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The US Economy In Pictures
Submitted by Lance Roberts of STA Wealth Management,
I have written extensively about the data behind the headline media reports. I have also discussed the importance of the relationship between the underlying data trends relative to broader macroeconomic perspectives. However, it is sometimes helpful just to view the various economic indicators and draw your own conclusions outside of someone else's opinion.
With the economy now more than 5 years into an expansion, which is long by historical standards, the question for you to answer by looking at the charts below is:
"Are we closer to an economic recession or a continued expansion?"
How you answer that question should have a significant impact on your investment outlook as financial markets tend to lose roughly 30% on average during recessionary periods. However, with margin debt at record levels, earnings deteriorating and junk bond yields near all-time lows, this is hardly a normal market environment within which we are currently invested.
Therefore, I present a series of charts which view the overall economy from the same perspective utilizing an annualized rate of change. In some cases, where the data is extremely volatile, I have used a 3-month average to expose the underlying data trend. Any other special data adjustments are noted below.
Leading Economic Indicators
Durable Goods
Investment
ISM Composite Index
Employment & Industrial Production
Retail Sales
Social Welfare
The Broad View
Economic Composite
(Note: The Economic Composite is a weighted index of multiple economic survey and indicators - read more about this indicator)
If you are expecting an economic recovery, and a continuation of the bull market, then the economic data must begin to improve markedly in the months ahead. The problem has been that each bounce in the economic data has failed within the context of a declining trend. This is not a good thing and is why we continue to witness an erosion in the growth rates of corporate earnings and profitability. Eventually, that erosion combined, with excessive valuations, will weigh on the financial markets.
For the Federal Reserve, these charts make the case that continued monetary interventions are not healing the economy, but rather just keeping it afloat by dragging forward future consumption. The problem is that it leaves a void in the future that must be continually filled.
In my opinion, the economy is far too weak to stand on its own two feet. With the Fed easing off the current rate of bond purchases, it will be interesting to see what happens in the months to come. While there will certainly be positive bumps in the data, as pent up demand is released back into the economy, the inability to sustain growth is most concerning. From this perspective, it could become increasingly difficult for the Federal Reserve to remove their "highly accommodative stance" anytime soon.
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You forgot this one:
http://nowscape.com/atheism/images/One_Nation_Under_god.gif
...with the updated caption: "One Nation Under God's Work"
(Thanks, Lloyd. May we have another?)
The difference from those past comparisons is the FED wasn't printing what is effectively the entire 2005 M0 money supply each and every year.
They'd better get their asses in gear, because this economy needs MOAR!!! and now.
How about doubling it to $170 trillion/month?
There's no debt limit right now.
Wait, Go for it with massive printing like Krugman would be giddy about. Go for a $tillion/month!
Best chart porn I've seen in some time.
But the best chart of them all....and by best I mean the most "truthy" is THE BROAD VIEW chart.
Well....after all...."On a long enough timeline......"
Bullish.
So BTFD then
I will ... just as soon as its down 70% or so.
Weather.
For those peak resource interested parties here, see http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014780614 for news about Michael Rupert.
he was just featured on a vice piece. pretty good. however im concerned about that guys mental health. apparently he has been suicidal and has moved into a indian reservation or something. the truth will fuck you up sometimes. kinda like how in the matrix they explained freeing a mind after so many years could be fatal.
edit
oh shit he killed himself. damn! i hadnt clicked the link before i wrote that. gave me goosebumps
so according to the charts
nobody has a job
most people are on gov assistance.
savings are in the shitter
spending is non existant
but bernanke said mission accomplished
ww3 coming right up. thanks for playing! fuck you!
"expension" ?! You mean inflation.Every asset in the US is over inflated x100 to the actual state of and reality of the US economy! I wouldn't call that a expension!
climate change has eliminated recessions
btfd
"Are we closer to an economic recession or a continued expansion?"
Sorry, you do not need so many pictures. Just know that US inflation is understated by 3% at least for at least the last 10 years. So that reduces official US growth numbers by at least 3%. That puts the US in recession for most of the last decade.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
Well, the weather is getting better so I'm expecting increasing chances of improvement.
The gutters need fixing on my house, maybe I should just buy a new one.
make sure you break all the windows first. it would be unamerican otherwise. atleast according to most ivy league economists
Maybe I'll just cash-out re-fi.
Add one Bedroom with ensuite, new bathroom, upstairs laundry, enlarge kitchen, convert to open floor plan, lots of new closets ... +$150,000 home equity loan in order to add approx. $75,000 to would-be house price. Makes perfect sense. My wife and I are lawyers BTW, and I drive a Cadillac.
Down is the new up!
.....and Up is the new Down!
“The country’s private companies have been shut out of global capital markets almost entirely since the crisis erupted, causing a serious credit crunch and raising concerns that firms may not be able to refinace debt without Russian state support.
Bank of America said the dramatic showdown in Eastern Ukraine over the last three days “sharply increases risks of an all-out civil war” and raises fears of tougher measures by the EU, the US, Japan, and Canada.”
“On the one hand, the ECB demands that European banks increase their lending to the real economy, on the other, it insists that they reduce their leverage. Securitisation provides one way of reconciling this apparent contradiction. By getting loans off their books through securitisation, banks both decrease their leverage, and free up capital for additional lending, producing a virtuous circle of credit expansion.”
“Xavier Bertrand, the former employment minister, said it is time to abandon the Franco-German axis that has been the guiding principle of French foreign and economic policy for half a century. “It’s important but it shouldn’t be the alpha and omega of France’s vision,” he said.”
“How can we pursue an energy policy if the interests of France and Germany are so different. It is better to work with the English on this subject, and the same goes for European defence. Let us recognise that the alignment with Germany is stopping us pushing for another ECB policy, one that favours growth and jobs,” he said.
…and growth in State control of a shrinking pie is something different how?
Bad news is good news...no matter where you look. Securitize!
Who cares Belguim is now counterfeiting to pay for everything.
Up my FAFSA Draghi mothafucka.
Recovery.
Does recalibrating the zero really count as expansion?
3-5x worse if you used honest stats...
Like we keep understanding here at "ZH"...
They would rather start a World War than be allow TBTF to actual "Fucking" F (.)
"The problem is that it leaves a void in the future that must be continually filled."
Call Bernie M. at the big house in NC. He's doubly an expert on "voids" being "filled" and all.
It depends upon what the definition of "is" is.
A bipolar economy... the top entitled clearly are doing okay if not better. the bottom entitled just getting worse.
Tyrone, I is hongry.
Yeah, Roscoe, too bad we cant eat these Ophones they give us.
Pass me another forty, bro.
Uh, they's only Twenties, now
"could become increasingly difficult for the Federal Reserve to remove their "highly accommodative stance" anytime soon"
I don't get it. The policy the Fed is implementing isn't working, so they're going to continue to do more of the same? Now I see why there is no hope. We have no ability to assess our actions and change them when they aren't working.
They're "highly accomodative stance" isn't working and is in fact making things worse by creating massive malivestments and negative incentives. I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but it gets more frustrating every time I read it.
LOL, if this didn't work then trigger hyperinflation. That will fix everthing right Fed PhDs?
Crash the US dollar and make it worse than toilet paper. Once there is loss in confidence in a currency some interesting things occur.
It is not too difficult to understand if you look at everything from what I see as the most realistic point of view.
What is money. What are bonds and what are stocks.
All three have one thing in common, they are debts.
How is that debt collected. It is collected by labor and profits made by people who pay taxes.
When you work you collect salary and that salary is just a store of your labor until you use it to buy something that you need. Like food or Heating or even a goddamn condom.
What do the 0.01 % have and according to all the flying bullshite everywhere, is so called wealth in the form of, ???? correct o mundo, fucking debt.
The fucking oligarchs are shitting themselves, because the only fucking thing they own are debts, fake debts, debts piled on top of debts. and the only fuckers left to pay those debts are taxpayers.
Stocks are debts, money lent to companies to use, whether corporate bonds or shares. Who owns all that debt. the fucking so called rich.
Who owns all the fucking junk issued as fucking treasuries, the fucking rich own it all.
What can the rich do to convert all that debt they own to slid tangible assets .
Well for you and me it is quite easy. All you need to do is go a store, buy lots f food, lots of cloths and pay off your fucking mortgage. If you rent a house or have a mortgage it is a fucking debt either to the landlord or to the bank you rent the money from . Makes no difference.
Buy a car but not with a loan, buys guns and ammo, enough to stop some other bastard getting designs on it, but spend it all on things that you can use now or later.
But a fucking oligarch, he has a problem, He can only sell his billions of debt to some other schmuck who is more gullible whether stocks bonds or anything else, but either way he still ends up owning debt.
yes those fucking useless dollar bills are just that, more debt.
So what does he do, but a thousand Ferrari's, dozens of what are now overpriced houses that he cant live in or rent out, two millions cans of beans or 500,000 pounds of beef jerky.
He is fucked if debt becomes worthless.
You me and our neighbors, well we can still made do, making things in small private companies, swapping around, farmers and lot holders cab still grow vegetables end swap for what they need in terms of clothes food or firewood.
But what is the starving oligarch going to offer you.
A fucking wheelbarrow full of S & P stocks and used $1000 bills.
He will only collect a bullet for his trouble.
Why do they invest in Greek and Italian bonds.. because they perceive those corrupt fucking governments as the likely ones who will shoot and ask questions later when their civilians done pay enough taxes or complain when they have everything confiscated.
And confiscated for what. Correct o mundo again, ... so that the fucking oligarchs can keep on trading their ponzi worthless debt.
So what to do to stop getting ass raped until you have nothing left.
Be in front of the crowd. Get everything you own out if the US and into a foreign place where debt is not the same as the western world, where there is democracy and where fucking oligarchs do not rule. Suggest Malaysia and the Philippines as the best places in the East. China no, India no , Vietnam no, Japan, only if you are stark staring mad.
Get rid of cash and buy things that can be sold later or useful to you and settle all debs as far and as fast as you can.
Next, stop collecting income, at least in cash or cash equivalent and sell anything remotely financial and keep just enough dollars to buy your beers and day to day.
Next, stop paying taxes. by whatever it takes.Personally I off shored my business, changed ownership under an agreement and therefore made it 100% outside US jurisdiction, and I take no income no dividends and only take loans from a connected finance company set up precisely for that purpose Therefore I have no income to declare whatsoever.
All property is sold and I rent, from the new owner.
Yes it the same off shore company that now runs my business basically as an outsourced operation and as a US property investor.
Net result,, I have twice the free cash , actually almost 3 X if I actually need it, but it is sitting there waiting for me to "borrow it" from overseas as and when I might it.
Such as when the rebuilding starts when the rest of the debt piles around the world are smoking toxic heats, sorry vast mountain ranges of smouldering shit.
Stop paying taxes.. Every stinking nazi traffic enforcer, every fucking nazi BLM scumbag will soon be screaming when they realize they are NOT going to get that fat fuck off pension, all the millions of useless petty bureaucrats and the millions of jobsworths that make your lives miserable are going to be out on their ears, preferably starving.
What is going on now is the unedifying sight of the miserable fucks called the elite shuffling like fuck their debt, hoping to get that debt into the safest possible place for collection later.
This is truly the era of the greater fool.
Only a few can win, as the debt monstrosity is so big that it can never be repaid. They will start wars, they will kill set up private armies and they will shoot you if you have anything they can take.
As for the debt mountain accumulating for future generations to pay.. That is I believe false too.
My kids will not be paying it nor my grandchildren.
If you want to be a sucker and pay it then that is up to you. personally I believe the future generations will repudiate it, it will be vast and international and the bankers will own it and then countries will default. The US Japan, France all of the Euro area and China will all default.
There will be reset .
If you hold or own debt you will be toast.
Think I will pay you, fuck you, think I will work to give it to you, fuck you, think I will do anything so that you can take anything I make, fuck you.
Go bankrupt you cunts, and you cunts sucking on the public teat, fuck you too.
Want your pension , fuck you, I'm not paying it, want some benefits fuck you I'm not paying it.
You want something from me., then you work for me or you have something I want in exchange .
Otherwise fuck off.
Yes it will be messy but that is what is coming. Either the holders of the worlds debt accept it now and write it all off and get impoverished or they get wiped out later and shot to boot.
Their choice, its stared already, like it or not all the shit in Libya and Syria and now Ukraine is all about debt and what it is worth, and who they can steal from. Which is why Ukraine paid all its gold to the US ,, for what, , well you might ask, apparently for sweet fuck all as they are going to get fucked whatever and when its over who will still be holding the gold.
Not the Russians who will win or the Ukrainians. And when Ukraine is finally Russia's, who will be next to get fucked over to find a way to get some of the debt paid.
Follow the debt. If you cant pay its war, if you wont pay it will still be war.
But at least you will know why you are fighting.