Sep 9 2024

How to Read the July Jobs Report

Posted Sep 9, 2024 By Martin Armstrong

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its report for July, indicating a slight uptick in employment. It is difficult to trust BLS data after their latest data revision that showed the Biden-Harris Administration have failed to create new jobs outside of the public sector. It was their steepest revision to data since 2009, yet all eyes were on July’s report. The headlines are optimistic about the workforce but fail to note two main issues – manufacturing is declining while the public sector is rising.

Manufacturing appeared flat during Q1 but it has been on the decline ever since as corporations move their operations overseas to avoid US regulation and taxation. The Biden-Harris Administration pledged to attract 1 million new manufacturing jobs in 2024. They believe that the CHIPS Act, Inflation Reduction Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act will attract business and spent billions on these measures that have failed to produce a single job. Initial data claimed that manufacturing was soaring under Biden but that was only due to businesses reopening after the pandemic. The BLS first claimed Biden added 765,000 manufacturing jobs before revising that figure down by 115,000 but even that was completely inaccurate. Estimates now believe manufacturing sharply declined by 96,000 by mid-2022 and has been contracting ever since. The most recent report found that July shed 24,000 positions but we should expect this figure to be optimistic.

Trump added 462,000 to the sector during his first two years before it declined by 43,000 during 2019. The COVID lockdowns caused the sector to plummet by 1.4 million jobs, 770,000 positions were later recovered before Trump left office but there was a net loss of 188,000 positions by the end of Trump’s term.

The White House promotes the manufacturing propaganda on its website:

“While our work isn’t finished, Bidenomics is already delivering for the American people. Our economy has added more than 13 million jobs—including nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs—and we’ve unleashed a manufacturing and clean energy boom.”

Admittedly, the sector was always beginning to see problems before Biden took office, however, Biden then spent hundreds of billions on acts to attract manufacturing and they ALL failed. BIDENOMICS HAS FAILED.

The White House paints a different picture:

“None of this progress was an accident or inevitable—it has been a direct result of Bidenomics. And rather than taking us back to the failed trickle-down policies of the past, President Biden is committed to finishing the job and continuing to build an economy that finally works for working families—with better jobs, lower costs, and more opportunity.”

Then we have the growing public sector that multiplied under Biden-Harris. The public sector added an additional 24,000 positions in July. Biden openly stated that he wanted to expand the government by at least 82,000 positions in FY24 and this seems to be the one promise he made good on. Every federal agency received a budget boost for this fiscal year with an emphasis on increasing the Treasury Department.

Bidenomics has failed and businesses continue to flee overseas. America is beginning to see a recession in manufacturing at a time when the US needs to produce more. Instead, we are wasting countless resources by growing government to the highest level since World War II. The proper way to analyze this jobs report is to view it as expenses rising and production declining. This will contribute to the coming stagflation that we will see in this economy as GDP declines.

Sep 8 2024

Colin Gray, Father of 14-Year-Old School Shooter, Charged with Murder and Manslaughter

Posted originally on the CTH on September 7, 2024 | Sundance

This is an interesting aspect to the latest school shooting in Georgia, and I’m not sure exactly what to think of this new approach. The father of the 14-year-old shooter Colt Gray, has been arrested and charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation announced the arrest of Colin Gray, the father of Colt Gray, the 14-year-old boy accused of opening fire at Apalachee High School, resulting in the deaths of four individuals including two students and two teachers.

Colin Gray, aged 54, faces severe charges including four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children, highlighting the escalating scrutiny on parental responsibilities in safeguarding firearms. (more)

Arrest warrants said he caused the deaths of others “by providing a firearm to Colt Gray with knowledge that he was threat to himself and others.”

(Via CNN) – […] “The key issue in the case against the father here will be: recklessness, foreseeability, how he handled the gun in relation to his son,” Toobin told CNN on Thursday night.

Colin Gray could face up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all counts, state Judge Currie Mingledorff said during a Friday hearing.

Central to the case against Gray will be an interaction the father and his son had with law enforcement more than a year before Wednesday’s mass shooting; the teenager’s access to the weapon used in the attack; and what the father knew about the boy’s mental state, experts told CNN, as a portrait of the teenager’s tumultuous family life emerges.

In May 2023, law enforcement questioned Colt and his father about online threats “to commit a school shooting,” the FBI has said. Colt at the time denied making the threats, and his father told authorities his son did not have unsupervised access to hunting guns in the house.

Just seven months later, the suspect’s father purchased the firearm allegedly used in the mass shooting as a holiday present for his son, two law enforcement sources told CNN. The AR-15-style rifle was bought at a local gun store as a Christmas present, one source said. (read more)

On its face, this does seem like the action of a reckless parent in purchasing a firearm for his son just after there was evidence linking the son to online threats of violence. And yes, factually there are several precedents for parents being held criminally responsible for the actions of their minor children. However, I’m not sure about the criminal justice system being consistent and charging a parent with second degree murder.

There are hundreds of non-school fatal shootings that could be tied to the reckless action of parents, either by willful blindness or complicity; some in gang related killings.

Is it just the venue, the school shooting aspect, that suddenly draws the attention toward the father Colin Gray?

What about the youth shootings in Chicago, Los Angeles or Baltimore that are carried out by underage teens and yet the parents are never charged. What happens in those cases.

What are your thoughts about this new accountability model being placed upon the parents?

Sep 6 2024

Goldman Sachs Predicts Stronger Economy Under Harris

Posted Sep 6, 2024 By Martin Armstrong

Goldman Sachs, or Government Sachs as they are known in the industry, has bet on the establishment candidate. The person who has already spent four years in the White House will somehow repair the damage they caused to the US economy, according to Goldman Sachs, who strongly believes America should stay on the same losing trajectory.

“We estimate that if Trump wins in a sweep or with divided government, the hit to growth from tariffs and tighter immigration policy would outweigh the positive fiscal impulse” from maintaining most tax cuts, Goldman economists stated. Remember that Goldman Sachs places their employees within the US government as there is an ongoing revolving door. “We estimate that the contribution from immigration to labor force growth if Harris wins would be 10,000 per month higher than if Trump wins with divided government,” and 30,000 a month higher than if Trump secures the vote.

Goldman Sachs Predicts Stronger Economy Under Harris

Posted Sep 6, 2024 By Martin Armstrong |

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America has spent billions on the migrant crisis which has toppled state and city budgets. We have over 8 million newcomers now living solely off government assistance. Goldman is preaching the same propaganda that these migrants are needed for America’s workforce, despite recent data showing a major slow in hiring in addition to numerous adjusted jobs reports that show NO new jobs have been created outside the public sector under Biden-Harris. They believe GDP would peak by 0.5 percentage points in Q2 of 2025 under a Trump victory.

A Harris victory would lead to a “very slight” boost in GDP compared to Trump, as “new spending and expanded middle-income tax credits would slightly more than offset lower investment due to higher corporate tax rates.” The “experts” believe that “the effects of policy changes would be small and neutral on net,” but the truth of the matter is that a Harris victory would guarantee a major economic downturn. It is astonishing that they expect the public to believe that the middle class will increase their spending through tax credits. They simply do not understand that a lack of confidence is the reason that people hoard, and under this economy, the middle class does not have any disposable income to spend.

Then they state that Trump’s tariffs on China, Mexico, and EU would cause inflation to rise by 30 to 40 bps. I do not support tariffs but we are seeing the Biden Administration slam China with new tariffs and one could reasonably believe Kamala would do the same. Do they understand Kamala’s corporate tax hike proposition and how that would decimate America’s ability to compete?

Harris is proposing taxing capital gains including UNREALIZED gains. The American public has nothing left to offer Uncle Sam and rest assured Harris will raise taxes as her countless spending packages come at a price. Goldman Sachs completely failed to consider the impact government spending has had on the overall economy.

Most importantly, Government Sachs did not factor in the strongest driver of inflation – WAR. War produces nothing and will not lead to an economic increase. Kamala Harris along with Joe Biden helped America become completely embedded in Ukraine and now Israel. Trump is the only candidate who wants to stop sending endless checks to Ukraine and end the war.

These reports are meant to mislead the public and are nothing more than establishment propaganda.

Sep 6 2024

Prisons Collaborate with the Private Sector – Free Labor

Posted originally on Sep 6, 2024 By Martin Armstrong

Slavery is alive and well in the United States. Two-thirds of US prisoners, 800,000 men and women, have jobs in federal and state prisons. While 80% of prisoners work to maintain the prison in terms of maintenance, a growing portion of prisoners hold jobs for private companies. Estimates that that these prisoners are producing at least $11 billion annually for the US government and receiving little to nothing in return.

Non-industry workers can earn between 13 cents to 52 cents per hour. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas are not required to pay these workers. “There’s no way we can take care of our facilities, our roads, our ditches, if we didn’t have inmate labor,” Warren Yeager, a former Gulf county, Florida, commissioner said to the Florida Times-Union. In other words, states have become reliant on free labor from prisoners and actively put this into their budgets.

What some do not understand is that private companies are also employing prisoners. McDonald’s, Burger King, Golden Corral, Walmart, Wendy’s, IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Texas Instruments, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, and Target are among hundreds of private companies that have active agreements with state governments to farm out their prisoners. The private companies pay the prisons directly, bypassing the people who are forced to work long hours with no protections.

These workers have a far lower rate at being released on parole. The state believes they are safe enough to work among the public, but refuse to offer them an opportunity to leave. Only non-violent offenders are offered these jobs and most are swindled into accepting the positions to obtain favorable housing.

Alabama, for example, allows non-violent prisoners to work in the private sector for pennies. Yet, the state takes away 40% of their pay before taxes, charges them fees for transportation, laundry, and any extras they find. Alabama now earns more than $450 million annually on the backs of these workers. It comes at no surprise that the parole rate in Alabama plummeted to 8% in 2023.

American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found that over 75% of workers are unable to take off work, and if they do, they risk being sentenced to solitary confinement and prevented from visitations with their families. About 70% of these workers said they cannot even afford to call home or purchase soap. They are denied all rights and treated as sub-humans. “The United States has a long, problematic history of using incarcerated workers as a source of cheap labor and to subsidize the costs of our bloated prison system,” said Turner, a principal human rights researcher with the ACLU’s Human Rights Program.

“The private contracting of prisoners for work fosters incentives to lock people up. Prisons depend on this income. Corporate stockholders who make money off prisoners’ work lobby for longer sentences, in order to expand their workforce. The system feeds itself,” notes a study study by the Progressive Labor Party, which accuses the US prison complex of being “an imitation of Nazi Germany with respect to forced slave labor and concentration camps.”

Private prisons, in general, operate as businesses as they are guaranteed a fee per inmate, which US taxpayers pay. The majority of people are African American and Hispanic, but we hear silence from communities demanding reparations and failing to acknowledge that modern-day slavery is alive and well in the US. The private sector is creating jobs for the prison industry on behalf of the US government and this is one of the reasons that we see a decline in available jobs. The business is extremely lucrative because they profit on holding the inmates as well as forcing them to work.

So, these human beings were deemed stable enough to work unsupervised with the public. Yet, those same decision-makers turn around at sentencing and tell these workers that they are simply too dangerous to return home. This is why the United States, home of the free, hosts the largest prison population in the world. It always comes down to greed and money.

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