Now you know why Joe Biden has fund raisers in Hollywood and New York where the elites (the top 1%) live. Biden is the President of The Elites, not the middle class.
How bad it is? The top 1% now have more household wealth than the entire middle class. Note that the recent surge occurred under Trump, but Biden is doing nothing about it.
Further evidence? 46% of households are struggling.
In terms of housing prices, home prices are growing FASTER than average hourly earnings. Again!
Politicians. You can’t trust ANY of them with our money. Or a cookout.
Here is New Yprk Senator Chuck Schumer posing as a middle class American cooking gray hamburgers at super low heat with cheese on top of raw meat. What a fraud!
One month after the May Consumer Sentiment printed at a record 7-sigma miss to expectations, consumer sentiment once again “unexpectedly” slumped, this time from an upward revised 68.8 to 67.6, the lowest print since last November, and the biggest 3-month drop in sentiment (-13.8 points) going back to the covid lockdowns.
… which was not only a 5-sigma miss to the median estimate (an improvement from last month’s 7-sigma)…
… but also the biggest miss of 2024.
The collapse in sentiment was broad based, and hammered both current conditions – which plunged from 69.6 to 62.5, the lowest since 2022 and badly missing estimates of 72.2 – and also expectations, which dropped from 68.8 to 67.6 (and also far below the 72.0 estimate).
The decline in sentiment coincides with signs that the labor market, which has driven consumer spending over the last year, is also falling apart. The unemployment rate rose to 4% last month, the highest in more than two years, while jobless claims unexpectedly soared following a firing frenzy out of California.
“While lower-income families have, as a group, seen notable wage gains in a strong labor market, their budgets remain tight amid continued high prices even as inflation has slowed,” Joanne Hsu, director of the survey, said in a statement.
But wait there’s more, because if that was the “stag” part of the report, the UMich report also confirmed that the “flation” isn’t far behind, as the inflation outlook continued its recent deterioration, to wit: 1 Year inflation expectations remained unchanged at 3.3%, beating estimates of a drop back 3.2%, while 5-10 Year inflation expectations rose from 3.0% to 3.1%, the highest since November.
If that wasn’t enough, the slide in sentiment suggests restrained consumer demand in coming months. The university’s measure of buying conditions for durable goods decreased to the lowest level since December 2022, a glowing testament to just how tapped out the US consumer truly is.
In short: the verdict for Bidenomics is in, and it’s a complete disaster, as for Powell’s recent laughable comment that he can’t see the “stag” nor the “flation”… well, Fed chair, they just bit you on the ass.
On top of a poor consumer sentiment report, the PPI Final Demand index was down … again.
Joe Biden is a dishonest politician, so it is no wonder that he ignores actual data. Like claiming that crime is down under his leadership, when it is actually large cities like New York and Los Angeles not reporting their crime data to the FBI.
Take the May jobs numbers. The BLS reports that 272k jobs were added. However, the more accurate Household Survery reported a loss of -408k jobs in May.
While the Establishment Survey did indeed report that 272K “jobs” were added, this number also included multiple job holders; stripping those out, we get that the actual number of “employed” workers plunged by -408K.
On the jobless claims side, the number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the first time surged last week to 242k (up from 229k and well above the 225k exp). That is the highest since August 2023…
Source: Bloomberg
On an NSA basis, claims exploded higher.
The last three weeks have seen the largest surge in claims since January…
Source: Bloomberg
Notably this surge is very VERY similar to what we saw last year (but not the prior few years, so not a ‘seasonal’ pattern per se)…
Too much debt should be the theme song for the US! Both for consumers and the Feral government (not a typo!)
Consumer credit increased by +$6.403 billion in April, much softer than consensus estimate of +$10 billion … more notable, however, was March data, given initial read of +$6.274 billion was revised down to -$1.099 billion.
Not to mention $13 trillion in mortgage debt (1-4 unit housing), but at least that is backed by property. Unlike The Feral government who borrows/prints with only a promise.
And growing awfully fast. Note that since the “pandamic”, debt as % of GDP has exceeded 100% and is projected to hit 166% by 2054. But look at the UNFUNDED LIABILITIES the need to be paid ($216+ TRILLION ($641.5k per citizen!). Pretty soon, we (the 99%) will be back on the chain gang paying for endless wars and government corruption. I wish Biden, Schumer, McConnell and other swamp creatures would consider all the spending the government is on the hook for rather than focus on spending that will help them get elected perpetually. There is no middle of the road anymore. The US is broke and has too much debt.
Of course, President Biden wants endless spending on wars (Ukraine, Israel, etc) and now wants an unlimited check to pay for the next pandemics. The Pretenders’ song “My City Was Gone” seems to be appropriate for the US as “My County Is Gone.”
Of course, some “economists” claim that the US can borrow/print unlimited amounts of money … until they can’t.
To begin with, America’s paychecks are bigger than 40 years ago, but purchasing power of those larger paychecks is about the sames as it was 40 years ago. Great job Washington DC!!! … NOT!!!!
Meanwhile, credit card delinquencies are at the highest level since 1991.
Biden’s open borders policies are like something out of the book/film “Gangs of New York.” This time it isn’t Irish immigrants that are rioting/looting, it iis illegal immigrants from Latin America, China, and the Middle East. Essentially replacing native-born workers with foreign-born workers.
Since COVID, the growth in foreign-born workers have blow away the growth in native-born workers. So much so that since 2019, native-born workers have actually lost jobs while foreign-born workers have surged.
But for May 2024, native-born workers lost 463k jobs while foreign-born gained 414k jobs.
In May, part-time jobs soared by 286k jobs while full-time jobs nosedived by -625k jobs.
Finally, the difference between the BLS survey and the more accurate Household Survey is huge!
The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the second quarter of 2024 is 1.8 percent on June 3, down from 2.7 percent on May 31. After recent releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcasts for annualized second-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real private fixed investment growth declined from 2.6 percent and 3.1 percent, respectively, to 1.8 percent and 1.5 percent.
fff
Since I used The Animal’s version of the John Lee Hooker great tune “Boom Boom,” I will use another Animals tune for Joe Biden’s penchant for sniffing little girls. “Baby Let Me Take You Home.”
The Animals band. Not to be confused with the animals in the Biden Administration and Congress.
Job openings in April 2024 dipped to 8,059. Notice the trend (orange line) is below the trend set prior to Covid (red line).
Back in 2023, Socialist Paul Krugman declared that “the war on inflation is over!!! “We” won, at very little cost.” I love when elitists claim “We won!” since clearly 99% of Americans lost since food, housing and car prices up are double digits under Biden.
The problem is that food, energy, shelter, and used cars/trucks are a huge part of Americans consumption basket.
Under Biden, food CPI is up 23%. Home prices are up 34% and used cars/truck prices are up 17.7%.
A note to Paul Krugman, YOU may have won, but the rest of Americans lost. Consumer purchasing power of the US Dollar is DOWN 16.5% Under Biden.
After an unexpected jump in March, pending home sales were expected to drop 1.0% MoM in April as mortgage rates pushed back above 7.00% and stayed there.
Well, the analysts had the direction right but magnitude was way off as pending home sales plunged 7.7% MoM – the biggest drop since Feb 2021 (and below the lowest estimate), leaving sales down 0.7% YoY…
Source: Bloomberg
This is the 29th straight month of YoY declines for non-seasonally-adjusted pending home sales.
This MoM decline pushed the Pending Home Sales Index back to record lows…
Source: Bloomberg
The Midwest saw the biggest drop in pending sales, down 9.5% in April, followed by declines of 8.5% and 7.6% in the West and South, respectively. Contract signings in the Northeast fell 3.5%.
“The impact of escalating interest rates throughout April dampened home buying, even with more inventory in the market,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.
“But the Federal Reserve’s anticipated rate cut later this year should lead to better conditions, with improved affordability and more supply.”
All driven by affordability crisis as mortgage rates surged back above 7.00%…
Source: Bloomberg
“The prospect of measurable home price declines appears minimal,” Yun said.
“The few markets experiencing price declines will be viewed as second-chance opportunities for buyers to enter the market if those regions continue to add jobs.”
As a reminder, the pending-sales report tends to be a leading indicator of sales of previously owned homes, because houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
You must be logged in to post a comment.