Poor
Man Survival
Self
Reliance tools for independent minded people…
ISSN
2161-5543
A Digest of Urban Survival Resources
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol,
causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our
troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for
stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
>P. J. O'Rourke
“Let me ask America a question,” Trumps begins. “How has the ‘system’ been working out for you and your family? No wonder voters demand change.”
I, for one, am not interested in defending a system that for decades has served the interest of political parties at the expense of the people. Members of the club—the consultants, the pollsters, the politicians, the pundits and the special interests—grow rich and powerful while the American people grow poorer and more isolated.
>>Wall Street Journal OP/ED April 14, 2016
Those that were hoping for an “economic renaissance” in the United States got some more bad news this week. It turns out that the U.S. economy is in significantly worse shape than the experts were projecting. Retail sales unexpectedly declined in March, total business sales have fallen again, and the inventory to sales ratio has hit the highest level since the last financial crisis. When you add these classic recession signals to the troubling indicators [retail store closings, spike in unemployment numbers] in the U.S. economy, it paints a very disturbing picture. Virtually all of the signs that we would expect to pop up during the early chapters of a major economic crisis have now appeared, and yet most Americans still appear to be clueless about what is happening.
I was surprised when the government reported
that retail sales had actually fallen in March. Consumer spending is a
very large part of our economy, and so if consumer spending is slowing down
already that certainly does not bode well for the rest of 2016. The
following comes from highly respected author Jim Quinn…
The Ivy
League educated “expert” economists expected March retail sales to increase by
0.1%. They only missed by $6 billion, as retail sales FELL by 0.3%. They have
fallen for three straight months. At least gasoline sales were strong, as
prices have risen 22% since mid-February. That should do wonders for the
finances of American households. If you exclude gasoline sales, retail sales
fell by 0.4%. As the chart below reveals, the year over year change in retail
sales has been at or near recessionary levels for most of 2015, and into 2016.
You can view
the chart that he was referring to right here. In addition to a decline in retail sales,
total business sales have also been falling, and this is another classic
recession signal. The following comes from Wolf Richter…
Total
business sales fell again in February, the Commerce Department reported today.
They include sales by manufacturers, retailers, and wholesalers of all sizes
across the US economy. This measure is far broader than the aggregate sales by
publicly traded companies, which too have been falling.
At $1.284
trillion in February, total business sales were down an estimated 0.4% from
January, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price
changes. And they were down 1.4% from the already beaten-down levels of
February last year. They’re back where they’d first been in November 2012!
Yes, the
stock market has been on quite a run for the past several weeks, but that
temporary rebound is not based on the economic fundamentals.
The truth is
that the real economy is definitely starting to slow down substantially.
If you want to break it down very simply, less stuff is being bought and sold
and shipped around the country, and that tells us far more about what is coming
in the months ahead than the temporary ups and downs of stock prices.
More people are
stocking up on gold
Another huge red flag is the fact that the inventory to sales ratio in the U.S. has hit the highest level that we have seen since the last financial crisis…
The crucial inventory-to-sales ratio, which tracks how long unsold inventory sits around in relationship to sales, is now at a mind-bending 1.41. That’s the level the ratio spiked to in November 2008, after the Lehman bankruptcy in September had put the freeze on the economy.
Inventories
represent prior sales by suppliers. When companies try to reduce their
inventories, they cut their orders. Suppliers see these orders as sales. As
their sales slump, suppliers adjust by cutting their own orders, thus causing
the sales slump to propagate up the supply chain. They all react by cutting
their expenses. And if it lasts, they’ll cut jobs. Inventory corrections
have a nasty impact on the overall economy.
Because
sales have slowed down, inventories are starting to pile up to alarmingly high
levels. And when companies see that business is slowing down, they start
to let people go.
Challenger,
Gray & Christmas is reporting that job cut announcements at major firms
in the United States are up 32 percent
during the first quarter of 2016 compared to the first quarter of 2015. Ford
Motor announced it was shipping jobs to Mexico and Oreo Cookies is closing its
US production facility as well and shipping roughly 400 jobs to Mexico.
Somehow, most of the talking heads on television don’t seem too alarmed by this.
But ordinary
Americans are beginning to become alarmed about what is happening. In
fact, the percentage of Americans that believe that the U.S. economy is
“getting worse” is now the highest it has been since last August…
One of the
more glaring examples of how strong pessimism has become is Gallup’s U.S.
Economic Confidence Index. The measure gauges the difference between
respondents who say the economy is improving or declining. The most recent
results are not good.
Fully 59
percent say the economy is “getting worse” against just 37 percent who say it
is “getting better.” That gap of 22 percentage points is the worst since
August, according to Gallup, which polled 3,542 adults.
So far, it
is less severe than what most of the rest of the planet is experiencing.
Japan’s GDP is officially shrinking, major banks are failing all over Europe
and the same is taking place in Brazil and parts of the EU.
On a smaller scale my associates tell me they see it locally with reduced retail sales, lower online sales and even higher numbers of delinquent payments on mortgages and auto loans.
While the Republican party dithers and squabbles it is highly evident that a growing percentage of Americans are disgusted by career politicians and government as usual which are high on promises but short on promises…50 years of the same nonsensical campaign crap and all we get is a reduction in our spending power and a reduction in our freedoms is what I continue to hear…our government is broken, ruled by money and special interests without regard to the people. However…
You can’t cure an alcoholic with more alcohol.
You can’t cure government overreach with more government.
This November, a new president-elect will make grand promises, but he or she will sit at the top of the world’s biggest bureaucracy.
Not even a president has the power to rescue our republic. Congress has failed. The Supreme Court is the great enabler.
For them, the system works. As for us? We lose more liberty every day.
As I’ve said for 25 years…
We don’t need another election, We need another
revolution!
Bruce ‘the Poor Man’
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the Coming Economic Collapse
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