{"id":64887,"date":"2023-01-29T06:43:40","date_gmt":"2023-01-29T11:43:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64887"},"modified":"2023-01-29T06:43:40","modified_gmt":"2023-01-29T11:43:40","slug":"are-you-the-collateral-damage-of-central-planners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=64887","title":{"rendered":"Are You the Collateral Damage of Central Planners?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/are-you-the-collateral-damage-of-central-planners\/\">Are You the Collateral Damage of Central Planners?<\/a><\/h3>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/economicprism.com\/are-you-the-collateral-damage-of-central-planners\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-1829 size-full\" title=\"Are You the Collateral Damage of Central Planners?\" src=\"https:\/\/economicprism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Graffiti.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>The Conference Board \u2013 a nonprofit think tank that delivers cutting edge research \u2013 recently\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.conference-board.org\/topics\/us-leading-indicators\">published<\/a>\u00a0its latest Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States.\u00a0 The findings were a giant bummer.\u00a0 In December, the LEI dropped for the tenth consecutive month.<\/p>\n<p>The LEI, if you\u2019re unfamiliar with it, consolidates various measures of economic activity, including credit, interest rate spreads, consumer expectations, building permits, new orders of goods and materials, and several other items, to assess which way the economic winds are blowing.\u00a0 Over the past six months, the LEI has fallen by 4.2 percent.\u00a0 This is the fastest six-month decline since the great coronavirus panic.<\/p>\n<p>This week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis provided its\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bea.gov\/news\/2023\/gross-domestic-product-fourth-quarter-and-year-2022-advance-estimate\">advance estimate<\/a>\u00a0of Q4 U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).\u00a0 For the final quarter of 2022, real GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.9 percent.<\/p>\n<p>How could it be that GDP is expanding while the LEI is contracting?<span id=\"more-8507\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The most probable answer we can think of is the massive expansion of consumer debt.\u00a0 For example, credit card balances hit a new record of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/wusfnews.wusf.usf.edu\/economy-business\/2023-01-06\/credit-card-debt-reaches-record-high-among-u-s-consumers\">$866 billion<\/a>\u00a0during Q3 2022.\u00a0 That marks a year-over-year increase of 19 percent.<\/p>\n<p>Americans are borrowing from their future to make ends meet today.\u00a0 This may give GDP the appearance that it\u2019s expanding.\u00a0 But, in reality, the GDP expansion is merely a measurement of the rate that consumers are going broke.<\/p>\n<p>The fact is the U.S. economy is traversing headlong into a recession at the worst possible time.\u00a0 We expect things will get especially ugly, as consumers are operating in a world of chaos\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>World of Chaos<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In a centrally planned economy, decisions are not made between individuals through free market mechanisms.\u00a0 Instead, they\u2019re made by politicians and bureaucrats through policies of mass market intervention.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are You the Collateral Damage of Central Planners? The Conference Board \u2013 a nonprofit think tank that delivers cutting edge research \u2013 recently\u00a0published\u00a0its latest Leading Economic Index (LEI) for the United States.\u00a0 The findings were a giant bummer.\u00a0 In December, the LEI dropped for the tenth consecutive month. The LEI, if you\u2019re unfamiliar with it, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[125,195,12043,2384,353,11763,33394,827,834],"class_list":["post-64887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-planning","tag-debt","tag-economic-prism","tag-elite","tag-gdp","tag-mn-gordon","tag-ruling-caste","tag-united-states","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64887"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64887\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64888,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64887\/revisions\/64888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}