Supplemental Poverty Measure on the Rise


Posted originally on Sep 19, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

poverty

The latest Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPMfound that at 12.9% of American households currently rely on government assistance, up from 12.4% one year prior. The figure was at 11.8% in 2019 and has risen every year under Biden-Harris. The data only factors in US households and not the tens of millions of illegal aliens who also rely on US government handouts.

Around 42.8 million Americans were in poverty in 2023, up from pre-pandemic levels of 38.3 million. We saw poverty levels decreased during 2020 and 2021 when the US government was providing nearly everyone with some sort of assistance to combat wages lost from COVID lockdowns. Those measures simply contributed to inflation and made it harder for those in poverty to move on without government aid.

The SPM factors in tax credits, noncash benefits, social insurance, and market income minus nontax expenses. If only factoring in market income net of necessary expenses, the number of Americans in poverty swiftly rises to 77.8 million. Social insurance programs are now factored into these resources so the data has declined by 28 million, and the addition of SNAP and noncash benefits reduced the figure by another 6.6 million. This certainly does not mean there are less impoverished people living in the wealthiest nation in the world.

Data can be manipulated easily to portray a strong economy. Simply put, more Americans have fallen into economic decline in recent years under Bidenomics. The data would be unbelievable if they actually took into account the migrants who are also living on government aid, and receiving more in aid than Americans citizens who paid into the system.

16 Economists Sign Letter Saying Trump Policy Will Increase Inflation – Reality Is Opposite, Here’s The Data


Posted originally on the CTH on June 26, 2024 | Sundance 

This headline article from the New York Post caught our attention because it has the familiar ring of “51 former intelligence heads” in the 2020 election.

Previously, the stacking of experts to create disinformation was used to hide the truth within the Hunter Biden laptop, which was evidence of Joe Biden’s pay-to-play schemes.  Now, the “experts” are stacked to claim Joe Biden’s economic policy is better than Donald Trump’s.

[Source]

I will ignore the article’s Freudian optic of the economist speaking at the globalist WEF event, and instead focus on the facts.  We have an actual track record of President Trump’s MAGAnomic policies to review. We heard the insufferable “inflation created by tariff” arguments back in 2017; they were all false.

Wall Street loves to shout about looming damage that will come if anyone reverses the “service driven economy” policies they rely upon. However, none of their hair on fire arguments ever materialize, because they are not accurate. These economists are politically motivated in their claims.

See below for real data on the outcomes of MAGAnomic policy as delivered in Trump’s first term.

This might be the cited data you want to bookmark for later reference.

Traditional Fascism was defined as an authoritarian government working hand-in-glove with corporations to achieve totalitarian objectives. A centralized autocratic government, headed by a dictatorial leader, using severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

That governmental system didn’t work in the long-term, because the underlying principles driving free people rejected government authoritarianism.  Fascist governments collapsed, and the corporate beneficiaries were nulled and scorned.  Then along came a new approach to achieve the same objective.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) was created to use the same fundamental associations of government and corporations.  Only this time the corporations organized to tell the governments what to do.  The WEF was organized for multinational corporations to assemble and tell the various governments how to cooperate to achieve control.

Fascism is still the underlying premise, the WEF just flipped the internal dynamic.

The assembly of the massive multinational corporations, banks and finance offices now summon the government leaders to come to their assembly and receive their instructions.  Some have called this corporatism. However, the relationship between government and multinationals is just fascism essentially reversed with the government doing what the corporations tell them to do.

A massive multinational corporate conglomerate; telling a centralized autocratic government leader what to do; and using severe economic and social regimentation as a control mechanism; combined with forcible suppression of opposition by both the corporations and government.

This was our reality until we finally broke the glass, hit the emergency STOP button and elected Donald Trump.

It was the Fourth Quarter of 2019…..

Right before the pandemic would hit a few months later, despite two years of doomsayer predictions from Wall Street’s professional punditry, all of them said Trump’s 2017 steel and aluminum tariffs on China, Canada and the EU would create massive inflation – it just wasn’t happening!

Overall, year-over-year inflation was hovering around 1.7 percent [Table-A BLS]; yup, that was our inflation rate.  The rate in the latter half of 2019 was firmed up with less month-over-month fluctuation, and the rate basically remained consistent.   [See Below]  The U.S. economy was on a smooth glide path, strong, stable, and Main Street was growing with MAGAnomics at work.

A couple of important points.  First, unleashing the energy sector to drive down overall costs to consumers, and industry outputs was a key part of President Trump’s America First MAGAnomic initiative.  Lower energy prices help the worker economy, middle class and average American more than any other sector.

Which brings us to the second important point.  Notice how food prices had very low year-over-year inflation – 0.5 percent.  That is a combination of two key issues: low energy costs, and the fracturing of Big Ag’s hold on the farm production and the export dynamic:

(BLS) […] The index for food at home declined for the third month in a row, falling 0.2 percent. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs decreased 0.7 percent in August as the index for eggs fell 2.6 percent. The index for fruits and vegetables, which rose in July, fell 0.5 percent in August; the index for fresh fruits declined 1.4 percent, but the index for fresh vegetables rose 0.4 percent. The index for cereals and bakery products fell 0.3 percent in August after rising 0.3 percent in July. (link)

For the previous twenty years, food prices had been increasingly controlled by Big Ag, and not by normal supply and demand.   The commodity market became a ‘controlled market’. U.S. food outputs (farm production) was controlled and exported to keep the U.S. consumer paying optimal prices.

President Trump’s trade reset was disrupting this process.  As farm products were less exported, the cost of the food in our supermarket became reconnected to a ‘more normal’ supply and demand cycle.  Food prices dropped, and our pantry costs were lowered.

The Commerce Dept. then announced that retail sales climbed by 0.4 percent in August 2019, twice as high as the 0.2 percent analysts had predicted. The result highlighted retail sales strength of more than 4 percent year-over-year.   These excellent results came on the heels of blowout data in July, when households boosted purchases of cars and clothing.

The better-than-expected number stemmed largely from a 1.8 percent jump in spending vehicles. Online sales, meanwhile, also continued to climb, rising 1.6 percent. That’s similar to July 2019, when Amazon held its two-day blowout Prime Day sale. (link)

Despite the efforts to remove and impeach President Trump, it did not look like middle class America was overly concerned about the noise coming from the pundits.   Likely that’s because blue collar wages were higher, Main Street inflation was lower, and overall consumer confidence was strong.  Yes, MAGAnomics was working.

Additionally, remember all those MSM hours and newspaper column inches where the professional financial pundits were claiming Trump’s tariffs were going to cause massive increases in prices of consumer goods?

Well, exactly the opposite happened [BLS report] Import prices were continuing to drop:

[Table 1 – BLS report link]

This was a really interesting dynamic that no one in the professional punditry would dare explain.

Donald Trump’s tariffs were targeted to specific sectors of imported products.  [Steel, Aluminum, and a host of smaller sectors etc.]  However, when the EU and China responded by devaluing their currency, that approach hit all products imported, not just the tariff goods.

Because the EU and China were driving up the value of the dollar, everything we were importing became cheaper.   Not just imports from Europe and China, but actually imports from everywhere.   All imports were entering the U.S. at substantially lower prices.

This meant when we imported products, we were also importing deflation.

This price result is exactly the opposite of what the economic experts and Wall Street pundits predicted back in 2017 and 2018 when they were pushing the rapid price increase narrative.

Because all the export dependent economies were reacting with such urgency to retain their access to the U.S. market, aggregate import prices were actually lower than they were when the Trump tariffs began:

[…]  Prices for imports from China edged down 0.1 percent in August following decreases of 0.2 percent in both July and June. Import prices from China have not advanced on a monthly basis since ticking up 0.1 percent in May 2018. The price index for imports from China fell 1.6 percent for the year ended in August.

[…]  Import prices from the European Union fell 0.2 percent in August and 0.3 percent over the past 12 months.

[Page #4 – BLS Report, pdf] – BLS press release.

So yes, we know President Trump can save Social Security and Medicare by expanding the economy with his America First economic policy.  We do not need to guess if it is possible or listen to pundits theorize about his approach being some random ‘catch phrase’ disconnected from reality.  Yes folks, we have the receipts.

This was MAGAnomics at work, and this is entirely what created the middle class MAGA coalition.  No other Republican candidate has this economic policy in their outlook, because all other candidates are purchased by the Wall Street multinationals.

America First MAGAnomics is unique to President Trump, because he is the only one independent enough to implement them.

That’s just the reality of the situation.  They hate him for it… 

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Ohio Election Rules Create Mess for Biden Replacement During DNC Convention, Maybe….


Posted originally on the CTH on May 30, 2024 | Sundance

I will openly admit to being one of those political followers who thought/think the DNC cannot stick with Joe Biden if they want to win the 2024 general election.  Every move by the Barack Obama network and the hardcore leftist community generally aligned and reconciled with the DNC replacing Joe Biden at the Chicago convention in August.

However, as many people have noted the Ohio rules for ballot placement ahead of the 2024 general election require the party candidate to be certified by the national party prior to August 7th.  The DNC nomination convention is August 19th, this creates a problem.

The Democrats are solving the problem by holding a “virtual roll call of delegates” prior to August 7th, which will adhere to the Ohio rules and reconcile the timeline disparity.  However, this “virtual roll call” would then seemingly stop any Chicago convention effort to announce a horrible illness (or other) and replace Biden/Harris with something akin to Newsom/Rice.

Knowing the DNC and RNC are private clubs that can make up their own rules about how party nominees are decided, I’m still not sure the Ohio dilemma has blocked the replacement plan completely.  If the DNC apparatus wants to nominate someone other than Biden, or replace Biden with someone prior to the 2024 election, there’s seemingly no national rule that would stop it.

It is only a state issue that can seemingly disrupt the DNC national agenda, and the state issue only impacts that state.  Yes, if adherence to the aggregate primary election will of the voters is the paramount factor, then Biden/Harris will be 100% guaranteed as the ticket following the “virtual roll call of delegates.”  Then again, what is the primary function of the convention (other than platform) if the virtual roll call determines the candidate prior to August 19th?

Perhaps this recent issue and subsequent solution explains why Politico recently published a widely reported article about most Democrats freaking out with the certainty of Joe Biden as the party nominee now in place. [SEE HERE]

(VIA POLITICO) – A pervasive sense of fear has settled in at the highest levels of the Democratic Party over President Joe Biden’s reelection prospects, even among officeholders and strategists who had previously expressed confidence about the coming battle with Donald Trump.

All year, Democrats had been on a joyless and exhausting grind through the 2024 election. But now, nearly five months from the election, anxiety has morphed into palpable trepidation, according to more than a dozen party leaders and operatives. And the gap between what Democrats will say on TV or in print, and what they’ll text their friends, has only grown as worries have surged about Biden’s prospects.

“You don’t want to be that guy who is on the record saying we’re doomed, or the campaign’s bad or Biden’s making mistakes. Nobody wants to be that guy,” said a Democratic operative in close touch with the White House and granted anonymity to speak freely.

But Biden’s stubbornly poor polling and the stakes of the election “are creating the freakout,” he said. (READ MORE)

Again, knowing how openly extreme the communists and leftists are now, I don’t put anything beyond their ability to change it, break the rules about it, manipulate it, or totally stop the customary way something was being done in order to be more extreme.

The professional political left is visibly emboldened by their seemingly untouchable control over the institutions of power.  Breaking the party rules and norms to install a more progressive candidate is not exactly a big deal when we consider the weaponized government institutions they have assembled.

Why Does the Government Borrow Its Own Currency?


Posted May 11, 2024 By Martin Armstrong  

The problem with people’s attitudes toward the national debt is that everyone has forgotten why we borrowed in the first place. The theory was that if you borrowed rather than printed money, you were NOT increasing the existing money supply, and therefore, in theory, it would not be inflationary.

US Debt accumulated Interest as Percent of total

However, the Democrats forgot how to run for government without their Marxist agenda of bribing the people to vote for them. This led to always creating deficits. Add to this the NEOCONS who have done nothing but wage wars ever since World War II to defeat Communism and have spent money lavishly on trying to conquer the world.

Kennedy_Nixon_Debat_(1960)

October 13, 1960 Debate Transcript

During the Presidential Third Debate of 1960, the question about the outflow of gold from the USA reserves arose. This sparked a Gold Panic in the London gold market, whereby gold rallied to $40 for the first time, showing that the Bretton Woods System was beginning to collapse. The United States’ outflow of gold was not really from a trade deficit but from the fact that the USA was defending the world with its military establishing bases everywhere. That meant capital was leaving. Gold rallied again to $40 in the late 1960s, and finally, it forced the collapse of the convertibility of gold under the Bretton Woods System in 1971. Kennedy’s words were:

“Now, on the question of gold. The difficulty, of course, is that we do have heavy obligations abroad, that we therefore have to maintain not only a favorable balance of trade but also send a good deal of our dollars overseas to pay our troops, maintain our bases, and sustain other economies. In other words, if we’re going to continue to maintain our position in the sixties, we have to maintain a sound monetary and fiscal policy. We have to have control over inflation, and we also have to have a favorable balance of trade. We have to be able to compete in the world market.” 

The dollars were being spent not to benefit our economy but to fulfill the dreams of the Neocons; when Communism fell, they refused to accept any real change.

Trajan Welfare Youth

Rome takes care of widows and orphans.

We borrow, which is worse than printing because we have to pay interest on constantly rolling the debt. This year, we will spend about $1 trillion on interest, the total national debt when Reagan took office in 1981. At times, 70% of the national debt is accumulative interest. That means it went nowhere to improve society or care for widows and orphans, at least as the Romans did. Had we printed the money instead of borrowing, it would have been less inflationary and the capital would have created more jobs instead of investing in government debt which has only funded the Neocons’ wildest dreams.

WarRoom Battleground EP 531: The Spending Of Trillions As America Burns


Posted originally on Rumble By Bannons War Room on: May 9, 2024 at 10:00 pm EST

Interview: Are We On the Brink of Economic Collapse


Posted originally on Apr 27, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

Public Sector Multiplying – Skewed Jobs Report


Posted originally on Apr 22, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell essentially said he was unimpressed by the “strong” jobs report, and it certainly was not enough for the central bank to even consider dropping rates. I wrote how the BLS report was skewed; Americans are working more than one job and still struggling to keep up with the cost of living amid inflation. Another reason that the March jobs report was “strong” was due to the US government hiring 194,000 additional personnel to the private sector within the first three months of the year and 71,000 jobs in March alone.

These public sector positions are now on the taxpayers’ payroll. The public sector produces absolutely nothing and will not add to GDP growth. By comparison, government grew by 11% during the first three months of 2019 before Biden. The private sector rose by 4.3% in 2022 before slowing to 2.3% in 2023. The public sector, not the private sector, is growing at an alarming pace. Government hiring rose a full percentage point from 2022 to 2023 by 2.7%, marking the highest annual increase since 1990.

Armstrong on Government

The government cannot hire manufacturing jobs and added a total of 0 new manufacturing roles in March. Police agencies have been defunded and are operating with a dangerously low number of officers. The government is increasingly created unnecessary agencies to solve nonexistent problems like DEI and climate initiatives. I discussed in a previous post how the public sector leeches off of the taxpayer and has become a form of welfare that is used as a political weapon.

Javier Milei of Argentina’s first point of order in restoring his nation was to eliminate useless government agencies and downsize government. “The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism,” Milei said to a hostile crowd at Davos. “We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world—rather they are the root cause.”

Now, the Biden Administration has been blocked from hiring even more public sector employees. Without pushback, the Biden Administration would have multiplied the IRS and other agencies that are intrinsically unpatriotic and are used as weapons against the American people, the very people funding these agencies through taxation.

1 Big Government

I also highlighted that these newly created nonprofit government-funded agencies are inefficient. An audit in California found that the $24 billion granted to numerous agencies to combat homelessness was never regulated or required to show results. Instead, homelessness more than doubled and you have people within these nonprofit agencies raking in hundreds of thousands per year to do absolutely nothing.

We have seen what happens when governments grow to disproportionate figures and it never ends well. The longest reigning empire, the Roman Empire, fell as a direct result of an oversized public sector that bankrupted Rome. The private sector produces economic growth, while government is a public servant consuming the wealth generated by others.

Ep 3323a-Right On Schedule,Biden Continues With Economic Narrative,All Falls Apart On His Watch


Posted originally on Rumble By X 22 Report on: Apr 5, 2024 at 8:45 pm EST

Biden Proposes Largest Spending Package and American Taxpayer Burden in US History


Posted originally on Mar 13, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

2023_02_21_Biden Poland Speech

The Biden Administration is outright destroying America through reckless spending. The Federal Reserve has warned that Biden’s current spending habits are robbing future generations of Americans. They cannot stablizie prices or make a dent in inflation due to the rising national debt. After his State of the Union address, Joe Biden unveiled his next spending package that could cost Americans $7.3 TRILLION.

Americans are expected to pay $5.5 trillion in tax hikes to fund this bill, which will offer nothing to the everyday American. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) told the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) that this plan will raise the national debt by $45.1 trillion or 105.6% of GDP by 2034. The national debt already reached 97% of GDP in 2022. This makes the Inflation Reduction Act look like pocket change, as the US has never experienced such a large tax burden.

Biden Republican will bring chaos2022_11_03_20_32_25_Biden_says_Republicans_would_cause_chaos_in_U.S._economy_Reuters

Right on Inflation, Wrong on Tariffs – Gary Cohn Outlines Biden Inflation and State of Economy for 2024 Election


Posted originally on the CTH on March 10, 2024 | Sundance

Gary Cohn appears on Face The Nation to discuss the finance, the economy and the pain felt by consumers.  He won’t say it directly, for obvious reasons, but what Cohn describes in terms of political support boils down to Main Street business supporting Donald Trump and Wall Street Multinational Corporations supporting Joe Biden.  That is ultimately what is obvious at a macro level.

I’m starting the video at 03:08 for the purposes of emphasizing inflation.  What Cohn says about U.S. inflation is essentially accurate and I have a Cliff Notes, tldr, HERE.  However, what Cohn says about tariffs creating inflation is not accurate, as outlined by the 2017 through 2020 results of Trump tariff policy.  Cohn says, “No one absorbs tariffs, except the consumer,” this is false.  As we saw in 2017, 2018, and 2019 China, Asia and the EU essentially dropped their export prices to retain access to the USA market and offset tariff costs.  That’s just a statistical reality.

The transcript is HERE; however, I want to draw attention to a geopolitical aspect that is not getting enough attention.  Specifically, the cost of FOOD PRODUCTS and the attached inflation.

Why is food inflation continuing to be a problem?  Why is food inflation not just a USA problem?  Why are the EU farmers protesting?  These questions are easily answered, and yet no one in the Western financial press will explain.

The Build Back Better agenda, known in the USA colloquially as the Green New Deal, carries with it massive increases in cost for energy products.  Fertilizer, which needs natural gas, and farming, which needs large amounts of fuel, diesel and fuel oil, uses costly energy products.  Packaging, plastics (petroleum derivatives) and cardboard also require large amounts of energy.

The manufacturing (heating, cooling, freezing) as well as storage and transportation of food products also use massive amounts of energy.  Additionally, and specifically because of the nature of their consumption, the increased energy costs associated with generating food travels quickly through the supply chain.

Food inflation is always the first thing you notice when the prices of energy products skyrocket.  This is well known and not subject to debate; everyone accepts this.

In the past 30 +/- years, large multinational corporations known as Big Ag have created a system where the USA generates a massive amount of the global food supply.

The advent of modern farming fertilizer, pesticides, seed genetics and other farming products/equipment that increase crop yield, has also been a big factor in the capacity of the USA and Western farming world to increase production.  As the globe became more reliant on the production efficiencies of the Big Ag “Western world,” they simultaneously became dependent on the outcome.  That dependency put them at risk of feeling the impact of inflation when you think about the farm products.

The result was that when Western Ag farming costs skyrocketed, the high cost of harvest outcomes were not just felt in the USA and/or Western nations.  As food production costs increased, the higher costs of production transferred into all the exported products.  Food inflation was exported globally.

The Western Build Back Better and Green New Deal energy policies subsequently meant the world was going to pay a higher price for food globally.  That’s what happened.

The Yellow Zone was responsible for a higher percentage of global food production.  The Yellow Zone is also the place where energy policy was changed in such a radical format that massive increases in energy costs were created.

The Yellow Zone (geopolitically the “West”) drove up the cost of farming, the Gray Zone pays a higher price.  This was all by design and not accidental.  The corporations who supported the BBB/GRD agenda all benefit.  The citizens who need to eat, do not benefit.

So, when you see EU farmers protesting against the ridiculous ENERGY POLICY changes of the West, you must accept the USA bears a greater responsibility for creating and demanding the increased prices that farmers globally are having to deal with.

In Gray Zone areas, where domestic food production costs are not subject to the changed energy policy, there is little to no food inflation.  However, the more dependent the country is to food imports (ingredients or final product) the more they are impacted by rising farming costs.

Grey Zone countries that can self-sustain on the production of food and have no energy agenda have little food inflation.

The more the country is strangling energy production and driving up energy prices, the higher the cost of farming and subsequently the higher index on food inflation.  The two metrics are directly related.

Food inflation globally is a big problem.  Western energy policy is exactly why!