Tesla CEO Elon Musk was seemingly channeling his inner Galt during a video interview with Joanna Stern of the Wall Street Journal at the CEO Council Summit. Apparently Mr. Musk can see what’s on the other side of this spending horizon and doesn’t want to experience it. WATCH:
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U.S. nonfarm productivity is a measure of economic activity within the engine of the U.S. economy. The U.S. productivity rate is a measure of how much value is produced by the economy through demand for the products and services, and the labor associated with the creation of those products and services.
I have often used the example of making bread {Go Deep}. If you are making 10 loaves of bread, there is a set amount of cost associated with each loaf created. The total cost of each loaf is the total cost to produce the entire batch divided by ten. However, if you have customers demanding 15 loaves of bread, you make more profit on the last five because it doesn’t cost 50% more in material or labor to make 50% more loaves.
Your productivity in the last five loaves is higher because the fixed costs of production (raw materials, energy) barely change, and the labor is only slightly higher. The opposite is also true. It costs more per loaf to make fewer than ten loaves because the fixed costs and your labor are pretty consistent, yet the finished value of 7 loaves is less than the finished value of ten.
Anecdotally, it has looked for quite some time that around May of this year the economy peaked, plateaued for a few weeks, and then began a slow downward progression. Today the Bureau of Labor statistics puts some revised data to that third quarter (July, August and Sept) economic activity {data here}. The quantified results align with what we sensed was taking place.
In the aftermath of the White House demanding that media pundits put a positive spin on economic news, the National Economic Council Chairman, Brian Deese, appears at the Brady Room podium today [Full Video Here] to put the finishing touches on their Potemkin village of economics.
The statistics cited by Deese were jaw dropping in the level of spin used to create them. First, the economic council cite their own national employment forecasts for economic recovery (under their ‘American Rescue Plan’), then celebrate they are ahead of schedule for a timeline they created.
When asked about inflation, Deese then proclaims he is not going to get into the business of economic predictions; which the media just accept without reminding him that his economic policies are entirely based on his own predictions… which he just cited in the prior moment of self-congratulation. Additionally, according to Deese (without any citation to demonstrate validity for his claim), the NEC Chairman says “real household income” is at its pre-pandemic level; which seems highly unlikely given the scale of inflation.
When asked if inflation will continue into next year, Deese refused to answer the question. Keep in mind, the discussion of inflation is a percentage of change from a previous price 12 months earlier. If an item doubles in price this year (from $2 to $4), and then goes up to $4.50 in the following year, you can claim that inflation is dramatically decreasing. However, that does not mean prices will ever return to the prior level, or that the next year price is any more affordable. WATCH:
The fact remains that White House energy, regulatory, fiscal and monetary policies are devastating for Main Street. All of those policies impact the domestic economy with increased costs from field to fork.
Cumulatively, all of the White House economic policies are increasing housing costs, transportation costs, medical costs, food costs, retail costs and service costs. At the same time, wages are only modestly rising to keep up with those massive cost increases. No amount of spin is going to stop the reality of the inflation storm from hitting U.S. consumers.
As we shared during the Obama-era baseline budget spending and deficit mess: “Half of something you just quadrupled is not less than you started with.”
Patrick Murray is a notoriously partisan pollster from Monmouth University {use searchbar}. Leftist favorite Murray puts the spin in spin-master when it comes to media polling and narrative engineering.
The Monmouth engineer recently released a heavily spun poll warning the communists and leftist Democrats, showing checkbook issues are the top concern priority for Americans – far beyond any concern about the COVID madness.
Keep in mind, Murray skews polls in extraordinary ways; however, yet even Monmouth cannot avoid seeing that 29% of leftist Americans are very concerned with inflation, while only 18% are concerned with COVID [pdf here]. Monmouth’s polls are always skewed with responses from the DNC base, so consider that result amid their own tribe. Democrats are twice as worried about their household bills and inflation as they are worried about Omicron or any variant therein.
This explains the massive freakout in the backrooms of the White House and DNC at the moment. Their economic policy chickens are coming home to roost.
“Concerns about inflation have taken center stage in discussions around America’s kitchen tables. And, as one would expect, many are placing the blame squarely on Washington,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute. (link)
When you ignore the public spin Murray puts on the polling (Republicans horrible etc), the bottom line is devastating for Democrats. This aligns with a recent Wall Street Journal survey showing that Latinos are flocking to the Republican Party, and there is now an even 50/50 split amid Hispanic voters.
This is nuts. The White House occupant doesn’t have any idea what they are loading into his teleprompter at this point, he just shouts it at the audience as if it’s supposed to make some kind of bizarre sense. This doofus is totally off his rocker. What does this even mean? WATCH (20 seconds):
I’ll look for a more expanded explanation as to what this idiot is supposedly saying. Good grief, what a knucklehead.
This stuff is just nuts. This guy is truly a meme of himself….
Unfortunately, massive Biden spending programs, in combination with fiscal policy, monetary policy, energy policy and mandatory vaccination policy, have created a perfect storm of inflation. That storm is growing in scale and scope and is likely to get much worse before it stalls.
The White House demands that media must ignore stunning price increases at the supermarket, jaw dropping home heating costs this winter, prices at the gas pumps that are 50 percent higher than last year, backlogs in the supply chain due to environmental regulation at West Coast ports, and a shortage of critical blue collar workers inside the U.S. Main Street economy due to the vaccine mandate. “Other than that, how did you like the play Mrs. Lincoln?”
In short, the White House wants the U.S. media to apply more cowbell to their propaganda.
Even CNN is having a tough time accepting the instructions:
The White House, not happy with the news media’s coverage of the supply chain and economy, has been working behind the scenes trying to reshape coverage in its favor. Senior White House and admin officials — including NEC Deputy Directors David Kamin and Bharat Ramamurti, along with Ports Envoy John Porcari — have been briefing major newsrooms over the past week, a source tells me.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis spoke on the inland side of Tampa Bay today as he announced a $276 million state program to support flood and sea level rise mitigation. The funds are one part of a comprehensive state level infrastructure program to support the incredible growth within Florida.
Even without a state income tax Florida is taking in historic revenue from growth. That revenue is being used to build up emergency reserve funds in the event of storms or severe tropical weather impacts, at the same time funds are being used to proactively develop systems to mitigate flooding events at the coastal and inland regions.
During the second half of his remarks today, Governor DeSantis also contrast and reaffirmed his position on the principles of respect for individual rights of all Florida citizens and pushed-back against the need for government intervention or mandates around COVID. Essentially DeSantis recommended that other state governors stop doing stupid stuff. WATCH:
The financial punditry class are befuddled, confused and perplexed. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released the November jobs report [data here] showing a six figure miss from expectations. Economists were expecting around 535,000 additional jobs; however, the U.S. added only 210,000 jobs according to the new data.
The situation itself is not that difficult to understand when you look at Main Street. However, so many of the professional punditry class are confused because they only focus on the Wall Street economy, their only prism of reference for the last several decades.
Americans are preparing, cutting back and hunkering down from the Hurricane that is Joe Biden’s inflation.
Inside the jobs numbers, you will note the areas where consumer spending contraction first hits: retail, luxury, leisure and hospitality, is the area where November employment was flat or jobs were lost. DUH!
The ‘retail sector‘ lost 20,000 jobs in November. Think about that. What usually happens in November? People are hired to handle holiday seasonal shopping…. but they weren’t… why not? The professional economic punditry cannot figure it out, so they avoid those questions entirely. Those questions hold the key to unlocking the understanding. Does the “pretending not to know things” ring familiar?
The damn jobs report is simply reflecting how Main Street USA workers, consumers, spenders and survivors live when gasoline, energy and food costs necessarily skyrocket. The November employment results are a reflection of the blue collar prepper mindset. This is not hard to figure out. As long as inflation continues to hit items that cannot be avoided, at a level that is two to five times the rate of wage growth, decisions are made that are based on checkbook economics.
The cognitive dissonance is quite remarkable look:
Yesterday the White House occupant equivocated any current supply chain shortages to the 1980’s Christmas shortage of Cabbage Patch dolls {link}. According to the White House narrative there are no shortages of essential products other than a few hard to find non-essential toys.
Obviously, that level of executive office propaganda is intended to gaslight a national audience into questioning themselves when they see shortages of highly consumable products like pet food and grocery store items. Unfortunately for the White House the supply chain issues are of such widespread frequency even the allied narrative engineers cannot ignore them. NBC reported that chicken tenders are “in short supply” at stores and restaurants as President Joe Biden’s supply chain crisis persists, during a segment on NBC’s “Today” on 12/2/2021.
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Strange how there’s no shortage of Marijuana in the supply chain…. And no, you are not crazy if you notice these things.
GBNews is using the opportunity of an interview with President Donald Trump to market their relatively new media franchise. Perhaps that is to be expected, but the amount of self-promotion from the network around this interview is a little weird. That said, Nigel Farage and GBNews were given an extended interview with President Donald Trump from Mar-a-Lago for broadcast in the U.K. The video from GBN is below.
The video is prompted to 09:00 to eliminate nine minutes of lead-in promotion. Farage begins the GBN narrative by saying President Trump has been invisible to the international audience since he left office.
The interview is broken down into two parts. The first part discusses the 2020 election, the second part covers current events. During each segment GBN injects MAGA and anti-MAGA voices into the discussion, as Farage says “to give balance” to the interview. President Trump notes it is important to look back to the problems of 2020 in order to look forward to what is needed for the MAGA movement in the next election. WATCH: