recovery

When a month ago the CEO of Wal Mart Americas told the world to "prepare for serious inflation", the Chairman laughed in his face, saying it was nothing a 15 minutes Treasury Call sell order can't fix (granted net of a few billions in commissions for JPM). 4 weeks later the Chairman is no longer laughing, having been forced to hike up his inflation expectations while trimming (not for the last time) his economic outlook. "U.S. consumers face "serious" inflation in the months ahead for
clothing, food and other products, the head of Wal-Mart's U.S.
operations warned Wednesday talking to USA Today.
And if Wal-Mart which is at the very bottom of commoditized consumer
retail, and at the very peak of avoiding reexporting of US inflation by
way of China is concerned, it may be time to panic, or at least cancel
those plane tickets to Zimbabwe, which is soon coming to us." In  light of that perhaps today's words of caution from Wal Mart CEO Mike Duke will be taken a tad more seriously (yes, even with the $50 billion in "squatters rent" that the deadbeats spend on iPads instead of paying their mortgage: that money is rapidly ending). Warning is as follows: "Wal-Mart's core shoppers are running out of money much faster than a
year ago due to rising gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried. "We're seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event in New York. "There's no doubt that rising fuel prices are having an impact." Tell that to Printocchio please.

A regular commentator on BoomBustBlog has been attempting to make the case for a housing recovery based upon rising employment metrics. One of his primary arguments was rising hourly earnings. I thought I would take this time to point out that average hourly earnings can rise due to the fact that less people are working. The aggregate employment in the US has literally fell off of a cliff. Since you know that I love pictures, let’s do this graphically…

Stepping back from this, you really can’t help but notice how stupid the whole “stock wealth effect” ideology is. Setting aside the fact that MOST of the gains stocks have produced since 2009 are due to US Dollar devaluation, it strikes me as odd that someone would think they were richer because their stock portfolio was up… while the cost of just about everything has ALSO gone up tremendously. For instance, since March 2009, stocks have doubled. However, oil has nearly TRIPLED in price.

Every major country is experiencing price inflation as a result of monetary inflation and it is starting to impact their economies. US Ex-Im prices and trade indicate that we are experiencing price inflation, regardless what the CPI says, and that it is weakening the economy.

The CMBS market gives us an inside look at the credit quality of many CRE loans which are the key to recovery. This article tells you why it's important.

During the Great Recession plenty of money was made betting against the consumer. In 2010, the number of non-business bankruptcy filings grew by 8.8% to 1.5 million. While this number may seem high, it is significantly lower than the 31.5% jump in 2009. In the shadow of bankruptcy lead defaults lies Portfolio Recovery Associates, Inc. (NASDAQ: PRAA). With a market cap of $1.4 billion, PRAA is the leading receivables management company. Read more to see how you can cash in on their ability to collect.

Punchline from Dudley's Puerto Rick speech just hitting the wires: "We must not be overly optimistic about the growth outlook. The coast is not completely clear—the healing process in the aftermath of the crisis takes time and there are still several areas of vulnerability and weakness. In particular, housing activity remains unusually weak and home prices have begun to soften again in many parts of the country. State and local government finances remain under stress, and this is likely to lead to further spending cuts, tax increases, or job losses in this sector that will offset at least a part of the federal fiscal stimulus. To sum up, economic conditions have improved in the past year. Yet, the recovery is still tenuous. And, we are still far from the mark with regard to the Fed's dual mandate. In particular, the unemployment rate is much too high." Word count of iPad: zero.

After first it was disclosed that TEPCO does not know the different between millions and thousands, the firm which is now set to be at least partially nationalized, has decided to blame its computers for the ongoing catastrophic handling of the Fukushima disaster. From NHK: "Tokyo Electric Power Company says it will review all data on radiation
leaked from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, citing errors
in a computer program. The utility says it found errors in the program used to analyze
radioactive elements and their levels, after some experts noted that
radiation levels of leaked water inside the plant were too high." In other words, every "fact" you have heard so far in the past 3 weeks - you can forget it. And since the BLS is coming, and the Nasdaq is about to fund (105% debt financed) the Japan government's multitrillion restoration effort, it will all be well from now.

Compare and Contrast James Bullard's boilerplate optimism: "U.S. growth prospects remain reasonably good for 2011...quantitative easing was “a classic easing of monetary policy and an effective tool" and "The US is on track for a "reasonable" recovery in 2010...Now it seems like the natural thing is to withdraw the quantitative easing and then as some later point raise interest rates"

The Confidence Board has released its Consumer Confidence Number, which in March went in freefall from the revised previous print of 72, highest in 3 years, to a below consensus 63.4 (expectations of 65). But while this number is largely irrelevant, the Inflation Rate index surged from 5.5 to 6.7, the highest since October 2008.

Wouldn't it be awesome if spin could actually solve problems? Then, you could just say the word 'recovery' every time you gave a speech, ignore any negative data, assume the markets are up because of general economic health and not a mass infusion of cheap money, and it would be so.

...Just the wrong kind of record. At just 250,000, this was the lowest annualized new home sales number ever. So on one hand you have a TV clown tell you the housing market bottomed in August 2008, on the other you have a pathological tax cheat Welcoming all to the Recovery, and on the mutated third hand (thank you Fukushima), reality continues to indicate that the biggest depression in history persists without abating.

As was first disclosed by Zero Hedge, PIMCO trimmed its Treasury holdings in February to zero. While many speculated that the reason is concern for global inflation, we now have the confirmation courtesy of a rhetorical Q&A with Saumil Parikh released by the Newport asset management giant. In a nutshell: "Setting aside immediate oil shocks, we believe global inflation has cyclically troughed and we see a secular upswing in inflation, which naturally will put upward pressure on interest rates. We see three key global factors as potentially adding to inflation over a long horizon: (i) The degradation of sovereign balance sheets and the structural inflexibility of fiscal deficits. (ii) Emerging markets used to export disinflation to the developed world, but over the secular horizon we see them as exporting inflation. (iii) As populations age, they tend to save less and consume more. Demographics may thus become an inflationary force globally, though possibly this risk will be balanced somewhat by demographics in emerging nations. In the near term, we anticipate most, though not all, global central banks are likely to err on the side of allowing inflation to rise above stated or implied targets during 2011. In the U.S., if the economic recovery sputters, the Fed could expand quantitative easing. But further deficit accommodation would pose inflation risks. Obviously nothing new here, and just a confirmation that in order to preserve the Wealth Effect, Bernanke will be forced to put the global Genocide (And Printing)Effect into overdrive.

Here's a simple test of whether the economic recovery is self-sustaining or not: cut Federal spending back to 2007 levels (a $1 trillion reduction) and cancel all Fed intervention such as quantitative easing. If the economy is self-sustaining, it will move forward without Federal spending and Fed intervention. If "self-sustaining" is a fiction, an illusion, a mere figment of propaganda deployed to enable the Status Quo to feast off the remaining productive elements of the U.S. economy, then the economy will absolutely crater.

Does anyone seriously think the global recovery is still intact? Based on what? Does anyone think that stagnant/declining wages, falling real estate values, skyrocketing prices for materials and energy, and belt-tightening by bankrupt States are ideal foundations for higher profits? Anyone who doesn't realize the quake in Japan is a tragic load dumped on a fragile addict's quivering back (i.e. the global recovery) will undoubtedly be surprised by how fast the global economy will start unraveling. Anyone who kept their eyes open is only wondering how a debt and propaganda-fueled recovery lasted this long.