The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) released the August review [DATA HERE] of producer prices for last month.  August rose 0.7% with cumulative results now showing an 8.3% increase in prices; the largest year-over-year jump in prices for final demand products in the history of tracking. The prior record was July with 7.8%.

Inflation is skyrocketing for consumer goods at all levels of production: Origination (commodity/raw material), Intermediate (Mfr/Wholesale) and Final products (retail).

In part, the extreme upward cost pressure from escalating fuel and energy costs are accumulating throughout the supply chain and surfacing in the prices of the finished products. We are all witnessing this in the prices at stores; especially in the quick turning products, like groceries (fast turn consumable goods), which reflect price increases the fastest.

Final demand prices moved up 0.7 percent in August, 1.0 percent in July and 1.0 percent in June. The year-over-year inflation rate on final demand products now stands at 8.3%.

MEDIA – […] “The data comes amid heightened inflation fears fed by supply chain issues, a shortage of various consumer and producer goods and heightened demand related to the Covid-19 pandemic. Federal Reserve officials expect inflationary pressures to ease through the year, but they have remained stubbornly persistent, with Friday’s numbers indicating that the trend likely will continue.

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The architect of Obamacare, Jonathan Gruber, famously said, “We relied upon the stupidity of the American voter“, when they lied about the changes to healthcare in order to get Obamacare passed into law.   Today the White House Chairman of the National Economic Council, Brian Deese, pulled out the Gruber playbook and attempted the same level of nonsense to convince the media that food inflation wasn’t real.

The effort is to downplay the massive scale of food price increase.  Watch a few minutes of his presentation  as prompted below:

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Just about everything Brian Deese stated in that segment about the root cause of food price inflation is false.  He’s not mistaken, he is not getting it wrong, he is not looking at false assumptions, he is lying.  He knows what he is saying is false…. he also knows it is abjectly silly on its face.  The proteins are driven up by the skyrocketing feed prices underneath them.

If you take away the food products driving the highest price increases, the price increases don’t look quite as high.   What the heck kind of bizarro-world spin is that?   Yes, it is true, if I take the fork I stabbed you with out of your eye the headache might subside slightly.  Good grief.

Wheat, corn and soybeans are the foundation of the U.S. food supply. They are primarily used as ingredients in processed foods, oils, and are fed to the cattle, hogs, and poultry that supply meat and eggs for the American diet. When those grain harvests go up in price, the downstream increase in price is far reaching.  Additionally, the part about multinational corporations merging and profiteering is a little disingenuous considering Joe Biden recently increased the amount of food stamp assistance by 25% per recipient, and expanded the program.

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The New York Directorate of COVID Compliance have announced that the pandemic will pause in the Northeastern U.S. around the Thanksgiving Holiday allowing the Macy’s parade to continue.

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Yes, the world has gone that stupid if they cannot see through this nonsense by now.

New South Wales, Australia – Premier Gladys Berejiklian has announced that once the state achieves 70% double-vaccinated status, citizens within the region will be given some freedom from the lock-down situation. The details of the freedom will be announced later; however, only vaccinated people will be permitted to participate.

The announcement from NSW followed their release of the latest COVID stats showing eight people had died of “covid-related health issues” in the past 24 hours. Two men in their nineties, two people in their eighties and three people in their seventies, died in hospital. According to the Health Minister, all of them had “pre-existing medical issues and conditions.”

Following the nationwide standard, every citizen will be required to download their proof of vaccine into their personal “QR Code” on their phone. This digital identification will be scanned at the entrances of all businesses, offices, workplaces, and venues that require entry to participate in society. This process is called “check in”, and will be monitored by the national and state governing authority who will enforce protocols for tracking each individual citizen.

This ain’t a gag folks, this is the actual nuts-and-bolts of the new process that is being rolled-out right now throughout Australia. Premier Gladys Berejiklian held a press conference yesterday, where some of larger aspects to the programs were highlighted. If you are not paying attention, you had better perk up and start looking into what they are doing.  Once they implement this, we can expect to see these standards, rules and regulations imported into the U.S. during the Biden administration.   Australia & New Zealand look like the beta-test.

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Apparently the internet has been turned off for people in Australia.  That is the only reasonable explanation for how their political leadership can keep claiming that vaccinated people cannot contract the COVID virus.

{Press Conference Video}.

This claim is empirically refuted by every other nation who is seeing vaccinated people contracting COVID and “some” being hospitalized regardless of their vaccine status.

On a weirdly positive note, it appears they have abandoned the regional Australian plan of “COVID-ZERO,” which was a plan to lock-down the entire nation, on a state-by-state basis, until they never had a single case of COVID and then re-open society.

They have abandoned that plan because it was abject nonsense from the outset; and reality showed the virus spreading despite their complete lock-down and quarantine protocols.  However, the latest COVID plan within the regional states is to use the enforcement of total vaccinated status before they will allow freedom.

In a press conference yesterday from Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews proclaimed that vaccinated citizens in the state of Victoria will be allowed out of lockdown in the near future.  However, freedom as defined by access to medical treatment, the ability to work, shopping, attending events and engagement in the economy writ large, will not be permitted for any non-vaccinated citizen. Anyone who is not vaccinated will remain in locked-down isolation as enforced by the state.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released the August jobs report [Data Link Here] showing only 235,000 jobs created in August.  Economists and financial analysts were predicting 750,000+.

While the financial punditry are jaw-agape with disappointment, these results are in line with the background data and should not have been a surprise.  Within the BLS data you will note the retail sector lost 29,000 jobs, and the leisure and hospitality sector remained unchanged.

Massive inflation and price increases in fuel, gasoline, energy costs and food pricing is slowing down retail purchasing of non-essential goods.  The working class are cutting back non-essential purchases and focusing on how to pay for groceries, electricity and gasoline.  Connected to this checkbook issue, the working class are not spending on leisure and hospitality.   Everyone is focused on making ends meet.  Spending decisions are prioritized.

The government COVID subsidies have also created a false bottom.  Service sector workers could make more money from COVID bailouts than they could by returning to work.  Some families made the decision to stay home, drop the daycare cost for their kids, and actually net a higher overall income position from government relief funds.  This dynamic is mostly noted in the lower tier of the income and wage earning employment category.

Government run education, local and state, also saw a drop in jobs of -26,000 simultaneous to kids returning to school.  Why did this happen?  Well, private sector education gained +40,000 jobs. This is in line with the cultural shift.  There is so much COVID propaganda, and manipulation of teaching outcomes as a result of unionized education dictates around COVID, many parents have had enough with the nonsense, mask mandates and indoctrination and are taking their kids out of public schools.

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Polls are generally worthless; media polls even more so.  However, when the ultra far-left NPR produces a manipulated poll that can only get Joe Biden a 43% approval rating, you know things are bad… horrible for the White House occupant. [Polling Data Here]

The latest NPR/Marist poll shows Joe Biden with a 43% approval overall, and that’s with a proclaimed 85% of Democrats still sticking with him {insert eyeroll here}.   64% of Independents disapprove of Biden’s job performance and 95% of Republicans disapprove.

The polling was D+7 [pdf here] to achieve an overall 43% approval rating.

In related news perhaps Joe Biden will be campaigning for Liz Cheney.

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The Bureau of Labor Statistics report on August jobs is anticipated Friday. However, the numbers from the private sector ADP payroll review [Data Here] were released today, and the results are far below what was predicted.

According to the ADP payroll review, businesses hired a total of 374,000 workers, compared to the expectation of 600,000+ from the financial media.  The vast majority of jobs gained was in the ‘Service and Hospitality’ sector that added 201,000 jobs.

The total services sector added 329,000 jobs, while the goods-producing sector only gained 45,000 jobs. This result is reflective of an overall drop in consumer spending which has continually been identified in sales data from the past several months.

Consumers are being hit with massive inflation on food, fuel, energy and housing costs. As a result, they have pulled back from spending on durable goods, luxury products and other items now considered ‘non-essential.’

The service and hospitality sector shows job growth from new hires and returning workers as people start to travel, dine in restaurants and engage in other vacation activity.  Simultaneously, those same consumers are spending less on retail purchases. This pattern has been very consistent throughout the summer.

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The latest measure of consumer confidence [Data Here] reflects a continued trend, and the index drops well below expectations.  The Consumer Confidence Survey is a monthly report detailing “consumer attitude, buying intentions, vacation plans and consumer expectation for inflation, stock prices and interest rates.”

The index now stands at 113, a drop from last month when it was 125.  The decline in confidence is an outcome of workers and consumers feeling the impact of massive inflation from Joe Biden economic and monetary policies.   With gas and food prices climbing rapidly, it should not be a shock to see consumer confidence begin dropping; however, the financial analysts were caught off guard by the unexpected size of the drop.

According to Marketwatch, “Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a reading of 123.1”, a drop to 113 is a much more severe change in consumer confidence than expected.   The economists who get this stuff wrong repeatedly are inside the echo-chamber of Wall Street and the financial class.  There is a disconnect between those analysts and the real economy on Main Street; that’s why they are always surprised.

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Yesterday we shared that U.S. consumer spending unexpectedly dropped 1.1% in July [Source], and today the commerce department is reporting that U.S. housing starts unexpectedly dropped 7% in July [Source].   Stop me when you notice a trend…

The financial pundits continue to attribute these drops to supply chain issues, COVID impacts, material constraints and various ancillary factors that have nothing to do with the underlying and overarching issues – inflation and wages.

As long as skyrocketing food and fuel prices continue to impact the middle-class, forward looking purchasing decisions will be constrained.

We are in an economic era where working class family income priorities are focused on current day survival. “Food, fuel and energy price increases are changing consumer spending habits.  Non-essential purchases have stopped….. they haven’t slowed, they have stopped. ←Emphasize this because it is not yet showing up in the data lag.”  ~SD

Building permits have been issued, but we are in that period where speculative builders have noticed the consumer plateau and they have proactively stopped the home building process before they get caught upside-down with finished goods and no buyers.

WASHINGTON, Aug 18 (Reuters) – U.S. homebuilding fell more than expected in July, the latest sign that surging construction costs and home prices continued to constrain the housing market early in the third quarter.

The number of houses authorized for construction but not yet started last month was the third highest on record, indicating builders remained hesitant to undertake new projects.

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