Hand To Mouth! 70% Of Americans Are Financially Stressed, 55% Live Paycheck-to-Paycheck As Credit Card Debt Soars And Personal Savings Dwindle As Fed Tightens (GOLD Rises Above $2,000)

Hand to mouth should be Biden’s Presidential re-election theme song.

70% Of Americans Are Financially Stressed, 58% Live Paycheck-To-Paycheck because America is living off their credit cards living a life they can’t actually afford as credit card debt keeps hitting record highs approaching $1 TRILLION!

Of course, what is really troubling is that credit card useage is soaring as The Fed hikes interest rates to combat inflation … caused by Janet Yellen and The Fed keeping rates near zero for too long under Obama. Then we have Biden fighting fossil fuels and Congress spending like drunken sailors in port. All together? Consumers turn to credit cards to cope and their personal savings are dwindling.

How to protect yourself against out-of-control Fed money printing? Gold is up over $2,000.

Former Fed Chair Janet Yellen didn’t try too hard to avoid asset bubbles or slow Obama’s economy. But as a result of her horrible monetary policies, The Fed is keeping on pushng rates up. And America is suffering for it.

US Industrial Production Limps Home At Dismal 0.53% YoY As Retail Sales Decline -1.0% In March (Money Sugar Rush Followed By Sugar Crash) US Retail Sales Advance Falls -1%

The US economy is barely chooglin along at a dismal 0.53% YoY (but 0.4% MoM in March). As the Covid “sugar rush” that caused a surge in Industrial Production in April 2021 of 16.56% has led to a “sugar crash” as M2 Money growth crashed and The Fed hiked rates to combat inflation. Known as a “sugar crash.”

Also in today’s economic news is more Sugar Crash news. Advance retail sales dropped -1% in March. That is -155% lower than a year ago when it was +1.8%.

Here is the breakdown.

The Federal Reserve put a spell on us when Bernanke/Yellen kept rates too low for too long (TLFTL) and The Fed is now playing catch up. It is now creating havoc.

And on the Philly Fed’s Christopher “Fats” Waller saying that he favored more monetary policy tightening to reduce persistently high inflation, although he said he was prepared to adjust his stance if needed if credit tightens more than expected, we see that US Treasury 2-year yield jumping 13.5 basis points to 4.103%.

Out Of Gas? US PPI Final Demand PRICES Crash To 2.7% YoY As Fed Withdraws Monetary Stimulus

Is the US economy out of gas? Or are we under The Fed’s massive thumb?

US Producer Price Index (PPI) final demand YoY fell to 2.7% in March as The Fed withdraws its massive monetary stimulus.

Final demand MoM fell -0.5% in March. But the interest number is CORE PPI ex food and energy actually down but at 3.6%. So, CORE PPI final demand growth is higher than the aggregate.

Do I detect a trend in US continuing jobless claims?

At least Biden is in Belfast Ireland making his usual gaffes, telling outrageous lies and looking totally lost. As usual. He can do less damage to the US by being in Ireland.

Gimme Shelter! Fed Leans Toward Another Hike, Defying Staff’s Recession Outlook (Shelter CPI UP 8.2% YoY, Food CPI UP 8.5% YoY)

Gimme (cheap) shelter.

Two of the biggest items for consumer are housing and food. Shelter inflation (CPI) is still growing at 8.2% YoY and food is still growing at 8.5% YoY.

Federal Reserve officials appear on track to extend their run of interest-rate hikes when they meet next month, shrugging off their advisers’ warning of recession with a bet that they need to do a little more to curb inflation.

Minutes of last month’s policy meeting showed officials dialed back expectations of how high they’ll need to lift rates after a series of bank collapses roiled markets last month. Still, officials raised their benchmark lending rate a quarter point to a range of 4.75% to 5%, as they sought to balance the risk of a credit crunch with incoming data showing price pressures remained too high.

They did so even after hearing from Fed staff advisers that they were forecasting a “mild recession” later this year.

Officials agreed “some additional policy firming may be appropriate,” according to minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee gathering, a posture several Fed speakers have reiterated in recent days.

Policymakers “commented that recent developments in the banking sector were likely to result in tighter credit conditions for households and businesses and to weigh on economic activity, hiring and inflation,” the minutes said, though they agreed the extent of the effects was uncertain. “Against this background, participants continued to be highly attentive to inflation risks.”

Sympathy for the Biden Administration and Federal Reserve? They caused this unholy disaster.

US Core Inflation Rises To 5.6% In March Keeping Rate Hikes On Table, Shelter CPI UP 8.2% YoY, Food UP 8.5% YoY (Taylor Rule Suggests 11.77% Fed Funds Rate)

US Core inflation keeps rising despite The Federal Reserve slowing M2 Money growth and raising The Fed Funds Targget rate as The Fed plays catch up from Janet Yellen’s “Too Low For Too Long” monetary policies under Obama. And she was … negligent.

US Core Inflation (Core CPI YoY) rose to 5.6% in March despite The Fed cranking up their target rate and rapidly withdrawing M2 Money.

Here is the CPI report for March. At least energy prices are down, but shelter is up 8.2% YoY and food is up 8.5% YoY.

How about REAL wages? Real average weekly earnings growth has now been negative for 24 straight months.

One reason that core inflation is still rising is that The Fed still has not raised rates sufficiently. According to the Taylor Rule, the Fed Funds Target rate should be 11.77% based on core inflation of 5.6%. Hey, The Fed isn’t even half way there. It is like the Doolittle Raiders in World War II dropping their bombs 100 miles off the Japanese coast well short of their target.

Fed Funds Futures are pricing in one more rate hike (and a small one at that) before they resume cutting rates again.

Is The Fed chicken?

Slippin’ Into Darkness? ISM Manufacturing PMI Crashes To Recessionary Levels As Bank Credit Growth Stalls (Fed Returning To Low Rate Policies)

I read over the weekend that the Biden Administration was planning to unleash its army of social influencers on us to hype Biden’s economic accomplishments before the Presidential election. I am not one of his preferred social influencers. In fact, the US economy is slippin’ into darkness under Biden.

An example is ISM Manufacturing PMI which has declined to a level typically seen in prior recessions.

And then we have US bank credit growth which just crashed to the slowest growth rate since 2014.

The Fed is returning to rate low-riding as the US economy slips into recession,

Is Biden Actually Captain Crunch? Inflation Drives Fed Tightening = Crashing US Bank Credit YoY (Now Only 2.73%)

Inflation started with Biden’s misguided war on US energy, then Biden/Congress helped inflation with an epic spending splurge. The Federal Reserve counterattacked with Fed rate hikes.

Over the past year, The Fed Funds Effective rate has risen and US bank credit has crashed to 2.73% year-over-year.

Do I detect a trend?

Since 2005, the crash in US bank credit is looking like 2008/2009 all over again.

Whether Biden is Cap’n Crunch or Jerome Powell or Janet Yellen, they are all crunching the US economy.

Never Ending Financial Crisis? US Bank Deposits Were Declining Already When SVB Failed

We have a seemingly never ending financial crisis.

US commercial banks deposits (red line) had been slowly declining even before Silicon Valley Bank failed. Along with Signature Bank and First Republic Bank, not to mention Credit Suisse. And The Teutonic Titanic, Deutshe Bank, is on the ropes. But the failure of SVB saw an acceleration of the decline in commercial bank deposits as banks accelerated borrowing.

But never fear! The Fed will raise rates once or twice more, then drop them again.

“The banks will never behave on my watch as US Treasury Secretary, you have my word!” And don’t worry. Biden will bail them all out … again. Call it “The Biden Bailout Shake!”

Hey Bartender! March Jobs Added 236k, Avg Wage Growth Falls To 4.2% (Too Bad Inflation Is 6%), Low Paying Leisure & Hospitality Leading Jobs Added At 72k

Hey Bartender!

Joe Biden loves to brag about “his” great economic successes, particulary in jobs added. But the jobs added in March were not in higher-paying factory jobs, but Biden’s building from the bottom-up approach is mostly low-paying leisure and hospitality jobs.

And here is the rub on wages. Average hourly earnings growth fell to 4.2% YoY, too bad inflation is 6% and expected to rise with the summer.

236k jobs added in March, down from a revised 326k jobs added in February. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5% and labor force participation rose slightly to 62.6%.

Construction jobs added were down -9k. Retail jobs were down -14.6k jobs. But leisure and hospitality jobs added were +72k.

Bear in mind that many of the jobs added were simply jobs added back after the catestrophic Covid government shutdowns.

The good news? Labor force participation is slowly recovering from the damage caused by the government shutdown of the economy.

The result? The 2-year Treasury yield is up 14.3 basis points.

Here is Lloyd from the film “The Shining.” A big fan of Biden’s bartender economic recovery.

Challenger Job Cuts UP 319% YoY, Highest Ever In Non-Recession OR Are We Actually In A Recession? (Techology And Financial Sectors Lead Job Losses)

The Challenger, Gray and Christmas job cuts report is out for March and it revealed a year-over-year (YoY) increase in US job cuts of 319%. That is the largest increase in job cuts for a non-recession month. In other words, this feels like a recession.

Where were the job cuts in March? Technology got blasted followed by financial.

As The Fed hikes rates, US GDP has declined in growth to 1.469%, despite trillions of dollars of Federal spending by Biden and Congress. What has all the money gone??

Can we get someone to get Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to lose HER job? Silly me, of course not!