December Retail Sales Drop -1.1%, November Sales Data Revised Lower to -1.0%


Posted originally on the CTH on January 18, 2023 | Sundance 

There is something predictable about Main Street economics, eventually what you see around you overwhelms the great pretending.  CTH has been outlining the state of the consumer economy in great detail for quite a while, and though it is difficult to note when the outcomes will surface, eventually they do surface. [Reminder Here]

CONTEXT. CTH outlined the moment when the purchasing power of the U.S. middle class actually began contracting.  It was March and April of 2021 when that Rubicon was crossed.  We saw it in the second and third quarter data from 2021, but few were willing to admit.

What changed in those two months back in ’21 was a dramatic drop in the “unit sales” of stuff within the consumer economy.  The drop in unit sales was hidden because it happened simultaneously with the first wave of massive spike in prices.  Prices rose so fast the sales data was giving an artificial impression of sales growth, but in the background the actual unit sales dropped.   Those analysts correcting and adjusting historic data to ‘inflation adjusted terms’ are now noticing.

Additionally, and not coincidentally – because the metrics are connected, you will note this line from the Wall Street Journal review of the producer price index. “The producer-price index, which generally reflects supply conditions in the economy, rose 6.2% in December from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Wednesday, the slowest annual pace since March 2021.”  In essence, the current rate of wholesale price increase on materials is now returning to the rate of price increase that happened in the period when prices spiked.  Again, this is predictable.

Inflation is the measure of the ‘rate’ of price increase over time.  March and April of 2021 were the beginning of the first inflationary spike.

Driven almost entirely by the supply side shock from Biden energy policy, in the subsequent 20 months the rate of price increase skyrocketed, peaked August 2022, and now the rate of increase starts returning.  This does not mean price declines; this means the rate of growth in the price increase is lessening.

This is a cyclical outcome.

After 20 months of dropping unit sales, a result of massive price increases; and as the rate of inflation now starts to moderate created by the cyclical nature of it; what we now see is the inability of the price increases to continue hiding the drop in unit sales.   [Background pdf Data] Total retail sales data is now exposed and that’s why we will see this increasing story about negative sales data as the inflation cycle plateaus.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – Retail spending fell in December at the sharpest pace of 2022, marking a dismal end to the holiday shopping season as rising interest rates, still-high inflation and concerns about a slowing economy pinched American consumers.

Purchases at stores, restaurants and online, declined a seasonally adjusted 1.1% in December from the prior month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. Sales were also revised lower in November and have fallen three of the past four months.

The decline in retail spending late last year adds to signs that the U.S. economy is slowing. Hiring and wage growth eased in December, U.S. commerce with the rest of the world declined significantly in November, and existing-home sales have fallen for 10 straight months. The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that industrial production slumped in December, led by weakness in the manufacturing industry.

S&P Global downgraded its estimate for fourth-quarter economic growth by a half percentage point to a 2.3% annual rate after Wednesday’s data releases. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal this month expect higher interest rates to tip the U.S. economy into a recession in the coming year.

“The lag impact of elevated inflation weighs heavily on U.S. households, it’s very clear that the median American consumer is still reeling from the loss of wages in inflation-adjusted terms,” said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM US LLP. “We’re moving towards what I would expect to be a mild recession in 2023,” he added. (read more)

When the Baghdad Bob economic pretenders say, “mild recession,” anticipate something more akin to a mild nuclear meltdown, something with breadlines and soup kitchens.

Now, you must keep in mind that almost every financial media outlet used the same Retail Federation talking point about anticipating an 8% increase in holiday sales last year.  [Reminder] Apparently, collective pretenses must be maintained.  Meanwhile, news crews and camera crews were having a desperate time finding any holiday shopping to use as background footage for the claims that sales were strong.  Here we are in January and the pretending has hit reality.

Negative retail sales in November and December when prices are roughly +10% over the prior year, means the unit sales collapse was far more dramatic…. Far more.

Trying to survive policy driven price increases in housing costs, energy costs, electricity costs, home heating, food and fuel costs has forced consumers to reevaluate purchasing decisions.  Consumer demand for non-essential items has collapsed, and Americans are dig deep into their savings just to sustain unavoidable expenses.  Eventually, pretending this is not happening is going to run into the wall of reality.

On one hand the leaders of large multinationals must pretend everything is splendid; after all, the only acceptable position they can articulate is to support interest rates being raised because demand is just too darned high….  pretending.  But on the other hand – those same suppliers and multinationals are furiously trying to calculate how to avoid being stuck with billions worth of unsold inventory and idle industrial equipment.

Who is America’s Enemy? Russia or the other Political Party?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Politics Re-Posted Jan 18, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

In writing the Greatest Bull Market in History, published in 1986, I had to do all the original research. I read all the newspapers daily year after year to come to the realization that attitudes shift back and forth. It became very obvious that before FDR and the introduction of Marxism to the United States, the focus was on markets. With Roosevelt, he weaponized the Federal Reserve and just about everything else to further his agenda. Roosevelt demonized Pierre du Pont for he made a lot of money providing the weapons for World War I. Roosevelt called him the Merchant of Death, but then suddenly needed him again for World War II.

The nation is dividing significantly. This is why the United States cannot stand divided. The latest poll demonstrates that the forecast made by our computer is unsurpassed. The question presented was who is our enemy?

For Democrats, the top three results named Russia (31 percent) as our “greatest enemy,” followed by Republicans (26 percent) and China (16 percent).

For Republicans, the top three are China (35 percent), Russia (33 percent), and Democrats (12 percent).

We now are starting to see that we have an enemy within – the opposite political party. This is absolutely essential for it confirms the forecasts of our computer that have been common since our 2011 WEC.

Prostitutes Attending WEF Summit in Davos Create Business Opportunity for EU Sex Workers


Posted originally on the CTH on January 17, 2023 | sundance

January 17, 2023 | sundance | 84 Comments

As noted by Steve Bannon during a summary of events at the World Economic Forum, the Daily Mail is reporting {SEE HERE} how the attending prostitutes are creating a business opportunity for European sex workers. Among the other topics up for discussion at this year’s summit are the Ukraine war, global inflation rates, climate change and inequality. {Direct Rumble Link}

Noor Bin Ladin Live From Davos: Climate Change Is The Globalists’ Trojan Horse To Introduce Social Credit Scores

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[L-R] Alain “SpankMe” Berset, president of Switzerland, Olena “MoMoney” Zelenska, First Lady of Ukraine, Ursula “FemDom” von der Leyen, president of the European Commission and World Economic Forum founder Klaus “WigglyBits” Schwab.

On a more serious note, the World Economic Forum describes itself as a collection of corporations, “shaping” government “policies.”

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

That system of government didn’t work in the long-term, because the underlying principles of free people reject government authoritarianism. Fascist governments were destroyed, and the corporate beneficiaries were nulled and scorned for participating. 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, it was the multinational corporations who organized to tell the government(s) what to do. The WEF was organized for multinational corporations to assemble and tell the various governments how to cooperate with them, in order to be rewarded by them. Corporatism was/is the outcome. The government is now doing what the multinationals tell them to do, and in return the multinationals install the compliant politicians.

Fascism, the cooperation between government and corporations, is still the underlying premise; the World Economic Forum simply flipped the internal dynamic putting the corporations in charge of handing out the instructions.

What results is a slightly modified definition of fascism:

…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.

Doesn’t that define our current reality.

The instructions from the multinational corporations to government would be called the “Great Reset“, or as previously transposed by the government officials receiving the instructions in the era following the COVID-19 pandemic, “Build Back Better”.

John Kerry Pontificates About the Extraordinary Ability of a “Select Group of Humans” at the World Economic Forum, Who Will Save The Planet for the Eaters and Serfs


Posted originally on the CTH on January 17, 2023 | sundance

During a sidebar conversation with those rare elites who wax philosophically about their magnanimous ability to protect the vulgarian eaters, former Secretary of State and current Climate Czar John Kerry, praises the audience for their unique traits and gifted high-mindedness that will protect all humanity.

While the lizard tongue darts, the grand pontifications are espoused.  The audience oohs and ahhs, at the nature of their entitled superiority. They are so good, so magnanimous, so altruistic in their disposition, according to Kerry they are literally “extraterrestrial,” which is to say out of this world.  WATCH:

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Go ahead and tell me how CTH was wrong 12 years ago….  Their worldview:

Madoff – Hiding the Real Fraud


Armstrong Economics Blog/Conspiracy Re-Posted Jan 17, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

COMMENT: I know you saved Mercedes making back their $1 billion lost all because they listened to the fake news about how the pound and the dollar would crumble in the face of the euro. I read the 2011 Barron’s article on your forecast. It was OK to publish that when they thought you would be wrong. Where is the follow-up when you proved to be the only one who was correct? The same can be said of the New York Times and especially Bloomberg. It is obvious that they will not report on the success of your forecasts because they are leading society at the direction of the Deep State.

Keep up the good work. We need someone independent in this time of darkening clouds.

JWN

REPLY: Let me explain something. All the hype about Bernie Madoff is also FAKE NEWS. On December 10th, 2008, Madoff’s sons Mark and Andrew covered themselves most likely at their father’s direction, and told authorities that their father had confessed to them that the asset management unit of his firm was a massive Ponzi scheme. They even supposedly told them it was “one big lie”. The next day, agents from the FBI arrested Madoff and charged him with one count of securities fraud. There was no possible way the FBI would arrest someone like that without an independent investigation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission had previously conducted numerous investigations into his business practices. Vere did ANY audit uncover such a massive fraud. It was then on March 12th, 2009, when Bernie Madoff simply pleaded guilty to 11 federal felonies and admitted to turning his wealth management business into a massive Ponzi scheme. He was not even indicted. He pled simply to what is known as an “information” so nothing was even presented to a grand jury. That is UNPRECEDENTED!

The banks all claimed that they had “no idea.” Before he died, Madoff did an interview where the headline was that the Banks had to have known. There is ABSOLUTELY no way that the banks were NOT involved or had no idea.  That is legally impossible. As a client of a bank of that size especially, the bank must fill its files with KNOWN YOUR CLIENT rules.

In my case, we had companies set up for each note in Turks & Caicos. The bank actually sent someone down there to audit the legal structure behind every account. There is simply no way a bank can even claim it had no idea. That was a serious RED FLAG that the Madoff case was not what it appeared.

Everyone just skipped over the fact that the SEC conducted multiple audits and found nothing. That included looking at bank accounts and positions on hand. That did NOT add up to a PONZI scheme where you are taking money from one person to pay another which is the actual structure of Social Security. The current generation’s contributions are tasked to pay the previous generation.

Add to that, HSBC, which has been itself indicted for money laundering more than once, stood out as the largest “victim” of Madoff’s scheme – $1.5 billion. HSBC pays countless fines for every scandal they seem to be in the middle of.

In my case, the Bank said they had no idea where the money was after they stole it. How does $1 billion leave a bank without a withdrawal of some sort? Had it not been for my clients standing with me and doing what I told them to do and then sued HSBC, they would have gotten nothing, the government would have claimed I lost it all and the ban was not responsible. The government then put a gag order on me to stop me from helping my clients against the bank! If the bank was not trying to take my client’s money to cover their losses in Russia, then why put a gag order on me if the bank did not do anything wrong?

Then to hide my profits, the receiver handed the notes we issued to HSBC for them to redeem for $606 million pocketing $400 million profit stolen from my company. A former employee bumped into a former HSBC official and he asked what the hell went on. The bankers bluntly told him, the deal offered by the government was too good to pass up. When I asked a NY lawyer why no banker ever is charged or goes to jail, he laughed and said: “You don’t shit where you eat!”

Remember the 1995 collapse of the British Barings Bank because of a “rogue” trader? Nicholas William Leeson was an English former derivatives trader whose claimed fraudulent, “unauthorized and speculative trades” resulted in the 1995 collapse of Barings Bank, the United Kingdom’s oldest merchant bank. Leeson was convicted of financial crime in Singapore court and served over four years in Changi Prison. At the time, I owned a Brokerage House I was asked to bail out by the Japanese government. At our Hong Kong office, Barings wanted to open an account to trade with Leeson in charge.

I knew the corruption of the banks and if the trade went wrong, they would claim he was not authorized. That was the standard operational procedure. Knowing the inside of the industry out, I insisted on a letter from the Board of Directions expressly laying out the credit line for Leeson they requested from my company. I got the letter. So when Leeson supposedly went belly up, guess what. I was quietly paid when everyone else it was said Leeson was a rogue trader.

The New York Post journalist Isabel Vincent who wrote Gilded Lilly, the wife of Edmond Safra, had called me and asked that since I had said that Republic National Bank, Edmond Safra’s, had been illegally trading in my accounts, did I think they were laundering money for the Russian mafia “as they were doing in Madoff’s?” I said I did not know. All I could tell was there were countless errors constantly being put into my accounts and then backed out. At first, I assumed they were “parking trades” in my accounts to use my cash for their margin. Of course, if the “error” was backed out to a different account, they indeed, they were engaging in money laundering.

The court-appointed forensic accountant even wrote to the court about the unprecedented errors in the accounts. The government refused to provide account information to allow them to audit what was going on. The court-appointed counsel, David Cooper, I believe was doing everything he could to help the government cover everything up. The forensic accountant then sent letters to the Judge, and he took no action.

You now have the FTX scandal. You will see that there will NEVER be a trial that would expose all the money laundering where the Democrats had Zelensky, which supposedly needed money to defend his country and fee starving Ukrainians, hand the money to FTX who then happened to be the #2 donor to the Democrats for the midterms. Guess what! Sam Bankman-Fried was charged in the most corrupt court in the nation – the Southern District of New York. The Court of Appeals admitted on page 97 of US v Ziccehtello, that judges are altering transcripts and changing the very words spoken in court.  That is 20 years in prison if you or I alter court documents. They do it all the time. When I confronted Judge Richard Owen about this practice, so many people showed up in court to see what would happen. The lawyers said you can’t accuse a federal judge of committing a crime. I said you all say they do it. They responded. Yes, but you cannot accuse them of doing it. The judge got scared and admitted it in public but claim it wasn’t material.

All the press was there AP, New York Times, Bloomberg, NT Post, you name it. NOT a single member of the press reported what took place that day. OMG! Exposing the federal courts corruption? Impossible!

If a case is a high profile, you will NEVER see the truth in the media.

Tucker Carlson Outlines How the National Security State is Superseding Elections by Controlling Politicians


Posted originally on the CTH on January 17, 2023 | sundance 

During his opening monologue last night, Fox News host Tucker Carlson hit on an important aspect to the classified document saga. The professional bureaucracy within Washington DC is now the superseding agency controlling the outcomes of elections.

Unnamed and opaque officials within the DHS and FBI manipulated the 2020 election by controlling the public conversation. Then, after the election takes place, the similarly mined administrative state employees, then begin using their control systems to manipulate the policy outcomes of the politicians. In essence, the desires of the voters are irrelevant to the permanent bureaucratic state in Washington DC. WATCH:

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Ukraine Weighs BAKHMUT Retreat Due To RUSSIAN Offensive


The Dive With Jackson Hinkle Streamed on: Jan 15, 11:07 pm EST

Why Are Ancient Coins Rising in Price?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Ancient History Re-Posted Jan 16, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: I went to the New York show and I sat in on that CNG auction to watch the Diocletian medallion. A friend said you told him you thought it would bring $750,000 on an estimate of $500,000. Well, it brought $1.9 million to everyone’s shock. It seemed that prices were generally double estimates on most things. I was curious if you would comment on that.

Cheers

CP

ANSWER:  Yes I know. I was watching it online. I do not know who was the buyer or the underbidder. One dealer told me it was a collector. Ancient coins are rising because they are a global market. If you have American, British, or German coins, naturally the best market will be in those countries. However, when it comes to ancients, there are buyers in China and Russia coming into the marketplace in addition to Americans and Europeans.  Simply put, ancients are a global market for they bring to life history and much of history has even been confirmed by the coinage.

The prices have continued to rise even in the face of rising interest rates and the Fed’s attempt to cause a soft landing. The fact that these coins are still rising sharply confirms what I have been warning that our computer does NOT see another Great Depression and complete collapse in the share market. We are in this trend where money is simply trying to get off the grid.

Posner on NATO v Russia


Armstrong Economics Blog/Russia Re-Posted Jan 16, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

Interesting Discussion – David Sacks Provides Context on Using the Twitter Files as Gateway for New House Subcommittee


Posted originally on the CTH on January 16, 2023 | sundance 

I generally hit and miss most podcasts, often stumbling across content as an outcome of other people sharing and asking for review, analysis and opinion.  You could spend all day listening/watching various podcasts, and quite frankly who has that much time.  That said, this discussion has some great content as outlined by David Sacks.

Mr. Sacks is connected to some of the Twitter aspects and has a good perspective on processes being revealed in the Twitter Files.  Essentially the internal filtration team is applying keystroke inquiries into the Twitter electronic archives, based on terms given by the journalists.  Similar to FOIA but in a public company.  Something akin to how the discovery process would work if being done by lawyers.  {Direct Rumble Link}

Sacks has a very pragmatic outlook on the bigger picture but shares his overall perspective on what he views as the most disturbing revelations about the entire Deep State connection to efforts at controlling public speech.   Forward the interview to around the 00:07:50 point, for a great several minutes of analysis.  WATCH:

Twitter Files, Deep State and the Future of the GOP – A Discussion with Tech Visionary David Sacks