Medusa Touch II: REAL Wage Earning Growth Remains Negative, Reverse Repos Continue To Grow, Lithium Prices And Mortgage Rates SOAR

President Biden (or whoever is pulling his strings) is inflicting a “Medusa Touch” on the US. That is, everything his administration touches turns to stone.

Yesterday, I walked through the rise in energy and food prices under Biden, and it is horrific. The only “disinformation” was generated by the Biden Administration itself claiming that soaring inflation is due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I demonstrated that inflation began with Biden’s anti-fossil fuel executive orders and the Russia invasion only made things worse.

Let’s look at average hourly earnings. Thanks to “progressive” energy policies from Biden, REAL average hourly earnings growth has crashed and burned.

But here is the chart that the Biden Administration touts showing average hourly earnings growth at 5.6% YoY (although I doubt if Jen Psaki would leave out the massive distortion caused by The Federal Reserve’s “Let’s go crazy!” monetary policy.

Another Medusa Touch moment is the reverse repo market. When I wrote about reverse repos before, several people wrote me saying “You don’t understand. This is a temporary problem and will vanish shortly.” However, The Fed’s reverse repo facility has now climbed to an all-time high.

Then we have the disruptive effects of The Federal Reserve deciding for us that mortgage rates are too low and should be higher.

Now look at lithium prices, a key element for electric car batteries. Making the switch from Internal combustion engines to electric motors far more costly.

The list goes on and on.

Suffice it to say, everything the Biden Administration touches turns to stone.

But I wager that the Biden Administration wishes that Hunter Biden’s laptop would turn to stone.

Only an elitist DC bureaucrat like Joe Biden would laugh at inflation that is ruining the lives of millions of Americans.

Bidenflation Roars To 25% YoY In March As Real GDP Growth Goes Negative (Clueless Joe)

While headline inflation is growing at 8.6% YoY in March, flexible price inflation grew at a terrifying 25% YoY rate.

Even with headline inflation of “only” 8.56% YoY, today’s Q1 real GDP growth checked in at -1.4% QoQ. Clearly, Bidenflation isn’t help the economy or anyone else.

Diesel prices have skyrocketed under Biden.

Instead of Shoeless Joe, we have Clueless Joe as President.

US Real GDP Q1 Goes Negative -1.4% QoQ As Price Growth Hits 8% (It’s Official! The Biden Economy Stinks!)

It’s official! The Biden economy stinks!

US real GDP growth for Q1 slipped into negative territory (-1.4% QoQ) while GDP price growth rose to 8%. So, negative real GDP growth is negative coupled with horrid inflation.

Personal consumption expenditures were below expectations at 2.7%.

Now that the Biden Administration has created an old Soviet Union-style Ministry of Disinformation (called the “Disinformation Governance Board”), I hope that I don’t get censored for reporting that the Biden economy officially stinks.

Good luck to The Federal Reserve in withdrawing the monetary stimulus.

Alarm! US Treasury 10-year Yields Rise Over 11 BPS As Treasuries And Agency MBS Continue Downward Price Path (Pension Funds, SSA BEWARE!!)

Alarm!

Particularly if you are a pension fund and hold US Treasuries and Agency Mortgage Backed Securities.

The bad news is that the 10-year US Treasury Note declined in price, sending the yield up over 10 bps today.

As The Fed is projected to raise its target rate over 10 times by February 2023, 10-year Treasury Note prices and agency MBS 3.5% prices continue to decline.

Here is a video of The Biden Administration and The Federal Reserve attacking pension funds and Social Security.

Heartaches In Heartaches! US Q2 Real-time GDP Stumbles To 0.446% As Fed Continues Monetary Stimulypto (What Will Happen When The Fed Pulls The Plug??) March Pending Home Sales Decline -8.90% YoY

Heartaches in heartaches. US GDP growth for Q2 has stumbled to 0.446% as The Fed is launching quantitative tightening (QT) to fight the inflation that they caused in the first place.

According to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow real-time GDP tracker, US GDP growth has stumbled to a meager 0.446%. Despite the massive stimulus from The Federal Reserve and Washington DC’s massive fiscal stimulus.

Biden, Powell and Congress are driving me crazy with inflation/price changes.

No corporate economists, inflation is NOT a good thing.

Pending home sales decline 8.9% in March, another heartache for Americans.

Will The Fed say good bye to its Snake Juice??

Going Down! MBA Mortgage Applications Dive 8.6% WoW, Purchase Apps Decline 7%, Refi Apps Decline 9% As Mortgage Rates Skyrocket (ARM Share Rose 9.4% WoW)

Thanks to The Federal Reserve helping to raise mortgage rates through the roof, mortgage applications are going down.

From the MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey. Mortgage applications decreased 8.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 22, 2022.

The Refinance Index decreased 9 percent from the previous week and was 71 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 8 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 7 percent compared with the previous week and was 17 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

The percentage of adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) increase 9.4% from previous week.

Yes, the 30-year mortgage rate is rising extremely fast.

“You’re Going Down” by Jerome Powell and The Constitution Avenue band. President Joe Biden conducting.

US New Home Sales In March Fall -8.6% MoM As Mortgage Rates Jump (Thanks To The Money Kings)

US existing home sales in March were expected to fall -0.6% from February, but they actually fell -8.6%. This is happening at The Federal Reserve is signaling tightening and mortgage rates are rising rapidly.

I think the above chart says it all.

Commodities Versus S&P 500 And The New World Order (Crashing Currencies And Flight To Commodities) The End Of US Dollar Hegemony?

Here is Dvorak’s New World Symphony, an appropriate piece the global turmoil that has taken place after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Here is the ratio of the S&P 500 index against the Bloomberg Commodity Price Index. This ratio is plotted against The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet of assets. Notice the decline in the Commodity Ratio in 2022, even ahead of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Global currencies, on the other hand, have been really crushed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The Japanese Yen, China’s Renminbi and Europe’s Euro relative to the US Dollar are falling due to a variety of reasons. Covid lockdown in China, Japan’s insistence on monetary easing while other Central Banks are tightening and the Euro with Russia threatening nuclear war.

WTI Crude is back to $100 a barrel. Critical metals are down today related to a slowing global economy and wheat is up 2.75%.

Could it be that US Dollar hegemony is nearly over and commodity-backed currencies are the way of the future?

Slippin’ Into Darkness! Dallas Fed Manufacturing Index Plunges To 1.1 As M2 Money “Slows” To 11% YoY (Will The Fed Reinstate Its “Low Rider” Interest Rate Policies?)

Slippin’ into darkness!

M2 Money stock YoY skyrocketed during the Covid mini-recession, peaking at 21% during February of 2021. The Dallas Fed manufacturing outlook grew to 38.1 in March 2021.

However, as M2 Money growth has slowed 11%, the Dallas Fed manufacturing outlook has plunged to near zero.

So, with the economy faltering (and REAL wage growth in negative territory), will The Fed reinstate its “Low Rider” interest rate policies?

The US Treasury 10Y yield is down -12.5 basis points (never a good sign as investors buy Treasuries in a flight to safety).

Crude oil is down below $100 again and is down -5.61% today on … problems everywhere. ALL metals are down.

Cryptos are getting clobbered today as well.

Between Biden’s “Going green!” policies and The Fed’s allegedly trying to fight inflation, markets are getting trashed.

Fauci’d! Office Occupancy Remains Low At 42.8% While Office Prices Soar +16.2% With Fed Stimulus (Average Time To Foreclosure In Hawaii Is Over 7 Years??)

Do you want to see a magic trick? Like how governments shut down the US economy resulting in collapsing office occupancy rates while the price of office buildings rose dramatically (+16.3% since Q2 2020)?

Kastle’s “Back to work barometer” is showing that the 10 city average occupancy rate in the US is now only 42.8% as remote working has caught on. And the fear of yet another Covid mutation is keeping office occupancy below 50%.

Even Washington DC, home of Dr. Anthony Fauci, has only a 37.5% occupancy rate. Of the top 10 cities, Austin TX has the highest office occupancy rate at 62.4%.

So, the magic trick is not why America is so slow to return to the office, but why commercial office prices are rising so fast. Ah, Federal government STIMULYTPO! Aka, The Federal Reserve has been overstimulating the economy since 2008 and particularly since 2020 and Covid.

Speaking of a magic trick, here is how government’s make the average time to foreclosure up to over 7 years in Hawaii and 4.4 years in New York. In simple terms, you can buy a home in New York, never make a mortgage payment and live rent free for an average of 4.4 years.

Of course, the states with the longest average times to foreclosures at JUDICIAL foreclosures states (seen here is gray). Hawaii is now a judicial foreclosure state. That is, you must line up for a judge to hear your case.

So, the government’s magic trick is to 1) shut down local economies in fear of Covid, 2) provide excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus to combat the shutdown, 3) watch office building prices soar with stimulus as office occupancy remains below 50%.

Do you want to see a magic trick? Watch The Fed try to tighten monetary easing and NOT crash the economy.

Update for 04/25/2022. 10Y Treasury yields DOWN 8.7 bps.

And commodities are tanking. WTI oil is down 5%, iron ore is down almost 7%.

And the Dow is diving with increased expectations of Fed monetary tightening, but the expectations (green line) have been declining this morning.