Confounded Interest – Anthony B. Sanders
Financial Markets And Real Estate
I have never seen anything like this. The US Treasury 10Y-2Y yield curve is deep in inversion and has had a negative slope for 265 straight days. Bidenomics is born under a bad sign!
On the commodities front, heating oil is up almost 2% this morning and nickel (an important element in Biden’s green energy mandates) is up 1.78%.
On the crypto front, Bitcoin is up 0.47% and Dogecoin is up 5.58%.
You can always buy Kamala’s Own Word Salad Dressing!
Shot through the heart (of the economy), and they’re to blame. The Fed and Congress give government a bad name.
When I see the faces of Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke, Janet Yellen and Jerome Powell, all I think of is …. the Minsky Moment brigade!
From Zero debt in 1776 to $21 trillion in 1997 and just in the last 4 years, debt has gone up by that same $21 trillion. This graph shows the debt explosion, a 63x increase.
And then we have Congress promising >$192 trillion in entitlements (wealth transfers) that will likley be added to the already >$32 trillion in Federal debt.
Bidenomics strikes! Or as Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum sing “I’m going to make (the US) mine!”
Despite the open borders where millions of low wage workers and parasites pour across into the US, we still see 1-unit housing starts plunged -7.4% YoY in June as The Fed continues tightening.
Multifamily starts actually fell worse than 1 unit starts. 5+ unit starts were down -11.56% MoM. Multfamily permits were down -13.52%.
And it just isn’t little girls that Biden is creepy about (like the family member we all keep our kids away from), Biden is creepy towards adult women too! These guys, like most normal people, aren’t digging Old Joe’s creepiness.
The Federal Reserve, an organization that even George Orwell would find outrageous, is a Minsky Moment Machine!
A Minsky Moment refers to the onset of a market collapse brought on by the reckless speculative activity that defines an unsustainable bullish period. Minsky Moment crises generally occur because investors, engaging in excessively aggressive speculation, take on additional credit risk during bull markets.
And since Covid and the Great Monetary Expansion to fight it helped creates massive inflation and helps the 1% get wealthier and wealthier. BUT as M2 Money growth slows, the 1% are losing their position as top dogs in the economy. Not by much (see pink circle), but a little.
And The Federal Reserve helps create the monetary expansion through low rate policies, fueling credit and asset bubble expansion. Greenspan, Bernanke and Yellen were the masters at creating a Minsky Moment (named after Hymen Minsky, the late Washington University of St Louis economist).
Then we have the latest bit of bad news. US Industrial Production year-over-year of -0.43% as M2 Money growth evaporates.
After The Fed’s insertion of massive monetary in 2008, continued stimulus until the second massive stimulus burst in 2020, unfunded liabilities of pension funds have worsened. Another possible Minsky Moment created by the Kafkaesque Fed. Kafedesque??
The Fed’s Powell: Let’s play a game … and make the 1% even wealthier!!!
The Fed. The beauty of failure. When the economy starts failing, The Fed goes wild.
The global credit correction has arrived. Or as Bill Paxton said in Twister, “It’s already here!”
The question is, how far into the economy will it extend?
US Gross Domestic Income YoY is still growing strong at 4.5%, but shrinking really fast as Fed monetary stimulypto wears off.
S&P Global Ratings’ Credit Cycle Indicator – forward-looking measure of credit conditions—shows that the momentum of the correction continues.
Source: S&P Global Ratings
Speaking of cycles … I give you the ultimate cycle killer, the US Federal Reserve.
As The Federal Reserve is poised to continue it inflation-fighting crusade, the US economy is rapdily approaching DEFLATION. US Producer Price Index FINAL DEMAND fell to 0.1% YoY in June.
Bidenomics, the combination of insane monetary stimulus and insane directed Federal spending towards going green at all costs, is running out of steam. M2 Money growth was last measured to be -4% YoY and the US Dollar is down -8.2% since September 2022.
The good news? Silver is up over 2% today!
And Bitcoin is up almost a percent today.
Speaking of the Biden White House ….
Bidenomics relied of massive Federal spending thanks to Covid and massive monetary expansion. This led to the highest inflation in 40 years (Bidenflation). But now The Fed is slowing M2 Money growth into negative territory and hiking their target rate.
The result? Bank credit growth has crashed to 0.5% YoY. In other words, banks are no longer expanding credit for the first time since the aftermanth of The Great Recession and Financial Crisis of 2008/2009. Of course, Washington DC bailed out their bestest buddies, the banks, while middle America suffered.
As America loses steam under Biden and The Fed, 41+ countries have signed on to the BRICs gold-backed reserve currency. Unlike the USA with its fiat currency (backed by Babbling Biden and Janet “The Midget Marxist” Yellen), this reserve currency will be backed by gold.
Speaking of Yellen, she met the Chinese vice-Chairman (their version of Cacklin’ Kamala) and bowed three times. And the Chinese official didn’t return the bows. Way to capitulate Janet!!
Bidenomics, the massive Federal spending spree that helped drive inflation to 40 year highs, is the most top-down Soviet-style command economy model imaginable.
As The Fed battles Bidenflation, the 30-year mortgage rate has now risen to 7.31%, a far cry from 2.88% when Biden was installed as President. That is a 154% increase in the 30-year mortgage rate under Bidenomics.
The architect of Bidenflation, Snow Biden.
Biden’s massive spending spree (aka, Build Back Better) has a new name: Build Back Bankrupt!
According to Epiq, Commercial Chapter 11 Filings Increased 68 Percent in the First Half of 2023.
NEW YORK – July 03, 2023 — The 2,973 total commercial Chapter 11 bankruptcies filed during the first six months of 2023 represented a 68 percent increase over the 1,766 filed during the same period in 2022, according to data provided by Epiq Bankruptcy, the leading provider of U.S. bankruptcy filing data. Individual Chapter 13 filings increased by 23 percent during the same period.
Overall commercial filings registered 12,107 for the first half of 2023, representing an 18 percent increase from the commercial filing total of 10,258 for the first half of 2022. Small business filings, captured as Subchapter V elections within Chapter 11, totaled 814 in the first six months of 2023, a 55 percent increase from the 525 elections during the same period in 2022.
Overall commercial filings increased 12 percent in June 2023, as the 2,123 filings were up from the 1,891 commercial filings registered in June 2022. The 404 commercial Chapter 11 filings in June represented a 9 percent increase from the 371 filings in June 2022. Total Subchapter V elections within Chapter 11, experienced a 111 percent increase from 94 in June 2022 to 198 in June 2023.
“The increase in commercial and individual bankruptcy filings during the first half of 2023 underscores the economic challenges faced by businesses and individuals,” said Gregg Morin, Vice President of Business Development and Revenue at Epiq Bankruptcy. “Our objective is to provide bankruptcy professionals with timely and accurate data necessary for analyzing stakeholder volumes and trends for making informed business decisions.”
Total bankruptcy filings were 217,420 during the first six months of 2023, a 17 percent increase from the 185,352 total filings during the same period a year ago. Total individual filings also registered a 17 percent increase, as the 205,313 filings during the first half of 2023 were up from the 175,094 filings during the first six months of 2022. The 85,390 individual Chapter 13 filings in the first half of 2023 represent a 23 percent increase over the 69,367 filings during the same period in 2022.
All chapters increased in June 2023 compared to June 2022, with 37,700 total bankruptcy filings representing an increase of 17 percent from the 32,198 filed in 2022. Total commercial filings were up 12 percent from 1,891. Total Individuals were up 18 percent from 30,307.
While not the Epiq data, the Bloomberg Corp Bankruptcy Index shows the rise in bankruptcies as The Fed fights Bidenflation.
What is Bidenomics? It isn’t what Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre thinks. She said Biden hates “trick down economics”. Instead, Biden prefers a Soviet-style command economy where The Federal Government spends trillions of dollars and directs where the money goes. We also have the Socialist Federal Reserve that relies on rate manipulation to achieve policy results.
A good example of Biden’s Soviet-style “Bidenomics” is his use of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). Biden has now drained almost 50% of the SPR from when he was sworn in as President. And has drained the SPR for 14 straigth weeks to manipulate gasoline and diesel fuel prices in an effort to lower fuel prices ahead of the 2024 Presidential election. Watch Biden suddenly stop caring about fuel prices once he wins reelection!
After last week’s huge draw, expectations were for a smaller draw (which API showed last night), but the actual crude draw was smaller – just 1.5mm barrels. Stocks at the Cushing hub fell 400k barrels and products also saw notable draws..
At least we now know who left cocaine in the White House!
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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