Tag Archives: Naked Shorts

May 16 2023

Biden Nominates First Hispanic Woman to Fed Board – Who is She?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Central Banks Re-Posted May 16, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

The headlines praise Biden for nominating the first Latina woman to the Federal Reserve’s board. None of the current headlines list her qualifications, which is a given since this administration favors diversity over experience. I, for one, would like to know more about the people being placed in positions of power since their nationality has no relation to their responsibilities. Yet Sen. Robert Menendez (D, NJ) continually criticized the Fed for not having any Latino members. Let us look into Adriana Kugler, who may become very influential in the financial world.

Kugler, 53, was an executive director for the World Bank. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from McGill University in 1991, graduating with first-class honors in economics and political science. She was awarded her Ph.D. in Economics by the University of California at Berkeley in 1997. She worked as the chief economist for the Labor Department under Obama from September 2011 to January 2013 as well.

A recent article from the Wall Street Journal actually shines some light on Kugler and her policies. The picture they used of her was taken at a World Economic Forum event. She fought for the US government to provide families with $26,400 in funding during the pandemic and proposed three separate pilot programs to raise unemployment benefits. “For every one dollar that we put into the pockets of the unemployed working Americans, two dollars ripple throughout the economy, and it’s actually a win-win—it helps everybody,” she said. Well, that line is troublesome for obvious reasons since inflation should be the top priority for the Fed.

She is a proponent of closing the wage gap and eliminating income inequality. She penned an article about “income redistribution in the form of tax and transfer programs” to offer social insurance for the poor.

“Income redistribution in the form of tax and transfer programs provide social insurance and protection against many types of risks over a person’s lifetime and over his or her career that are not always provided through private insurance. Thus, social insurance in the form of transfer programs—such as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, program; Medicaid; the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps; and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, more commonly referred to as WIC—allows individuals to make decisions that involve higher risk, while at the same time affording them greater mobility than they would otherwise undertake.”

She argues that America needs a “more progressive tax system” in addition to “transfer programs” to redistribute wealth. “[P]rogressive taxation and transfer to the poor is not only the right thing to do; it is the smart thing to do,” the new Fed appointee stated.

The World Bank executive is also a big proponent of open immigration policies and climate change initiatives. “It is the biggest existential threat of our time, and I do believe that we need domestic action to go hand in hand with global leadership on climate change,” she claimed.

Biden has also elevated Philip Jefferson to be the Fed’s vice chair, making him the #2 guy at the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is intended to be separate from the government, but Biden is installing people who openly hold partisan views regarding economics. Kugler supports Biden and the Build Back Better globalists in terms of her views on wealth redistribution, combining climate change with fiscal policy, government aid, increased social programs, and more. But hey, at least she is Hispanic and female.

May 16 2023

U.S. Virgin Islands Issues Subpoena to Elon Musk Questioning Connection to Jeffrey Epstein


May 15, 2023 | Sundance 

People have been gobsmacked by a seemingly 180° change in the ideological outlook of Twitter owner Elon Musk.  The hiring of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) czar Linda Yaccarino as CEO caught everyone by surprise. {link} A Day later he conceded a free speech position to the government of Turkey, agreeing to silence the political opposition of Recep Erdogan. {link}  Perhaps some clarity can be found in a recent Bloomberg article:

Pay attention to DATES:

(Bloomberg) Elon Musk was issued a subpoena by the US Virgin Islands in its lawsuit accusing JPMorgan Chase & Co. of knowingly benefiting from Jeffrey Epstein’s sex-trafficking.

The US territory said in court papers it had reason to believe Epstein may have referred or attempted to refer Musk to JPMorgan as a client. Several other billionaires, including the Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have also been issued subpoenas by the USVI.

The USVI on Monday asked the judge overseeing the case to authorize alternative means of serving the April 28 subpoena on Musk. The territory said it made good-faith efforts to obtain an address for Musk, including hiring private investigators, but had been unable to locate one. 

[…] The USVI subpoena seeks documents reflecting communications or meetings between Musk and JPMorgan or Musk and Epstein relating to the two men’s accounts at the bank. It also seeks from Musk any documents “regarding Epstein’s involvement in human trafficking” or concerning fees the Tesla CEO paid to Epstein or JPMorgan in connection with his accounts at the bank. (more) 

On April 18, 2023, Elon Musk meets Linda Yaccarino for the first time.

April 26, Elon Musk meets Chuck ‘six-ways-to-sunday’ Schumer.
“We talked about the future,” Musk told reporters after exiting the meeting that lasted about an hour. {link}

April 28, Attorney General of USVI triggers subpoena to Musk about Epstein.

First weeks of May, USVI investigators trying to serve Epstein subpoena on Musk.

May 12, Musk hires DEI advocate Linda Yaccarino as Twitter CEO.

A curious sequence of events that preceded Musk’s recent actions.

All probably just a coincidence.

However, Suspicious Cat remains, well, suspicious…

May 16 2023

John Durham Releases 316 Page Report About FBI, DOJ, Intelligence Community and U.S. Govt Targeting Donald Trump


May 15, 2023 | Sundance 

Special Counsel John Durham has released a highly anticipated 316-page report outlining corrupt U.S. activity during the targeting of presidential candidate, president elect, and subsequent President, Donald J Trump.

[FULL REPORT pdf HERE]

I have completed my first review of the report, and suffice to say the details within it are not new.  The majority of the reaction so far has been centered around how Special Counsel Durham is not prosecuting anyone for their corrupt conduct outlined within the report.  However, for the sake of this first review, I will draw attention to a few aspects you will likely not see discussed anywhere else.

Please note this detail found at the bottom of page 3 and top two lines of page #4:

[…] “The Office exercised its judgment regarding what to investigate but did not investigate every public report of an alleged violation of law in connection with the intelligence and law enforcement activities directed at the 2016 presidential campaigns.”

As perhaps the only person who tracked down and subsequently interviewed the investigators on the Durham team, and as a person who subsequently came away with a full understanding of how the silo operation inside this investigation was going to play out, I can reasonably assure you that notation and reference by team Durham is entirely directed to us.

That statement above tells us why none of the DC politicians who engaged in specific violations of law were criminally charged. This is part of the silo effect within government, which I will explain later.  As a good friend said, “Yeah great, but we don’t have badges.”  So, we went to the badges with the evidence, but the badges did not want to act upon the evidence, because it would have been, in their estimation, too damaging to the framework of our government.

First a positive note about the report.  Unlike all other reports of similar internal investigation, I will give the Durham team credit for not using the ‘executive summary’ of the report to cloud, positively shape or disguise the corruption outlined within the body of the report.  This is the first such report where the executive summary actually summarizes the scale of the corruption within the details.

Perhaps the parting message was considered, “If you are going to whitewash this s**t [ie entire govt operation], at least be intellectually honest with the American people, and not whitewash the investigation in the ‘executive summary’ of it.”  I’m pretty sure that was the exact parting phrase.  It was after that conversation [Aug 2020] when CTH then said, do not anticipate anything from Durham.  Bill Barr was the bondo, John Durham is the spray paint.

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The “Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns” is a full uncovering of just how politically corrupt the DOJ, FBI and larger Intelligence Community were/are as it relates to the 2016 election.

Team Durham, while not indicting anyone for ancillary crimes – of which there are many – does lay naked the motives and intentions of the people at the top of the FBI, DOJ, CIA and ODNI. The full weight of government was weaponized against Donald Trump and the Durham report lays out all the details.

It is the background of this report that stands as the current motive for those same institutions to remove Donald Trump in 2023. Quite simply, they fear retaliation.

[…] “If this report and the outcome of the Special Counsel’s investigation leave some with the impression that injustices or misconduct have gone unaddressed, it is not because the Office concluded that no such injustices or misconduct occurred. It is, rather, because not every injustice or transgression amounts to a criminal offense, and criminal prosecutors are tasked exclusively with investigating and prosecuting violations of U.S. criminal laws. And even where prosecutors believe a crime occurred based on all of the facts and information they have gathered, it is their duty only to bring criminal charges when the evidence that the government reasonably believes is admissible in court proves the offense beyond a reasonable doubt.” [Page #6]

Durham walks through the missing predicate that initiated the Trump-Russia investigation.  Essentially, as the Durham team noted, there was nothing ever to trigger the authority of the FBI to investigate Donald Trump or his campaign in the first place.

The Obama FBI and DOJ justified full physical and electronic surveillance of their political opposition, through false justifications manufactured by the FBI.  As Durham notes, “Our findings and conclusions regarding these and related questions are sobering.” Really, “sobering”?  Nice choice of understatement.

Everything was predicated on The Big Lie:

[…] As set forth in greater detail in Section IV.A.3 .b, before the initial receipt by FBI Headquarters of information from Australia on July 28, 2016 concerning comments reportedly made in a tavern on May 6, 2016 by George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign, the government possessed no verified intelligence reflecting that Trump or the Trump campaign was involved in a conspiracy or collaborative relationship with officials of the Russian government. 

Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation.

[…] As set forth in greater detail in Section IV, the record in this matter reflects that upon receipt of unevaluated intelligence information from Australia, the FBI swiftly opened the Crossfire Hurricane investigation. In particular, at the direction of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok opened Crossfire Hurricane immediately. Strzok, at a minimum, had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump. The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information.

Further, the FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence.

Had it done so, again as set out in Sections IV.A.3.b and c, the FBI would have learned that their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved with Russian leadership officials, nor were others in sensitive positions at the CIA, the NSA, and the Department of State aware of such evidence concerning the subject.

In addition, FBI records prepared by Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials.

The speed and manner in which the FBI opened and investigated Crossfire Hurricane during the presidential election season based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence also reflected a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaign. [Page 10]

I’ll have more on the substance of the report, as well as share the details of others following their review.  However, in the interim, it is important to understand how the investigative silos, created by DC administrators, impact the investigative outcomes as displayed in this report.

Former FBI Director James Comey is a criminal.  Former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe is a criminal. Former FBI Special Agent Peter Strzok is a criminal.  Current Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Senator Mark Warner, is a criminal.

Any criminal conduct that is discovered by a person who is not the direct victim of the criminal conduct does not penetrate the DC system.  Meaning, just because you can show criminal activity in Washington DC, that doesn’t mean anyone has a responsibility to investigate it.

If the criminal conduct is not identified by the investigators inside the DC system, the criminal conduct essentially does not exist – unless the evidence of criminal conduct in DC, is provided by a specific victim of the crime being reported.

There is a silo effect in place within the DC system that permits the investigative authorities to dismiss claims of institutional or administrative criminal conduct from outside entities, including ‘whistleblowers.’  The DOJ/FBI arbiters of what constitutes crime are the same DOJ/FBI arbiters in charge of protecting the institutional system.

If the DC system is threatened by the conduct of an outside entity, a crime may have been committed.  However, if an agent, operator, official or politician representing the DC system is the one threatening, there is no crime.  The justice system in DC is designed to protect itself.

Holding DC officials accountable for criminal conduct first requires the deconstruction of the silos that protect them.  Deconstructing those silos requires strategy and legislative willpower….

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May 14 2023

Ground Reports – What is Your Experience With Prices of “Processed Goods” at Stores?


Posted originally on the CTH on May 13, 2023 | Sundance 

Recently I went to the supermarket to pick up some general provisions.  Given the nature of previously predicted food price increases, and proactive measures to mitigate the predictable prices, I haven’t needed to purchase basic foodstuffs in a while.   Yikes!  The prices… Wow.

Since we originally warned in ’21 about the waves of food price inflation that were coming, the prices have more than tripled on many food commodities.  That part is not as surprising in current review; however, the prices of processed foodstuffs is, well, quite frankly astounding.

I am left to wonder how working-class people are able to afford the jaw dropping price increases in highly processed food products like condiments (mayo, ketchup, mustard, etc), and even coffee and milk.  I knew the processing costs would drive those prices, but the scale is just astounding.

Beyond the foodstuff, what was truly stunning was the current price of non-food items at the store.  Items like chemical cleaners, soaps, aluminum foil, trash bags, Styrofoam products, ziploc bags, paper goods, etc.   I mean seriously, $8 for a box of trash bags, good grief.

After a review of the non-food item prices, I went back to the recent BLS report [DATA HERE] to look at the producer price index to see if the data reflected the scale of the processing cost that I was reviewing across a broad spectrum of goods.

Are consumers getting gouged by manufacturers who are taking advantage of the price shock inside the ongoing inflation?

Or are the processing costs, mostly driven by energy price increases, really that big a factor in the end product as it is generated?

In the topline final demand Producer Price Index [Table A above] you can see how we are cycling through the second wave of inflation that hit in the spring of 2022.  The rate of price increase is lower, but the prices are still rising.  That means the prior massive price increase is now baked into the product, and the current price will never decline. Instead, it will just increase at a slower rate than before.

However, that’s not the full story… and that is not the data I was most curious about.

The intermediate product costs are really where the story is found.

Table B [DATA HERE] Tells us a remarkable story.

Raw materials (unprocessed goods) are essentially in a deflationary status [-19.2% in April].  Meaning demand for the raw material has dropped well below the available supply.  However, look at how much of the deflationary price is consumed in the processing of the raw materials.

A full 16% is consumed by processing cost increases [energy, physical plant, transit, production costs etc]. That is remarkable.

A random example might be citric acid.  The price of the citrus base drops 19.2%, but the processing of the base into the intermediate good phase chews up 16% of the drop in raw material price and exits processing only 3.2% lower in price than a year prior.

Another example might be found in plastics.  The petroleum base, and/or a combination of each material additive, might be 19.2% lower than prior year, but processing negates the lower raw material price, and exits into intermediate essentially even -.04, and then toward the ending +2.3% final demand change in the rate of price increase.

The PPI data is essentially showing the flow of costs of production as reflected in the impact during processing.  We can assume mostly increases in energy, transport and distribution costs to bring the raw material forward to final good status.

Key takeaway, the demand side of the raw material is diminished.  There is less raw material demand.  However, processing costs are continuing to drive the final production price of goods that head into the hands of wholesalers who then bring the product to market.

The outcome of this are the prices of processed goods as noted in the products on the shelves.

QUESTION: Are you noticing rather remarkable price increases in non-food goods during your store visits?

May 14 2023

The 12 Caesars


Armstong Economics Blog/Hoards Re-Posted May 13, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

As far as the 12 Caesars are concerned, I am doing my best to assemble a few sets. These are not easy to put together. Nevertheless, I am giving it a shot to see what I can do that would be reasonably priced, under that $100k people ask on the market. I believe reasonably excellent VF/XF sets for around $50,000. But this is not something that quantity exists. This is very hard to assemble. I’m still trying to fill in some gaps. They will be presented in a nice wooden case.

May 12 2023

Can Socrates find new solutions to Crises?


Armstrong Economics Blog/Socrates Re-Posted May 12, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

QUESTION: Allison Schrager at Bloomberg claimed that AI does a great job finding solutions based on existing rules and information. But it’s less suited for finding novel solutions to new problems. Somehow, this does not seem to apply to Socrates for there are no new problems anyway. Am I correct that Socrates will find new solutions?

GU

ANSWER: Yes, you are correct. However, Socrates has a database that is unprecedented and cost tens of millions of dollars to assemble. It can find solutions that are certainly not mainstream and may appear to be revolutionary but in fact, may have taken place even 2,000 years ago.

Socrates is NOT a Neutral Net. This is something I created from scratch. I put myself into this system. I had to teach Socrates how to analyze. I did not create some open AI and let it develop in some unknown manner. This is not Chat GPT where it is searching the net to come up with answers to what is the name of Lady GaGa’s dog.

Socrates has the largest financial database in the world. It has a money supply recreated from the coinage of thousands of years. It has correlated that with wars and plagues and it makes the connections. It has a database of 6,000 years which is unsurpassable. If I even tried to recreate this at today’s prices, it would be more than $1 billion.

Just on Forex Exchange, I had staff recording all the currencies back hundreds of years taking down quotes for all the world newspapers stored at the Royal Newspaper Library in London for years. Without that, we would never have been able to forecast that the pound would drop to par in 1985 when it was trading at $2.40.

What Socrates will do is it will test what attempts were made to solve crises in the past and what worked and what failed. Diocletian (284-305AD) imposed wage and price controls to try to stop inflation the same as Richard Nixon.

There was a major earthquake in Turkey that devastated the region. Emperor Tiberius issued coins to provide relief and suspended all taxes in the region to help rebuild. There have been so many different solutions that people today would never consider, but Socrates will.

May 12 2023

Here is a Larger Video of Socrates’ Solution


Armstrong Economics Blog/Socrates Re-Posted May 12, 2023 by Martin Armstrong

This was the Question asked:

Socrates, how do I solve a debt crisis without a default that is fair to both sides?

May 5 2023

The California Contagion – PacWest Teters on Becoming the Next Regional Bank to Collapse as Regional Banking Stocks Continue Severe Drops


Posted originally on the CTH on May 4, 2023 | Sundance 

According to those who relish the Cloward-Piven strategy, things are proceeding swimmingly.

…”As long as the decisionmakers continue doing the things that are creating the crisis, the crisis will continue.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said yesterday the “U.S banking system is sound and resilient,” insert uncomfortable snicker here.  However, uncertainty is continuing to pummel the banking industry, despite assurances from the Fed, Treasury, FDIC financial regulators and bankers such as Jamie Dimon who are all saying there is no crisis in the banking industry.

If you want to know the big picture source of the uncertainty, it’s the great pretending.  The average person can sense something is wrong, and the person who pays attention has the experience of institutional lying over the past several years.  The last ten years of lying and pretending has created the biggest collapse in institutional trust in U.S. history.

Russians interfered with the election – trust us. Stick this needle in your arm, it’s safe – trust us.  The FBI are the good guys – trust us. Biden won more votes – trust us. This inflation is merely transitory – trust us.

See the problem?

So, when the same voices shout, “the banking industry is sound, trust us,” well,… yeah, that suspicious cat sense that’s on high alert isn’t buying the chorus.

Reasonably intelligent people who accept things as they are, not as they would have us pretend them to be, can see the core connection to the World Economic Forum, Central Banks, and western globalist policy to change the entire dynamic of economics and finance around the “Climate Change” agenda, or Build Back Better, or Green New Deal.

Overlay that commonsense and pragmatic outlook with the logical consequences of the activity, and this banking collapse issue is a self-fulfilling prophecy.  As long as the decision makers continue doing the things that are creating the crisis, the crisis will continue.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – Regional-bank stocks tumbled Thursday despite assurances from the Federal Reserve that the banking system is on solid footing.

PacWest Bancorp PACW -47.04%decrease; red down pointing triangle, which has been hit hard since the collapses of several banks, dropped by about 40%. The stock started falling in after-hours trading Wednesday evening, after a report that it was considering selling itself.

PacWest said in a statement after midnight Eastern Time Thursday that its core customer deposits were up since the end of the first quarter, and that it hadn’t experienced any unusual deposit flows since the collapse of First Republic.

[…] Investors have been wondering how much further the problems in regional-banking could spread, and whether they will spill over to the broader economy. Some analysts said the decline in PacWest and others reflected the market’s tendency to view news as categorically good or bad, rather than worries about PacWest specifically. Western Alliance, another bank whose stock has been hit hard, fell by about 35%.

[…] Regional banks, as major lenders to businesses and families across the U.S., also tend to fall when investors are expecting a recession. The 10-year Treasury yield slipped this week, and Brent crude hit a 52-week low on Wednesday.

[…] On Wednesday afternoon, the Fed said the U.S. banking system “is sound and resilient,” echoing language from its March statement. Fed Chair Jerome Powell added then that deposit flows at banks had eased and that this week’s seizure and sale of First Republic should further stabilize the industry.

[…] PacWest shares were recently trading around $3.70, putting them on track for their lowest close on record. The stock has now lost some 85% of its value since March 8, the day that SVB spooked bank investors by announcing a loss and a planned capital raise.

Many of PacWest’s customers are tied to technology startups—a tightknit clientele that pulled from high-balance accounts en masse at Silicon Valley Bank before it failed. (more)

May 4 2023

Second Biden Removal Leverage Deployed and Timed to Coincide with First – Prosecutors Near Decision on Hunter Biden Indictment


Posted originally on the CTH on May 3, 2023 | Sundance | 

If you think about Joe Biden’s 4-year term in office as an intentionally constructed single term with no limits or consequences to the cascading damage inflicted; and if you think about the ideologues behind the plan to use cognitively challenged Biden as a tool to achieve their agenda; then everything from the way he was selected in 2020, to the disconnected and fragmented policy and Biden’s interpretation of them, just makes sense.

As our friend Lee Smith summed up in early 2021, “Joe Biden is an avatar for Barack Obama’s third term.”  That is what we have been witnessing.  A term in office where every policy wish list and far-left agenda item could be triggered without any care or consequence of political damage.

The people behind Biden are ideologues using this unique opportunity to further the “fundamental change.”  From that perspective every single granular move during the Biden term makes sense.  However, this also means there’s no term two in the design.   The damage will be so great, there’s no way for a second term.

Again, if you accept that background, and ignore the puppet presentations, everything currently underway that seemingly makes Biden look vulnerable and disposable makes sense.  It’s not Republicans trying to take him down, it’s Democrats – who will use republicans to assist them.

Into this landscape comes the second leverage point for the removal.  The vulnerability represented by Hunter Biden.  This approach also explains why the Hunter Biden investigation was completed long ago, and the Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco/Obama-minds were simply waiting for the timing of the election calendar.  Earlier today a Main Justice whistleblower provided the triggering mechanism for one removal approach.  Here is another:

WASHINGTON DC – Prosecutors are nearing a decision on whether to charge President Biden’s son Hunter with tax– and gun-related violations, according to people familiar with the matter, the culmination of a four-year investigation that Republicans have sought to portray as evidence the Biden family is corrupt.

Biden’s attorneys met at Justice Department headquarters in downtown Washington last week to discuss the case with U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. Typically, that sort of meeting — in which defense lawyers urge prosecutors not to seek an indictment of their client, or to seek reduced charges —comes toward the end of an investigation.

The people familiar with the matter said Weiss is nearing the end of his decision-making process, although they offered no specific timetable. They cautioned that the probe has taken longer than some officials thought it would, frustrating some law enforcement officials, and conceivably could slow down again before a decision has been reached. (read more)

Every single conflicting point reconciles, if you accept the Biden program was a one-term disposable effort.

The timing is up, now the removal leverage is deployed with enough time to present the branding needed for the Biden replacement.

Assets like Susan Rice are pulled from the White House.  The Obama embeds position to avoid damage, and the circumstances for Biden’s removal are created by the same people who control the collection of the evidence against him.

There isn’t going to be a Joe Biden DNC nominating convention in Chicago.  There isn’t going to be another presidential race by Biden; it was never the intention from the outset in the 2020 plan to use him.  Biden is in the process of being excommunicated from the party.  His usefulness exhausted, this is the disposal phase.

The only thing left to negotiate are the terms of the exit.

Apr 28 2023

First Quarter GDP +1.1% Reflects Military Spending on Ukraine War, and Drop in Domestic Investment Along with Inventories


Posted originally on the conservative tree house on April 27, 2023 | Sundance

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released their first quarter estimate of economic growth [DATA HERE] and the result of 1.1% growth shows how the U.S. economy has become dependent on government spending money we don’t have. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) calculation is a valuation of all goods and services created within the U.S. economy, minus the value of goods and services imported.

Keep in mind that all calculations are in dollar terms. Personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices increased 4.2% in the first quarter after increasing 3.7% in the fourth quarter. Excluding food and energy, the PCE “core” price index increased 4.9% after increasing 4.4%.   Two-thirds of the increased spending on goods was driven by higher prices, only one third by consumers purchasing more stuff.

Looking at Table 2 (the percentage change by sector) the increase in prices provided 2.48% lift to the GDP but the actual purchasing of goods only delivered 1.45%.  Meanwhile the decline in inventories subtracted 2.26% from the GDP, a major factor, and domestic investment has dropped subtracting 2.34%.

Government expenditures (+0.81) drove more than 70% of the total GDP growth as national defense spending (Ukraine War) was a major federal component.  The local and state government spending increase was driven by higher wage rates.   Don’t forget there’s $2.2 trillion in Inflation Reduction Act (Green New Deal) spending that is also within the economy.

Overall, this is a dark picture.  Inflation is still raging. Inventories are dropping as consumer purchasing is squeezed, and replacements goods are not being manufactured. Companies are tightening their belts.  The federal government is spending to try and assist the economy, but the private sector is contracting economic activity.

When households evaluate their checkbooks, a Biden administration claim of a growing economy falls flat – because the only part of the economy that is growing is the part that fuels the energy and security needs of Europe.  Main Street USA is suffering through the massive inflation that Joe Biden has created, and purchases of anything other than necessities have come to a near halt.