Gaslit…
Tag: economy
Government Job Numbers Make No Sense
The Bureau of Labor Statistic (BLS) released new jobs data on Friday. According to the report, seasonally adjusted total nonfarm jobs rose 339,000 jobs in May, well above forecasts. The unemployment rate rose slightly from 3.4 percent to 3.7 percent (month over month).
Headlines in the mainstream media declared the headline employment data to be evidence of very strong job growth and economic success. According to Politico, the latest jobs numbers are evidence of a “remarkable resilience of President Joe Biden’s economy” and NPR declared the job market to be “sizzling hot.”
Yet, May appears to be yet another month in which it seems nearly every economic indicator except the payroll jobs data points to an economic slowdown. The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is in recession territory. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is, too. The Leading Indicators index keeps looking worse. The yield curve points to recession. Even Federal Reserve staffers, who generally take an implausibly rosy view of the economy, predict recession in 2023. Individual bankruptcy filings were up 23 percent in May. Temp jobs were down, year-over-year, which often indicates approaching recession.
So how do we square all this with yet another jobs report that claims to tell us that the job market is the best it’s been in decades?
Well, a lot of the jobs data isn’t actually very good.
Drug And Food Shortages Are Here, And They Will Get A Lot Worse…
Once the pandemic subsided, global supply chains were supposed to return to normal. But now “hundreds of drugs” are in short supply in the United States, and even CNN is admitting that we are in the midst of “the worst food crisis in modern history”. As I did research for this article, I was stunned by what I discovered. Things are worse than I realized. I knew that a lot of drugs were in short supply, but it turns out that there have been shortages of many of our most basic antibiotics since last October, and now Pfizer is telling us that several types of penicillin will completely run out later this year…
Pfizer will run out of several doses of penicillin, which treat syphilis, strep throat, and other infections, later this year as shortages ripple across the US supply chain.
The company anticipates running out of the children’s dose of the syphilis drug Bicillin L-A by the end of June, according to a letter Pfizer posted Tuesday on the Food and Drug Administration’s website. The company says it’s prioritizing production of larger doses of Bicillin L-A, which is recommended for pregnant people with syphilis because it is the only drug that can pass through the placenta and also treat the fetus.
A different Pfizer penicillin, Bicillin C-R that treats other bacterial infections but not syphilis, is expected to run out in the third quarter, which ends Sept. 30. Pfizer’s penicillin has been in shortage since April.
Of course there are growing shortages of many other commonly used drugs.
For example, one recent survey discovered that most cancer centers in the U.S. “are reporting shortages of commonly used chemotherapy drugs”…
A recent survey found that a majority of cancer centers are reporting shortages of commonly used chemotherapy drugs used to treat a wide variety of cancers.
Much of the current shortage stems from the temporary closure of a drug manufacturing facility in India that happened after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found issues in the plant’s quality control.
After I first read that, I immediately had one burning question come to mind.
Why in the world are we having our chemotherapy drugs manufactured in India?
Once the war between the U.S. and China starts, it is going to be exceedingly difficult to get things shipped across the Pacific.
So what are we going to do then?
Commodity Prices Debunk The “Blame Ukraine” Excuse For Inflation
Most politicians have used the “Ukraine invasion card” to justify the massive inflationary burst in 2021-2023.
It does not matter if inflation was already elevated prior to the war.
Supply chain disruptions, demand recovery, wage growth… Many excuses were used to justify inflation, except the only one that can make aggregate prices rise in unison, which is the creation of more units of currency well above demand.
Inflationists will blame inflation on anything and everything except the only thing that makes all prices, which are measured in monetary units, rise at the same: Money supply growth rising faster than real economic output.
Supply chain disruption and commodity inflation are caused by monetary expansion: More units of currency going to relatively scarce assets. Profits, wages, or commodities are not causes of inflation, but consequences. The unit used to measure prices is weakened by massive increase of its supply. It is as if I sell apples measured in glasses of milk, and suddenly the issuer of milk puts hundreds of gallons more in the market. My apples will cost more glasses of milk to adjust to the reality of the new unit of measure.
Long-term inflation expectations have risen to 3%, the highest level in twelve years. Furthermore, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in April the Consumer Price Index increased 0.4 percent, seasonally adjusted (SA), and rose 4.9 percent over the past 12 months, not seasonally adjusted (NSA). The index for all items less food and energy increased 0.4 percent in April (SA); up 5.5 percent over the year (NSA). However, commodities have plummeted in the past year.
Crude oil (WTI) is down 38% in the past year, trading below pre-Ukraine invasion level. Gasoil (-44%), gasoline (-40%), heating oil (-44%), natural gas (Henry Hub -74% and NBP -65%) have all plummeted to pre-war levels.
Even wheat is down 30% from a year before June 4th, 2023. The FAO Food Price Index has also corrected to a two-year low in May.
Why do commodities plummet in the middle of the China recovery and elevated demand growth and tight supply? Monetary factors again. The massive rate hikes and the subsequent monetary contraction have impacted the internationally quoted prices of goods all over the world. It is more expensive to purchase storage, finance margin calls, hire tankers and start long positions.
If commodities and the Ukraine war were to blame for inflation, why is the consumer price index remain so elevated? Money supply growth is plummeting but not enough to revert the price expansion of 2020-2023 and, in fact, global money supply has not fallen lower than $101 trillion, according to Bloomberg. That is a significant drop in money supply from its highs, and one that justifies the rapid decline in headline inflation, but not enough to revert the price increases for consumers.
Three Lies They’re Telling You About The Debt Ceiling
Negotiations over increasing the federal debt ceiling continue in Washington. As has occurred several times over the past twenty years, Republicans and Democrats are presently using increases in the debt ceiling as a bargaining chip in negotiating how federal tax dollars will be spent.
Most of this is theater. We know how these negotiations always end: the debt ceiling is always increased, massive amounts of new federal debt are incurred, and federal spending continues its upward spiral. In fact, since the last time we endured a major debate over the debt ceiling—back in 2013—the national debt has nearly doubled, soaring from $16.7 trillion ten years ago to $32 trillion in 2023. Over that same period, federal spending has increased more than 80 percent from $3.4 trillion in fiscal year 2013 to $6.2 trillion in fiscal year 2022.
So here we are again with policymakers essentially discussing how long it will take for the national debt and federal budget to double again. As far as Washington is concerned, that’s all fine. The debt ceiling will rise sizably. We know this because what really matters—as far as DC policymakers are concerned—is that the taxpayer gravy train never stops. Equally important is that the federal government not default on any of its massive debt to ensure continued access to cheap debt—and thus massive amounts of deficit spending—now and forever.
To take this narrative at face value, however, we have to buy into some big myths that policymakers are quite enthusiastic about repeating.
These lies persist because the regime needs to convince the voters and the taxpayers that no matter what happens, no major changes to the tax-and-spend status quo can ever be allowed to occur.
Biden Policies Could Spell the End of Freelance Contractors, Republicans Say
Republican members of Congress say President Joe Biden’s administration is waging war on independent contractors. Democrats counter that they are trying to ensure workers are not exploited and businesses compete on a level playing field.
Kim Kavin, a freelance writer from New Jersey, said this is not a partisan issue.
“Our members have voted for everybody from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump,” Kavin told the Subcommittee on Workforce Protection of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
“All of us are in agreement on this.”
Kavin is one of five witnesses called before the committee for a hearing entitled “Examining Biden’s War on Independent Contractors.”
The hearing was called because the Biden administration is pushing a policy to deny Americans a fundamental right, according to Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.).
“Today’s hearing is about the right to earn a living. In a free society, few rights are as fundamental,” he said.
Countless Americans Plunge Into Despair As Hunger Spreads Like Wildfire All Across America
We haven’t seen anything like this in a long time. A couple of factors are combining to push millions of Americans into a state of food insecurity. First of all, food prices have been rising aggressively throughout the past year, and so our money does not go nearly as far as it once did. Meanwhile, food stamp benefits are being slashed. The federal government had greatly enhanced food stamp benefits for many Americans during the pandemic, but now that emergency program is coming to an end. So what this means is that many Americans are going to have very little money to spend on food at a time when economic conditions are starting to get really rough.
The Washington Post recently sent a reporter named Tim Craig to Kentucky, and he discovered that poor people are waiting in “a mile-long line” just to get some free food…
As he claimed the first spot in a mile-long line for free food in the Appalachian foothills, Danny Blair vividly recalled receiving the letter announcing that his pandemic-era benefit to help buy groceries was about to be slashed.
Kentucky lawmakers had voted to end the state’s health emergency last spring, by default cutting food stamp benefits created to help vulnerable Americans like Blair weather the worst of covid-19. Instead of $200 a month, he would get just $30.
Blair actually gets up at 4 AM in the morning so that he can be first in line for these handouts.
On the Friday that the reporter from the Washington Post interviewed him, he ended up staying in that line for nine hours.
I couldn’t imagine waiting in line for that long, but Blair feels like this is what he and his wife must do in order to survive…
Can’t Afford Groceries In Biden’s America? Wall Street Journal Says Just Don’t Eat!
As many Americans struggle to put food on the table, The Wall Street Journal proposed an idea this week: Instead of Biden taking responsibility for his destructive public policy, you should just skip breakfast.
Titled “To Save Money, Maybe You Should Skip Breakfast,” the article analyzed three popular breakfast foods — eggs, juice, and cereal — and offered explanations for why they cost significantly more since last year. According to the Journal, eggs are up a whopping 70 percent, frozen orange juice is up more than 12 percent, and cereal is up 15 percent since just one year ago.
Why the crippling increases? The explanations were as plentiful as they were diverse: avian flu, bad weather, citrus disease, dead chickens, and Vladimir Putin.
Global food supply includes a myriad of liabilities and moving parts, and of course, a drop in supply will play in role in rising prices. But the Journal neglected to mention perhaps the most important contributor to Americans’ economic woes: Biden’s apparently limitless federal spending.
Distract, Divide and Conquer: The Painful Truth About the State of Our Union
Step away from the blinders that partisan politics uses to distract, divide and conquer, and you will find that we are drowning in a cesspool of problems that individually and collectively threaten our lives, liberties, prosperity and happiness.
These are not problems the politicians want to talk about, let alone address, yet we cannot afford to ignore them much longer.
Foreign interests are buying up our farmland and holding our national debt. As of 2021, foreign persons and entities owned 40.8 million acres of U.S. agricultural land, 47% of which was forestland, 29% in cropland, and 22% in pastureland. Foreign land holdings have increased by an average of 2.2 million acres per year since 2015. Foreign countries also own $7.4 trillion worth of U.S. national debt, with Japan and China ranked as our two largest foreign holders of our debt.
Corporate and governmental censorship have created digital dictators. While the “Twitter files” revealed the lengths to which the FBI has gone to monitor and censor social media content, the government has been colluding with the tech sector for some time now in order to silence its critics and target “dangerous” speech in the name of fighting so-called disinformation. The threat of being labelled “disinformation” is being used to undermine anyone who asks questions, challenges the status quo, and engages in critical thinking.
Middle- and lower-income Americans are barely keeping up. Rising costs of housing, food, gas and other necessities are presenting nearly insurmountable hurdles towards financial independence for the majority of households who are scrambling to make ends meet. Meanwhile, mounting layoffs in the tens of thousands are adding to the fiscal pain.
The government is attempting to weaponize mental health care. Increasingly, in communities across the nation, police are being empowered to forcibly detain individuals they believe might be mentally ill, even if they pose no danger to others. While these programs are ostensibly aimed at getting the homeless off the streets, when combined with the government’s ongoing efforts to predict who might pose a threat to public safety based on mental health sensor data (tracked by wearable data and monitored by government agencies such as HARPA), the specter of mental health round-ups begins to sound less far-fetched.
The military’s global occupation is spreading our resources thin and endangering us at home. America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin. In 2022 alone, the U.S. approved more than $50 billion in aid for Ukraine, half of which went towards military spending, with more on the way. The U.S. also maintains some 750 military bases in 80 countries around the world.
Inflation Used To Squeeze The Middle Class. Now It’s Hitting The Poor The Hardest
The primary burden of inflation has shifted from middle class to low-income households thanks to a shift in the spending categories hardest hit by price hikes, according to a study published Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
At the onset of rising inflation in the spring of 2021, middle-income households, defined as those earning between $50,000 and $150,000 per year, bore the brunt of inflation as they purchased more used cars and gasoline than other demographics, according to the New York Fed. However, as the cost of gas falls and the price of food and housing surges, lower-income households, defined as those earning less than $50,000, now face higher effective costs — roughly 0.3 percentage points higher than average — since they spend a larger portion of their income on food and housing than middle and high-income households.
“As of December 2022, the bottom 40 percent have the highest year-on-year inflation rate of the three groups, and the inflation rate of the middle-income group is below the national average,” the report reads. “It is likely the case that the same rate of inflation represents a greater welfare loss for lower-income than higher-income households because of the former’s lower capacity for substituting to less expensive goods, greater liquidity constraints, and larger marginal utility of real income.”
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.