patrick.net

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.

.



,

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.
.



.

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.

.

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.

.

HeadSet says

Hence further inflation.

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

.

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,

When are they gonna start sending out inflation remediation checks again ????

Misc says

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,

Nina Turner just tweeted about this - claiming credit for the Dems. So I replied to her:

"Why not $55/hr? Why are you so stingy?"

ad says

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.

Well, that's easy.

Get government out of supporting corporations, from banks to large business. LET THEM FAIL.

There, problem solved.

You need to realize that we're not moving into a communist system, we're already in it, and the communist system is strangling the free market. Amazon, for example, doesn't make money, but they make money off from AWS, and all 17 "intelligence agencies" store their information on their servers.

Divorce government from the free market. Let them do whatever themselves, let them fail. They need to be part of the free market as well. Is your public school system shit, well, you should be able to replace it, and reduce your taxes to do it. That's charter schools.

Government isn't designed to fix problems, it's designed to make problems, to create the need to increase taxation, to... not fix the problem - but they'll promise to fix it...

Misc says

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.

Haha, $20 an hour to buy a Tesla? They are 70,000 dollars. $20 an hour is about $40,000 a year. That would have been a stretch to buy a HOUSE in 1970 for $60,000.

Misc says

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

I am outraged that people think that people vote for this shit. You have any FUCKING idea how easy it is to validate the vote?

YET, it's impossible, for some reason... This is using the same sort of system we used on IOWA standardized tests 40 years ago. Our elected leaders, I doubt, are elected. Your persistence in believing them allows them to continue to stay in power. Call them out.

Count the ballots in, count the number of people that walk in, should be 1:1. Run the ballots through the machine, that should take a few MINUTES. Store the ballots. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out. Want to get fancy? Give voters a receipt to see how they ballot was counted. It can be a pseudo randomized number, with a QR code and UPC symbol. Trivial.

We are SO FUCKING FAR ahead of this, you have no idea. It's like counting money. Think nobody can do that??

The fact that we even WONDER if a vote might be stolen, means the vote is stolen. It's trivial, TRIVIAL, to make it 100% lock tight. They depend on your uncertainty. Everything I proposed is TRIVIAL to do. It was trivial 20 years ago.

The_Deplorable says

That picture is from the late 1950s.

https://notthebee.com/article/this-man-took-before-and-after-photos-of-costco-prices-and-itll-break-your-heart-

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/06/economy/september-jobs-report-final/index.html

Jobs report today... government reported 336k jobs added last month which was about twice as much as forecasted

This is good if this means companies don't have a labor shortage which means paying overtime and then passing overtime costs onto the customers

Labor participation rate is unchanged at 62.8% and unemployment rate remains same at 3.8%.

....