patrick.net

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/09/david-stockman/the-bls-pointy-heads-and-monetary-mission-impossible/

It was CPI day. So it might be expected that some anomaly in the monthly data would provide a timely reminder that Washington’s main inflation index isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. In the context of our Monetary Mission Impossible series, it also provides further proof that the Fed’s fanatical quest to reach its 2.00% inflation goal is utterly misguided.

As it happens, the number -33.6% contained in the August CPI report fulfills both of these expectations and then some. This figure supposedly represents the Y/Y plunge in the cost of medical insurance!

That’s right. Anything connected to the medical delivery system was up by hefty amounts in August on a Y/Y basis, but the thundering collapse (purportedly) of health insurance costs allegedly saved the day. As shown below, according to the BLS the index for overall medical services was down -2.1% on a Y/Y basis in August when all of its other components where positive, some of them like dental care and home health services strikingly so.

Y/Y Change In CPI Medical Services And Its Components:

Dental services: +5.3%;
Eye care:+3.4%;
Physicians: +0.3%;
Home health services: +6.9%;
Hospital services:+3.0%;
Nursing home care: +6.1%;
Health insurance: -33.6%;
Overall Medical Care Services: -2.1%

... Yet that’s where the monetary politburo now finds itself impaled. That is, squinting at 27% of the CPI (i.e. the supercore) in order to calibrate its anti-inflation “tools” when this sawed-off inflation metric is so distorted by the BLS’s whacko health insurance proxy that it’s not worth the paper it’s printed on.

Unemployment rate is 3.8%. It was as low as 3.5% right before the pandemic started. Healthy unemployment rate is between 4% and 6%.

I am not sure how high it may go for the next recession, but we have a way to go for unemployment to get to that point.

I suspect when it reaches around 5.5% then we may be near the middle of the next recession.

An inflation rate between 4% and 6% corresponds to keeping wage inflation in check as the labor market has tightened however the market is still near or at full employment conditions.

I read Google has conducted another round of layoffs, this time to its recruiters workforce; it has indicated it is hiring less. That's a good sign as far as the labor market tightening so that inflation may continue to decrease.

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Patrick says

Health insurance: -33.6%;

Eventually the accountants are going to have to adjust this. And it is going to have to be adjusted by the end of this year, not right after the November 2024 election.

If at best, health insurance will go up 3% from December 2022 to December 2023. My estimate is that overall medical care services will finish between +6% to +10% for the end of 2024.

But no way will this aggregate or component remain in negative double digits or even negative single digits going into 2024.

Misc says

restock the Reserve

Yeah, look at the timing of this. It started around March 2022 and ended around mid October 2022 (right before the midterm election). If gas prices stayed high in 2022, then I don't know if the Dems would have fared well in the House election.

Birdbrain Biden is fucked cause now OPEC and Russia is cutting production and the price of gas has gone up. He cannot tap the depleted reserves like he
did in 2022 leading into the 2024 election.

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Focus on workforce participation such as prime working age (25 to 54 years)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

Look at the overall (all age groups) labor participation percentage rate (62.8%) and it is only 0.5% below Feb 2020 level, and only 4.5% below its peak in late 2000.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART

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Work for home doesn't apply for jobs with a lot of vacancies like air condition repair, nursing home attendant, car mechanic, etc.

Need more worker supply for those service areas to help bring down CPI and PCE services

Unless there are significantly more productivity gains such as more reliable air conditioners and cars which need less repair, etc.

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ad says

Birdbrain Biden is fucked cause now OPEC and Russia is cutting production and the price of gas has gone up.

You've seen ballot fraud magic once.

need robots and automation to increase productivity if the total worker participation rate is going to continue to decline due to demographics ...unless people continue to work at least part time between the ages of 65 and 80 ....
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Check out inflation in Lebanon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebanese_liquidity_crisis

There is also significant inflation, which caused a massive loss of purchasing power and an increase in poverty. The price of foule or ful, a fava bean common in the region, was up 550% in March 2020 over a year earlier. Sugar has seen an increase of 670%, while wheat, tea, rice, and cigarettes have all gone up nearly 1,000% over the same period.

Argentina and Turkey also having massive inflation.

And our all time favorite Zimbabwe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe
Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Zimbabwe's inflation rate shot up from 66% to more than 130% in May 2022. By June 2022, it surged again to 191%.

And of course Wikipedia is blaming the war instead of money printing for inflation, because they have an agenda.

zzyzzx says

Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Zimbabwe's inflation rate shot up from 66% to more than 130% in May 2022. By June 2022, it surged again to 191%.

And of course Wikipedia is blaming the war instead of money printing for inflation, because they have an agenda.

Rhodesia is still a food exporter. So one would think their current account is in surplus.

Basically, they were using foreign notes...then switched to a new currency but wrecked it like all the others.

On the plus side, they are supposedly adopting a gold system this year. Let's see if the gold held in reserve gets stolen.

...or even if this happens at all.

In April 2023, the government announced the introduction of digital currencies backed by gold reserves. The digital money will be allowed to be transferred for people and business as a form of payment via e-gold wallets or e-gold cards.

ad says

need robots and automation to increase productivity if the total worker participation rate is going to continue to decline due to demographics

This is why the southern border is wide open I would reckon. The influx of 7 MILLION people from all over the world since Biden 'took' office might have some impact.
Some of them will probably get jobs.

Biden went full krazy reading the script handed to him about oil and gas. Even Obama was careful and nuanced. And now the Saudis are going to make Birdbrain Biden pay for this for the next 12 months.

Unless Biden makes some deals to get oil prices to drop between now and the 2024 election, and then rise again after the election.

Look at how he used the strategic oil reserves from March to October 2022 and then oil prices rises again after the midterm election. That helped to make sure the House was not taken over by a large Republican majority.

I think they will not lower interest rates unless CPI and PCE remain at or below 1.75% annual for at least 4 months. The Fed would keep rates the same i both remain between 2 and 3% annual. Look at recent seasonal hiring announcements by Target and Amazon; I wonder if its going to be a good Christmas this year.

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Fear and Greed Index back in fear territory for the first time since March 2023 (except for a brief moment last month).

S&P 500 about 11% below its all time high (~4825), and at July 2021 levels.

The S&P 500 may not return to 4825 for another year and at least 2.5 years since it was set in December 2021. I don't think it will be 20% above 4825 before 1 January 2025.

Asset prices remain down which will mean less capital gains to drive up inflation. Also lower asset prices like stocks make people feel poorer and less inclined to spend money.

I wonder if we'll have a soft landing as Jerome Powell has mentioned.

no significant real gain in the S&P 500 over the last 2.5 years

no productivity gains or innovation

S&P 500 is up 30% since February 2020

yet overall inflation is 25% since February 2020

a few more daily drops in the S&P 500 and its real gain will be at best 0% for the last 2.5 years 🙁

Track and monitor the following:

Purchasing Managers Index
Baltic Dry Index
PCE and CPI
unemployment rate
employment participation rate (for all age groups and 25 to 54 years range)
credit card delinquency and default rates
S&P 500 real earnings growth
CNN Fear and Greed Index

The federal deficit is expected to be $2 trillion this year, largely due higher US Treasury interest rates. Lets hope tax revenue increases to reduce the deficit and debt to GDP ratio.
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Read below. This is the Orwellian double-speak the left wing media and Democrats are promoting about the economy being so good.

The economy is not good as tax receipts are down or not enough to restrain the deficit.

The economy is not growing fast enough to reduce the debt to GDP ratio.

My concern is that admin state or bureaucracy will start to further massage the economic data to try to convince the masses the economy is doing well (while conversely prices still remain high at the grocery store and gas pump).

*********

"What's happening: Bigger interest payments + lower tax receipts, despite strong economic growth.

"A strong economy usually reduces the deficit. Not this time," Stein writes."

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/04/federal-deficit-double-despite-economic-growth

It all depends on who you ask about the strength of the economy. Most of the US debt is short term, so when interest rates go from basically zero to over 5%, it adds up when the debt is over $30 trillion.

There's no way in hell the politicians are gonna increase taxes by the roughly $1 trillion that the interest payments increased by. The extra interest just gets added to the deficit. Additional debt is not necessarily a weakness when you're talking about the US government.

Another item to keep in mind is nominal vs inflation adjusted. Measures of GDP are adjusted for inflation, whereas the national debt is not. So, while the debt to GDP measure may be stagnant, the debt capacity could be increasing because of the nominal increase in the dollar amount of goods and services produced.

Misc says

dditional debt is not necessarily a weakness when you're talking about the US government.

It is as far as standard of living as it could cause major inflation of food, housing, and medical care.

What is needed is to motivate the working population. Promote the supply side.

Businesses need to do more with the same (if not less) in order to reduce the cost per unit.

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ad says

What is needed is to motivate the working population. Promote the supply side.

I have an idea. Let's get a group of people to whip people to work harder, and not smarter, and to execute them if they don't meet performance goals, and also rape their wife, and or kids. That'll motivate them!!

Because, you know, this is a Dumbocracy and not a dictatorship with an oblivious slave population - and if people don't believe it, shove Critical Race Theory down their kid's throats make them blame their neighbor, not their actual oppressor.

The problem is we don't have enough wars. I mean, our government gave $700 to every family in Maui after police blocked roads and let people burn alive, and only could spare $100,000,000,000 for those poor Ukrainians that are fighting a proxy war for the United States, after the United States overthrew their corrupt shit government in 2014 precisely to cause this conflict. You know, because foreign policy doesn't REALLY affect the United States...

Foreign policy is our biggest problem because according to the MOTHERFUCKERS in power, that's the ONLY problem.


original link

They tell you to your face they don't give a FUCK about the citizens of this country, which should be their first priority. Brush it off, don't worry, there will be a savior in Donald Trump, or Robert Kennedy Jr., or some other person. It wouldn't be hard to just murder these fuckers, or kidnap them, waterboard them, and find out who is giving them orders.

No, we'll just sit back and hope - and that's what we will do, including me. I'm not skilled in kidnapping and torture. Just a quick way to die for me.

Misc says

The extra interest just gets added to the deficit. Additional debt is not necessarily a weakness when you're talking about the US government.

That extra interest still needs to be paid, and "adding to the deficit" means printing. Hence further inflation.

ad says

Businesses need to do more with the same (if not less) in order to reduce the cost per unit.

Businesses are always looking for ways to reduce cost, good times or bad. If the government kept a steady money supply, this increasing efficiency would result in lower prices over time. Inflation has only one cause, government overprinting of money.

richwicks says

Let's get a group of people to whip people to work harder, and not smarter, and to execute them if they don't meet performance goals, and also rape their wife, and or kids. That'll motivate them!!

I am not saying make this a Chicom labor camp environment.

I am saying there needs to be emphasis on total quality management, productivity, etc. Its a culture matter whereas now the dominant theme or religion is Woke and not continuous improvement, six sigma, and driving down cost per unit.

I am even saying yes have temporary tax increases while holding federal government spending increases to just below the inflation rate for 3 years to attempt to

1) reduce debt to GDP ratio to below 90%, or

2) at least reduce the annual deficit to Clinton or early George Bush Jr era levels.

My family and I are doing what we can like I extended this HP-all-in-one desktop purchased in early 2018 to Ubuntu Unix operating systems. So I plan on using it for another 4 years without buying an Apple Mac Mini.

We don't go out cause its not worth it as far as value except maybe Panera Bread or Carabba Brothers.

We fix things as much as we can such as simple plumbing problems, etc.

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HeadSet says

Hence further inflation.

Yes the +3% annual inflation is the tax on the working and lower middle class.

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https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/labs-of-liberalism-monday-september

New York City’s retailers are starting to respond rationally to the City’s failure to prosecute so-called “low level crimes” like shoplifting, by locking down even low cost items, like toothpaste:




Precautions like this dramatically increase employee labor, which in turn increases what economists call the “transaction cost” of every single purchase. It’s crime inflation. The unstated “equitable” goal is to free the police up to prosecute the middle class for things like protesting in front of abortion clinics, and to pressure citizens into agreeing to federalize local law enforcement.

Ding-dong! (Wait several minutes.) Can I get a pack of adult diapers, please? Thanks. Ding-dong! Now could I grab some genital wart ointment? Thanks!

Meanwhile in California...to help its citizens the State of California raised the minimum wage of fast food workers to $20 an hour. Since this happens in a vacuum, expect the burger flippers to go out and buy a new Tesla, or buy a house oooooooooo aaahhhh the possibilities are endless.

What a bunch of clusterfucks. It is simply going to raise prices across the board especially rent prices. Yes, especially rent prices.

People keep voting for this commie shit. They get what they get,