CUT AND PASTE YOUTUBE LINKS
MASSIVE JOB FAIR LINES! WAL-MART LAYOFFS, BANK CRISIS DEEPENS, DEPOSITORS RUNNING SCARED
ISN'T IT TIME TO CALL IT A LOOMING DEPRESSION?
WSJ Poll: 78% Doubt Their Children Will Be Better Off in Biden’s America, Highest Share in Survey History
Seventy-eight percent of Americans doubt their children will be better off in President Joe Biden’s America, according to a WSJ-NORC poll released Friday.
Seventy-eight percent represents the highest share of Americans who are pessimistic since the survey began asking the question in the 1990s.
One reason Americans worry the next generation will fall behind is that they are losing faith in the power of a college education to move them up the economic ladder. Some 56% of respondents said that a four-year college degree wasn’t worth the cost because people often graduate without specific job skills and with heavy debt. Meanwhile, 42% of respondents said it was worth it because people have a better chance to get a good job and earn more. That marked a reversal from the last time the question was asked in 2017, when a narrow plurality viewed college as worth the investment.
One driver of happiness is financial certainty and economic freedom. According to the poll, Americans are unhappy with their financial position:
A plurality of respondents, 44%, said their finances are in worse condition than they expected for this stage in life, and more than a third said they are not at all satisfied with how they are getting along financially. Fewer than 3 in 10 agreed that people like them and their family have a good chance of improving their standard of living.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
Breitbart Business Digest: The Fed Is Forecasting a Contraction
The Fed Slightly Downgraded Expected Growth for 2023
The Federal Reserve appears to expect economic growth to come crashing to an abrupt halt later this year. The market suggests that is still too optimistic.
The Summary of Economic Projections released by the Federal Open Market Committee showed the median expectation for growth this year is just 0.4 percent, down a tenth of a point from the December projection. Next year’s growth rate is now seen at just 1.2 percent, down from the 1.6 percent projected in December.
What makes this remarkable is that we now know the economy not only very likely grew in the first quarter, it appears to have grown at a robust pace. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNOW tracker has us on pace for 3.2 percent growth in the third quarter. That may be overstating the actual rate of growth, but even more conservative measures, such as Bank of America’s GDP tracker, have us growing at a one percent rate.
Back in December, Fed officials likely expected growth to decline at the start of this year much more than it has. So, in order to get just a 0.4 percent growth for the year, we very likely will have to experience one or more quarters of negative real growth. The paucity of the rebound forecast for the following year suggests that the Fed expects us to start next year in contraction.
The Fed Expects a Stronger Labor Market
The Fed did budge a bit when it comes to recognizing the strength of the labor market. The projections now contemplate the unemployment rate going to 4.5 percent, down a tick from the earlier projection of 4.6 percent. The range of projections has grown. Back in December, projections ranged from 4.4 percent to 4.7 percent. Now the low end is all the way down at four percent, suggesting the economy is becoming harder to read.
Inflation is expected to be more persistent. In December, the Fed was projecting headline personal consumption expenditure (PCE) inflation falling to 3.1 percent and core PCE falling to 3.5 percent by the end of this year. Now it sees headline PCE at 3.3 percent and core at 3.6 percent.
Despite that, however, the median projection for the federal funds rate was unmoved at 5.1 percent. So, the Fed is expecting less growth, a higher level of employment, and more inflation; but it is communicating that it will not react to those changes. In essence, the Fed is saying: we’re changing our views about the economy but not our view on rates. No wonder the market read the March meeting as dovish.
Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on March 22, 2023, ahead of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s announcement about interest rates. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
The federal funds futures market correctly predicted the quarter of a basis point hike. Now the implied odds are indicating that the Fed is likely done hiking, with less than a 40 percent chance of a hike at the May meeting. Strikingly, the odds of higher rates go down for subsequent meetings. So, the chance that the target will be higher than the current target falls to 30 percent for the June and July meetings and then zero for later meetings.
In fact, the odds now imply that the Fed will have to cut rates by the September meeting. The odds of easing are around 80 percent for September and then climb to nearly 99 percent for December. There is just a 1.3 percent chance that the Fed target range will be 4.75 percent to 5 percent—the current target—after the December meeting. That’s a very strong conviction of a coming Fed cut.
That, in turn, implies that the market sees the labor market faring much worse than projected and unemployment climbing much higher. That’s the only logical way to explain the expectation not just for an end to hikes but for some serious rate cuts.
Chicago Fed National Activity Index Plunges
Could the downturn already be upon us? Although the labor market indicators came in strong for February and the housing market appears to have bottomed, manufacturing surveys have been suggesting weakness.
The picture of the economy painted by the Chicago Fed National Activity Index for February was much worse than expected. The index tracks 85 indicators of economic activity. It is constructed to have an average score of zero and a standard deviation of one. Positive scores indicate an economy growing faster than its long-term trend while negative scores indicate slower growth. The indicators are broken down into four large categories—production and income; employment, unemployment, and hours; personal consumption and housing; and sales, orders, and inventories.
In January, the index came in at +0.23, the strongest reading in seven months. This was expected to moderate to a positive +0.18. Instead, it crashed all the way down to -0.19, indicating a much bigger slowdown in growth than economists were forecasting. All four of the broad categories were negative, although none deeply so.
Surveys Indicate a Resurgence of Growth–And Inflation–in March
The growth of the U.S. economy accelerated in March, with business surveys indicating the fastest uptick in growth since May of last year, S&P Global said Friday.
Unfortunately, higher inflation accompanied the faster pace of growth.
The S&P Global Flash U.S. services-sector index rose to an 11-month high of 53.8 from 50.5 in the prior month. This was well above the consensus forecast for a reading of 50.3, indicating that economists have underestimated the strength of the services side of the economy.
The S&P Global U.S. manufacturing sector index, meanwhile, increased to 49.3 from 47.3. That’s the best reading in five months, although it is still below the 50 threshold that divides expansions and contractions. Economists had forecast this to drop down to 47.2.
The surveys, which are taken from executives inside U.S. companies known as purchasing managers, are considered to be some of the earliest indicators of economic developments. The surveys are often referred to as PMIs, short for purchasing manager index.
“March has so far witnessed an encouraging resurgence of economic growth, with the business surveys indicating an acceleration of output to the fastest since May of last year,” said Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “The PMI is broadly consistent with annualized GDP growth approaching 2%, painting a far more positive picture of economic resilience than the declines seen throughout the second half of last year and at the start of 2023.”
Manufacturing is still struggling. New orders fell again but at the slowest pace in six months, suggesting that these could be reaching their nadir. Production increased for the first time since last September, a development Williamson said was based on a marked improvement in supply chains.
New orders for services rose for the first time since September.
The labor market remains incredibly strong. Employment rose at both service companies and manufacturers. The rate of total job creation was the fastest for six months, as companies added to staffing numbers in response to increased new orders.
“On the price front, input costs faced by businesses continued to rise at a historically elevated pace in March despite the rate of inflation softening to the second-slowest since October 2020. Although raw material and supplier price hikes had eased, firms stated that greater wage bills pushed up cost burdens,” S&P Global said.
Selling prices increased, especially on the services side where businesses reported that “more accommodative demand conditions allowed them to pass-through higher cost burdens.” The rate of price inflation was the fastest in five months, S&P Global said.
Global Central Bankers Are Panicking & Invoke Crisis Era Swap Lines as the Liquidity Crisis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6yMSkkoHwVY&t=158s
86 More Banks “Are At Risk Of Failure”, And That Could Push Us Into The Next Great Depression
Dollar Tree Pulls Eggs from Shelves as Prices Soar in Joe Biden’s Economy
Dollar Tree has pulled eggs from its shelves as prices skyrocketed approximately 60 percent since the fall, the news coming as people struggle to make ends meet in President Joe Biden’s (D) economy.
“The chain, which is increasingly a go-to grocery destination for cash strapped shoppers, has roughly 8,000 Dollar Tree stores across the United States and Canada. Its spokesperson said it does not anticipate being able to bring eggs back into its stores for sale until later this fall,” Reuters reported Tuesday.
The price for eggs hit an average of $5 a dozen during the first month of this year, and the price hike was due to a global outbreak of the avian flu.
One social media user commenting on the news wrote, “Going to have to rename it 5 dollar tree at this rate.”
“Build back better,” another person commented in what appeared to be a reference to Biden’s so-called plan to “rebuild the middle class.”
Meanwhile, consumer pricing data from the government reportedly said egg prices dropped 6.7 percent last month.
“Our primary price point at Dollar Tree is $1.25. The cost of eggs is currently very high,” the company’s spokesperson, Randy Guiler, told reporters, adding the store will begin selling eggs again when “costs are more in line with historical levels,” per the Washington Examiner.
Joe Biden: ‘Main Driver of Food Prices’ Is Packaged Goods
The outlet noted the price for eggs may jump again in April due to the Easter holiday.
In February, Breitbart News reported that data showed egg prices rose by 70 percent in January:
With many consumer categories still being hit hard by inflation, new data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed on Tuesday that inflation for eggs had jumped 8.5 percent from December to January and a total of 70.1 percent year over year (since last January).
…
Besides the prices of eggs rising like the rest of food products, CNBC noted that the higher egg prices are largely due to the deadly outbreak of bird flu in the U.S. CNBC further noted that the disease, a highly pathogenic avian influenza, has killed a record number of birds throughout 2022 and has continued into this year — which also coincided with the winter holidays where eggs are in high demand for all the seasonal cooking and baking.
When asked in January if customers were upset over the high cost of eggs, Morton Williams Supermarket Manager Danny Cowan told Inside Edition, “I think they’re concerned.”
The outlet said Eileen’s Special Cheesecake in New York City was also hurting over the issue because eggs are an essential ingredient in its offerings. According to an employee, the business uses thousands of eggs on an average day:
She said there were things they could do to save and cut corners, but they were not going to resort to those options because it would have an affect on their product.
“We did raise our prices a little bit,” she explained. The outlet noted that since 2022, the average cost of a dozen eggs went from $1.47 to $3.60, per the outlet’s January report.
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