Economy Loaded With Red Flags
Despite governmental claims about the positive state of the recovery, evidence keeps piling up on the opposite side. The latest economic numbers are not only ugly but when put in context of the picture we had in 2006, they are downright frightening.
In the first two months of the 2015, the economic activity averaged only $15.67 trillion annually with both months coming in just over $1.31 trillion each. In 2006 America hit its highwater mark at $16.3 trillion. So, in pure numbers alone, we are still $600 billion short, just under 4% behind, where we were nine years past and far below the $24 trillion threshold the CBO claims we hit last year when it claimed the acknowledged national debt was only 79% of the economy.
That would be a setback in anybody's ledger but it gets worse when you project it against the estimated population of America in 2006 against the estimated population for 2015 as compiled by the Census Bureau. In 2006 it estimated the number of Americans at 292 million. We are now approaching the 322 million mark.
This means for every dollar of economic activity each consumer had in 2006, there was only 81 cents worth so far in 2015. This does not figure in inflation but is merely in raw numbers.
Against this backdrop the analysis released Wednesday by former White House budget director David Stockman, is not surprising. Stockman showed why business inventories are backing up quite rapidly and are an omen of a 'violent liquidation process' coming up--much like the one that caused the recession n the housing market.
Stockman asserted investors should not be taken in by March retail figures that showed positive momentum. "We spent four years digging out of the hole after the recession officially ended [June 2009]," wrote Stockman. "It might look like progress if you ignore where you started."
What really alarmed Stockman was the fact total business sales (manufacturing, wholesale and retail) continues to falter even as inventories expand.
"Business sales of $1.313 trillion in February were essentially flat with January, meaning the first quarter through two months is down 2% from the fourth quarter of 2014 and down 3% from the six month figure for 2014," he noted.
Combine Stockman's analysis with a St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank report on the state of the average American consumer last Sunday and the picture grows even grimmer. "Families that are neither rich nor poor, may be under more downward economic pressure than common but simplistic rank-based measures of income or wealth would suggest."
The study demonstrates real income for average Americans has not matched that of their parents yet, even with additional education. If the education of the younger generation did not match their parents' than they were much worse off.
The problem is because recessions are part of a natural economic cycle to eliminate dead wood in any economy. Government intervention halted much of that impetus and the actions of the current Administration in promoting more costly alternative fuel, which has emphatically wasted trillions of dollars while adding sharply-rising prices to many everyday goods, have not helped.
The government actions supported the financial sector, the auto industry and many green technologies which would otherwise have failed miserably on their own. That would have been rough. But we would be starting over with a clean slate in the economy by now. Instead we are still mired in a thick mud and the 'experts' cannot fathom why.
Obama Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers is one of those befuddled.
"The greater risks are on the side of an slowdown and stagnation, rather than on the side of overheating and inflation," claimed the Harvard prof in an interview with CNBC Monday. But he was putting all his eggs in the basket where the initial consumer expenditure report showed a whopping .3% increase, year-over-year, in February. That small an increase in a year, spread over a larger population base, doesn't feed the cat.
Summers used this single item to show the economy still has a ways to go before it can hit the 2% annual growth target of the Fed. But he is, like most economists, missing the boat because he continues to equate economic activity in terms of dollars only. Look at the units sold of each item.
The slowdown there is noticeable and devastating to the claims of a recovery. If unit sales across the board were picking up, then we would be on the recovery road in earnest.
But the building inventory stockpiles negate even the .3% gain Summers points to in his interview. The .3% gain is only because the Fed printed so many devalued dollars and shoved them into the financial arena. The extra 3.7 trillion in fiat is hanging over America's jugular like a Domacles sword.
The economy is not picking up steam except by comparisons of a dollar that is worth less than 18 percent of what it was before the recession hit. This may delay the lifting of interest rates until September.
But even that will not make a difference until the Washington structure pulls back and lets the economy go where it wants.
There's a lot of dead wood to be cleaned out of the system--and not all of it is economic. There is political dead wood as well.
"I have sworn on the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man."--Thomas Jefferson
- American exceptionalism is no mistake, and it started with God. Globalism seeks to level the playing field by devaluing our God, our currency and our country. The solution? Return to God. It's been done before, and it's going to happen again. So are you a part of the solution...or part of the problem?
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