback loops are often circuitous and unpredictable. What is at any given moment may not be what it appears.

Not Without Consequences

For instance, the Federal Reserve quadrupled its balance sheet following the 2008 financial crisis, yet consumer prices hardly budged. Undeniably, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index is subject to gross manipulation. We’re not endorsing the veracity of the CPI.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Newsflash From The December ‘Jobs’ Report—–The US Economy Is Dead In The Water

January 10, 2016

Newsflash From The December ‘Jobs’ Report—–The US Economy Is Dead In The Water

Here’s a newsflash that CNBC didn’t mention. According to the BLS, the US economy generated a miniscule 11,000 jobs in the month of December.

Yet notwithstanding the fact that almost nobody works outdoors any more, the BLS fiction writers added 281,000 to their headline number to cover the “seasonal adjustment.” This is done on the apparent truism that December is generally colder than November and that workers get holiday vacations.

Of course, this December was much warmer, not colder, than average. And that’s not the only deviation from normal seasonal trends.

The Christmas selling season this year, for example, was absolutely not comparable to the ghosts of Christmas past. Bricks and mortar retail is in turmoil and in secular decline due to Amazon and its e-commerce ilk, and this trend is accelerating by the year.

So too, energy and export based sectors have been thrown for a loop in the last few months by a surging dollar and collapsing commodity prices. Likewise, construction activity has been so weak in this cycle—-and for the good reason that both commercial and residential stock is vastly overbuilt owing to two decades of cheap credit—–that its not remotely comparable to historic patterns.

Never mind. The BLS always adds the same big dollop of jobs to the December establishment survey come hell or high water. In fact, the seasonal adjustment has averaged 320,000 for the last 12 years!

For crying out loud, folks, every December is different—–and not just because of the vagaries of the weather. Capitalism is about incessant change and reallocation of economic activity and resources. And now the globalized ebbs and flows of economic activity have only accentuated the rate and intensity of these adjustments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Keynesian Recovery Meme Is About To Get Mugged, Part 1

December 23, 2015

The Keynesian Recovery Meme Is About To Get Mugged, Part 1

Yellen said at least one thing of importance last week, but not in a good way. She confessed to the frightening truth that the FOMC formulates its policies and actions based on forecasts of future economic developments.

My point is not simply that our monetary politburo couldn’t forecast its way out of a paper bag; that much they have proved in spades during their last few years of madcap money printing.

Notwithstanding the most aggressive monetary stimulus in recorded history—-84 months of ZIRP and $3.5 trillion of bond purchases—–average real GDP growth has barely amounted to 50% of the Fed’s preceding year forecast; and even that shortfall is understated owing to the BEA’s systemic suppression of the GDP deflator.

What I am getting at is that it’s inherently impossible to forecast the economic future, but that is especially true when the forecasting model is an obsolete Keynesian relic which essentially assumes a closed US economy and that balance sheets don’t matter.

Actually, balance sheets now matter more than anything else. The $225 trillion of debt weighing on the world economy——up an astonishing 5.5X in the last two decades—– imposes a stiff barrier to growth that our Keynesian monetary suzerains ignore entirely.

Likewise, the economy is now seamlessly global, meaning that everything which counts such as labor supply and wage trends, capacity utilization and investment rates and the pace of business activity and inventory stocks is planetary in nature.

By contrast, due to the narrow range of activity they capture, the BLS’ deeply flawed domestic labor statistics are nearly useless. And they are a seriously lagging indicator to boot.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Judgment Day At Hand?

November 12, 2015

Is Judgment Day At Hand?

What is Judgment Day?

It is like ancient times that the Feds, under Greenspan, somehow decided that US needed to follow a zero interest rate policy, a policy now known as the ZIRP. It was 2008 when Bernanke gave birth to the term Quantitative Easing, QE. QE was followed by Operation Twist, and its sequels – QE2 and QE3.

The new buzzword is “normalization”. Normalization is the reversal of the QE operations and the raising of interest rates to above zero. Whether we agree or disagree is irrelevant. The fact is that the BLS just declared the unemployment rate is at 5%, a level that should justify initiating the normalization process starting with the next FOMC meeting in December. In other words, judgment day is at hand.

juday Batten down the hatches, judgment day approacheth
Image credit: World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)

The following two charts summarize the Fed’s policies nicely. The first shows the Federal Funds rate. It dropped from over 5% in 2007 to zero today. So we are making a big deal over a possible 25 basis points hike? I will leave that question for later.

Effective Federal Funds rate. It may be hiked from nothing to almost nothing soon, but what difference would it really make? – click to enlarge.

The second chart shows the Fed Balance Sheet, also starting in 2007. It went from $875 billion in 2007 to $4.5 trillion today, an increase of $3.625 trillion.

Total assets held by the Federal reserve. This unprecedented intervention has delivered “the weakest economic recovery of the entire post-WW2 era”. This result should be no surprise to anyone, except perhaps the monetary mandarins themselves – click to enlarge.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Looking at the two charts above, they beg the question: How do you normalize the extreme policies of the last 8 years? If normal means a return to a 5% federal funds rate and reducing the Fed’s balance sheet back to under $1 trillion, we have a hell of a long way to go.

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