Rising Oil Prices Might Be What Tips US Into Recession As Biden Drains The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (Crude Oil Reserves Lowest Since 1985)

Its hard to watch Biden and The Progressive Greens destroy the enegy security of this great nation. Biden is draining the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, probably in a misguided attempt at ensuring we never go back to abundent petroleum again. Crude oil inventories are now the lowest since 1985.

Authored by Simon White, Bloomberg macro strategist,

Household spending has kept the US economy afloat, but as growth slows a continued rise in oil and gas prices is poised to push personal consumption expenditure (PCE) lower and thus trigger a near-term recession – with stocks and bonds unpriced for such an outcome.

Once again it has been the redoubtable consumer that has thus far kept a recession at bay. However, Bloomberg Economics (BBE) pointed out in a recent article that negative household sentiment – in confluence with other drivers of household spending – suggests that we should already be in a recession.

A regression model (using income, wealth and real rates) pins PCE growth roughly where it is. But if we add in the University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment index, it indicates much weaker PCE growth and thus an economy that would likely be already be in the midst of a slump.

I recreated BBE’s model and got something similar. I then substituted in the Conference Board’s Consumer Index instead of the Michigan survey. This also improves the fit of the original model, but does not paint as negative a picture for PCE. The reason is that the Conference Board’s measure has not deteriorated as much as the Michigan survey.

Why? The divergence between the two likely comes from the Michigan’s greater emphasis on frequent expenditures and business conditions, while the Conference Board’s index is more focused on the jobs market. As an employee, the jobs market has looked pretty good, boosting the Conference Board’s index, while the Michigan survey is more influenced by rising prices and conditions for small-business holders, which have been less rosy.

The Michigan survey is in fact very sensitive to gas prices. In the model, I added the average gas price to the model’s original inputs (i.e. ex Michigan). Doing so also improves the model’s fit, and as the chart below shows, implies notably weaker, and negative, PCE growth – and therefore an economy that would likely already be in a recession.

This highlights that the US economy is potentially on thin ice, with that ice represented by hitherto positive consumer sentiment, driven in no small part by gas prices (and sentiment on how high they are perceived to be) that remain comparatively cheap to the levels they reached last year.

But oil has been rising, driven by excess liquidity, falling inventories and supply cuts.

Tailwinds remain for oil, and therefore the nascent recent rise in gas prices is poised to continue as well. That could be the final straw which unseats the US consumer and tips the US into a recession.

The US warhawks seemed focused on Ukraine’s security, but don’t seem to care about US energy security or the personal welfare associated with open borders. Just ask Mayor Adams of New York City.

Biden speaking on US green energy.

Biden’s Follies! Banks’ Usage Of Fed’s Emergency Funds Jumps To New Record High, Money-Market Inflows Soar As Bank Deposit Growth Remains Negative

What a mess Biden and his Progressive backers have made. And we are forced to suffer the consequeinces of his policies. Or follies!

Money-market funds saw inflows for the 7th week of the last 8 with a $42BN jump (the most in 2 months) to a new record high of $5.625TN…

Source: Bloomberg

The inflow was dominated by a $24BN increase in Institutional fund assets while Retail also saw a sizable $17.7BN increase…

Source: Bloomberg

And the divergence between money-market fund assets and bank deposits continues to grow…

Source: Bloomberg

And while we actually saw huge deposit outflows (on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis) – despite The Fed’s seasonally-adjusted deposits increase – The Fed balance sheet shrank by another $20BN last week to its smallest since June 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

The Fed’s QT program continues apace with$18.4BN sold last week to its smallest since June 2021…

Source: Bloomberg

Usage of The Fed’s emergency bank funding facility jumped by $328 Million last week to a new high of $108BN…

Source: Bloomberg

Fed BS weekly change:

Fed balance sheet QT (Notes and bonds decline): $4.255 trillion, down $18,2BN
Discount Window $2.1BN, down $800M from $.29BN
BTFP new record $107.9BN, up $400MM
Other Credit Extensions (FDIC Loans): $133.8BN, down $0.6BN from $134.4BN

Finally, US equity markets and bank reserves at The Fed have converged a little recently, but the gap remains wide (thanks to the plunge in reverse repo balances)…

Source: Bloomberg

Tick, tock, banks!

Source: Bloomberg

You have six months to figure out how to clean up the $108 Billion hole in your balance sheet that you’re currently paying The Fed’s exorbitant rates to fill.

Bank deposit growth remains negative as The Fed tightens its overly accomodative monetary policy.

And then we have this chart showing plinging M2 Money (white line fever).

And the horrific unrealized losses on bank’s books.

Bidenomics is failing America. Primarily because Biden was one of the stupidest members of the US Senate. Not to mention nasty. Great President, America! /sarc

US Beginning Credit Super Cycle (Bidenomics = Inflation, Rising Debt, Rising Delinquencies) Mortgage Rates UP 158% Under Bidenomics

Thanks to Bidenomics, code for massive Federal spending on green energy initiatives and payoffs fo large donors, we have agonizing inflation and consumers are borrowing more and more to cope with inflation. And with the increased use of debt comes …. drumroll … delinquenices!

Let’s start with mortgage loans, the overall delinquency rate is 63bps, near record lows, likely due to the huge home appreciation of the last few years which padded the equity cushion for most homeowners. Even the youngest cohort (18-29 years old) has a delinquency rate only 30bps higher than the aggregate. Unlike the 2007-2011 period, the credit cycle is not playing out in the real estate market.

The US conforming mortgage rate is UP 158% under Bidenomics.

Let’s move on to some forms of consumer loans, where the story is a little more daunting.

Auto loans are definitely the epicenter of the credit cycle. While the overall average is a still somewhat tame 2.41%, younger borrowers are not keeping up. Younger borrowers have delinquency rates that are 1-2% higher than the average while the inverse is true for older borrowers. Eighteen-to-thirty-nine year-old borrowers have the highest delinquency rate in 13 years.

Somehow, I sense that used car lots are going to start filling up again as these vehicles get repossessed. This should put downward pressure on used car prices, bringing that element of inflation down. This is one of the channels through which monetary policy works.

Lastly, I’ll take a look at credit card delinquencies.

Here is where we can really see the stresses building.

First, the overall delinquency rate has about doubled from 2.5% to 5% over the last couple years.
Second, older borrowers have seen a tick up in delinquency rates, a feature we don’t really see in other credit products.
Third, one in 12 younger 18-29 year-old borrowers are 90+ days late making their credit card payments.

Credit Card Delinquency Rate across all commercial banks hit 2.77% in the 2nd quarter, the highest level in more than a decade.

In conclusion, we are in the early days of a consumer credit cycle. Younger borrowers are the weakest link in this analysis, and this makes me wonder where rates go when student debt payments turn back on at the end of the month.

Slippin’ Into Darkness! St Louis Fed Nowcast Q3 GDP Growth At -0.07% As M2 Money Growth Collapses (While Atlanta Fed GDPNow At 5.6% Growth?)

Slippin’ into darkness! Bidenomics, that is! Joe Biden is not a friend of the US middle class.

The St Louis Fed’s real time GDP tracker known as Nowcast has Q3 GDP at -0.07%. This happening at M2 Money growth collapses.

If you want to feel good, check out Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow estimate (housing economist Raphael Bostic is its President) which has Q3 GDP at 5.6%.

When will The Fed return to it low riding rates days?

Reverend Biden.

“Soviet Joe” Biden Bails Out US Auto Industry With Up To $12 Billion In Loans/Grants As Green Energy Mandates Crush Auto Industry (Shades Of Banking Crisis, Another Federally Created Monster!)

Soviet Joe Biden, who is a believer in Soviet-style command economies where rather than rely on free market capitalism, we now have CC (Crony Communism) running the US economy. Into the ground. But in the tradition of bad Federal policiies, Soviet Joe and Energy Secretary Granholm (with help from Congress) mandate green energy transition at all costs, watch the auto industry suffer, then bail them out. Sounds a lot of like the banking crisis of 2008 where The Federal government pushed homeownership until it helped almost collapse the banking sector, then the Federal government bailed out the banks. Rinse, repeat, bailout. And the bailout of banks in going! (Notice that The Fed has barely shrunk its $8+ trillion balance sheet!).

Automakers are looking to finish the week with strength after it was announced on Thursday that the Biden administration would be making “up to $12 billion” available to retrofit facilities to make both EVs and hybrids.

The money will include $10 billion from a US Energy Department loan program for clean vehicles and an additional $3.5 billion in financing to expand domestic battery manufacturing, according to Bloomberg.

The United Auto Workers, currently in negotiations with Detroit, has argued that a shift to EVs will cost the industry union jobs. US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Thursday that the funding would help Detroit retain workers.

However, we’ve seen this “bailout” business model to save jobs before – at banks and during Covid, to name two examples – and it always winds up turning into a company cash grab before ultimately firing workers regardless. The UAW will try to prevent such a situation from taking place as it negotiates.

UAW President Shawn Fain “cautiously” welcomed the news after warning earlier this month that the White House should not push an EV agenda if it means the loss of jobs in Detroit.

Almost like the government should stay out of the auto industry as a whole, right? But that would make too much sense.

“The EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy,” Fain said this week. Meanwhile, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a Washington lobby group that represents most Detroit automakers, said this week the funding “will further advance the domestic automotive supply chain and globally competitive battery manufacturing platform that automakers have already made sizable investments.”

Instead, Bloomberg calls the move the Biden administration “doubling down on efforts to support carmakers’ transition to EVs”. In a statement this week, President Biden said: “This funding will help existing workers keep their jobs and have the first shot to fill new good jobs as the car industry transforms for future generations.”

The Biden administration continues to aim for half of all vehicles on the road being EVs by 2030.

Oh and now that UAW Boss seeks 46% raise and 32-hour work week. Reminds me of Federal student loans where students run up massive amounts of debt to major in useless degrees like political “science” and gender/race studies, yet universities hire more admininstrators.

Bidenomics 101 (Income): Real Gross Domestic Income Growth NEGATIVE For 3 Consecutive Quarters As M2 Money Growth Worst Since 1933 And The New Deal (Only 187k Jobs Added In August And ALL Of Last Year’s Jobs Added Were Revised Downwards)

The glories of Bidenomics is on fully display. Despite what Lyin’ Biden says, Bidenomics is only working for the elites (top 1%). How Soviet/CCP command economy of him!

Here is an ugly chart showing Bidenomics in action! We all know that Covid unleashed a torrent of Fed monetary stimulus AND Federal spending on Covid relief and green energy subsidies (most to large Democrats donors). BUT we now have experienced 3 consectutive quarters of negative gross domestic income (GDI) growth. And nominal GDI growth is falling with falling M2 Money growth.

And today’s jobs report for August showed that only 187k jobs were added.

Superficially this would have meant an unchanged print from last month when the BLS also reported 187K jobs, however in keeping with recent trends that number was revised – drumroll – lower again, to 157K, meaning that every single monthly payrolls print in 20-23 has been revised lower (see chart below), a 12-sigma probability and virtually impossible unless there was political pressure to massage the data higher initially and then revise it lower when nobody is looking. (As if the mainstream media is at all honest!)

But wait there’s more: while July was revised down by 30K from +187,000 to +157,000, June was revised even more, by 80,000, from +185,000 to +105,000, which means that a number that was originally reported as 209K has been reivsed 50% lower, to 105K and a collapse vs original expectations of 230K. Here, the BLS was proud to report that “with these revisions, employment in June and July combined is 110,000 lower than previously reported.”

And we have The Conference Board’s confidence index at -65. Yikes!

Finally, we have the 10Y-3M UST spread SCREAMING recession!

So, the economy is slowing under Bidenomics and Cadavar Joe.

Will Cadavar Joe actually go out on the campaign trail and debate ANY Democrat or Republican?? Remember, this is the man with the nuclear launch codes.

US Q2 GDP Revised Sharply Downwards To 2.1% (We Got Trouble In Potomac City!)

Bidenomics has a new themesong! We got trouble in Potomac City (aka, Washington DC). US Q2 GDP was revised sharply downwards to 2.1% QoQ. Much lower than the expected 2.4% QoQ.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.1 percent in the second quarter of 2023, according to the “second” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 2.0 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “advance” estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 2.4 percent (refer to “Updates to GDP”). The updated estimates primarily reflected downward revisions to private inventory investment and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by an upward revision to state and local government spending.

The increase in real GDP reflected increases in consumer spending, nonresidential fixed investment, state and local government spending, and federal government spending that were partly offset by decreases in exports, residential fixed investment, and private inventory investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, decreased.

The revision according to the BEA, “reflected a smaller decrease in inventory investment and an acceleration in business investment. These movements were partly offset by a downturn in exports and decelerations in consumer spending and federal government spending. Imports turned down.” In short, everything was uglier,

Taking a closer look at the data, we find the following changes to the bottom line:

Personal consumption added 1.14% to the bottom line print or just over half, up from 1.12% in the original print; annualized this comes out to 1.7% which was below the 1.8% estimate.
Fixed investment contributed 0.66%, down from 0.83%
Change in private inventories now subtracting 0.09% from the bottom line number, a big swing from the positive 0.14% print in the original estimate. And it will be revised even lower next month as more of the “shrink” emerges.
Net exports were also revised lower, with gross exports trimmed from -1.28% to -1.26%, while imports were revised from 1.16% to 1.04%
Finally the ever handy plug that is government consumption (which is a garbage concept since the government does not actually create anything of economic value in the economy but merely allocated graft and embezzlement of public funding), actually rose from 0.45% to 0.58% (of bottom line GDP). Without this revision, Q2 GDP would have printed below 2.0%

Separately, gross domestic purchases prices, the prices of goods and services purchased by U.S. residents, increased
1.7% in the second quarter after increasing 3.8 percent in the first quarter, above the 1.6% estimate last month but below the consensus 1.8%. Excluding food and energy, prices increased 2.4% after increasing 4.2%.

Personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices increased 2.5% in the second quarter after increasing 4.1% in the first quarter. Excluding food and energy, the PCE “core” price index increased 3.7% after increasing 4.9%. This number was also revised lower from 3.8% and missed estimates of 3.8%.

Finally, the BEA reported corporate profits decreased 0.4% at a quarterly rate in the second quarter after decreasing 4.1% in the first quarter. Profits of domestic financial corporations decreased 12.1% after decreasing 2.3 percent. Profits of domestic nonfinancial corporations increased 0.9% after decreasing 5.0 percent. Profits from the rest of the world (net)increased 4.4 percent after decreasing 2.0 percent. Corporate profits decreased 6.5 percent in the second quarter from one year ago.

Needless to say, all this is a far cry from the rebound in corporate profits that companies themselves reported in their various GAAP and non-GAAP metrics, which is to be expected in a world where there is now an uncrossable chasm between economic data and its government fabrications.

Then we have M2 Money collapsing, down -3.7% in July. Longest, deepest contraction of money suppy since 1933.

Biden, making Zelenskyy rich again!! The US bought Zelenskyy a new villa! “The document indicates that the villa was purchased by Zelenskyy’s mother-in-law in May 2023. The price of the villa is 150,000,000 Egyptian pounds or approximately $4,850,000.” Thanks Biden!!! America last!

Bidenomics At Work! US Purchase Mortgage Demand Decreased 0.3% Since Last Week, Down -27% Since Last Year (Mortgage Rate UP 157% Under Biden)

I wonder if Biden will use his writeboard to brag about the 30-year mortgage rate rising 157% under his economic Reign on Error? Aka, Bidenomics.

Mortgage applications increased 2.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending August 25, 2023.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, increased 2.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index increased 1 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index increased 3 percent from the previous week and was 28 percent lower than the same week one year ago. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 2 percent from one week earlier. The unadjusted Purchase Index decreased 0.3 percent compared with the previous week and was 27 percent lower than the same week one year ago.

Bidenomics Gets Jolted! US Job Openings Fall To 8.82 Million In July (Down -22.4%) As M2 Money Growth Collapses

Bidenomics just got jolted! US job openings in July collapsed by -22.4% to 8.82 million job openings. As M2 Money growth remains negative.

You can see the same collapse in growth of job openings in this chart.

Apparently, Powell and The Gang at The Federal Reserve have to keep on printing!

Here is alleged Civil Righter advocate Joe Biden saying the N- word in Congress. I can’t believe this stupid, demente fool is our President.

Livin’ La Vida Bidenomics! US Conforming Mortgage Rate Up 161% Under Biden, Home Prices UP 26%, Real Median Weekly Earnings DOWN -5%

We are livin’ la vida Bidenomics!

The 30-year conforming mortgage rate is currently 7.23%, up 161% under Biden and Bidenomics (code for massive Federal spending on green initiatives that go to large Democrat donors and Ukrainian oligarchs). Meanwhile, M2 Money supply is up 9.4% under Biden.

At the same time. home prices are UP 26% under Biden while Real Median Weekly Earnings are DOWN -5%.

On a sad note, it looks like The Federal government is starting to rattle its Covid saber just in time for the 2024 Presidential election. Odds are the US will ramp up online voting, early voting, etc. Think of John Fetterman (aka, Walter White’s twin brother) and the Pennsylvania voting experience.

Team Biden!