Looking Backwards …
LB #1
We have been waiting for confirmation that this tight financial cycle is over, and we have now received it loud and clear. In September, assumably, the Fed will start easing interest rates. Powell came out and announced it is time to change path. We have long called Jerome our Jedi, but I don’t see the logic in this unless it is to placate the markets and those that feed on the swollen teat of the market.
ZeroHedge has an article out after the announcement where they describe the four large problems with doing this and doing this now in particular. “First: the Fed will end its tightening cycle and starts the next easing cycle with stocks at all-time highs, something that has never before happened in the history of capital markets! Second, this is also the first time in history when the Fed has aborted a tightening cycle having achieved zero home price easing. Indeed, one look at the case-shiller index shows that home prices are the highest they have ever been… Third, while one can technically live without housing or rent, one still needs to eat. And here we find another problem, because not only did the Fed’s rate hikes not contain stock, home or rent prices, but food prices – both at home and away from home – are also at all time high! Fourth, and final, the seeds of the next inflationary bubble are already set, because even as the Fed kept conditions tight (or even exceptionally tight), M2 – the broadest money aggregate tracked by the Fed – is once again rising after declining for the past three years.”
So the question we ask is why. Why now?
Stupid is as stupid does Ma’am
LB #2
Perhaps one of the reasons why Powell has decided to switch gears on interest rate policy is the jobs report that came out this week. Every year the BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics or as I like to call them the Bureau of Lyin’ Sacks of what shall not be named. They put out an annual report that recalibrates their monthly estimates. On Thursday at 10am when this was supposed to be released I sat there and hit refresh, refresh, refresh and nothing happened. I couldn’t get the release. It turns out I wasn’t alone. The report itself was released over 30 minutes late. However if you called in and could get through you could get the numbers before the street. This incompetence is truly stunning. However, the report itself was also stunning. 818,000 more jobs were reported last year than were actually created. As we have been saying the reports and downward revisions are what’s really happening and the inflation of the jobs is an election year pacifier at best. At worst, it is incompetence being advanced due to the government deciding that woke hiring practices are more important than competence.
LB #3
Robby Starbuck continues on his God’s work journey of bringing equality back to business instead of blatant racism, sexism, optimism, pessimism, and every other ism know to the agenda known as the crazy left. He has recently gotten Tractor Supply and John Deere to see the error of their ways with social media boycotts. Tractor Supply quickly cancelled all of their DEI policies and after John Deere was exposed and conservative farmers started cancelling multi hundred-thousand-dollar tractor orders the Green Deere wanted to avoid the path of Budweiser and being branded a queer company for life.
This from Kerry Byrne at Fox News, “Harley-Davidson had faced grumblings for years from longtime customers, including hard-core bikers, who claimed that the Milwaukee-based company “used” them to build its “bad–s” brand, then abandoned them as the motorcycle’s popularity expanded to upscale riders….Starbuck said his social-media movement is now “three for three” after recent efforts to spotlight similar leftist corporate initiatives led to policy changes at John Deere and Tractor Supply Co.
Harley-Davidson’s statement noted that the company was “saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks, designed to divide the Harley-Davidson community.”
Starbuck responded to the criticism: “They can be saddened all they want. I got the changes we wanted, but we still want the CEO [Jochen Zeitz] gone, too,” he said.
This Starbuck fella is not someone that you want to mess with if your customer base is conservative and believes in family values. You want to kowtow to woke then you might go broke. In fact, Jack Daniels preemptively cancelled their own woke policies this week as well. Starbuck wrote on X: “We’re now forcing multibillion dollar organizations to change their policies without even posting just from fear they have of being the next company that we expose. We are winning and one by one we will bring sanity back to corporate America.”
Now Robby is doing tremendous work raising awareness. But let’s be clear he isn’t the reason they are changing behaviors. There is a distinction and a difference. The fact that he is posting and customers aren’t buying is why they are changing. If Bud Light was the number one beer in the world still, no one would care about Foxy Roxy or whatever that crossdresser’s name was. If people hadn’t stopped buying tractors, John Deere would still be having DEI goals and bonuses tied to DEI policies or whatever the case may be. It seems weren’t aware of what these companies were doing and Robby is making them aware. He is having more success than wearing a pink shirt for cancer awareness day. Like anyone isn’t aware of cancer…But I digress.
Looking Forwards…
LF#1
To the election. The great popularity contest was looming in November pitting one moron versus another. Together they had accounted for about 40% of the debt created in the history of this country in the last 7 and a half years. Both men had no inkling of slowing down spending when they were both just trying to buy your vote. However, Biden drooled his way through a debate when his meds wore off and we now have a new contender. This from ZeroHedge, “A few short months ago, Kamala Harris was ‘dragging Biden down’ in his bid for re-election. This, after a 2023 NBC survey found she was the most unpopular vice-president since polling began… In order to convince voters that the cackling, intellectually challenged Harris isn’t one of the most unpopular politicians in modern history, her campaign has been engaging in a massive astroturfing campaign – paying an ‘army’ of about 200 social-media influencers to promote her at the event, Bloomberg reports… For example, Monday night’s DNC in Chicago featured Deja Foxx, a Columbia University graduate (with less than 150,000 TikTok followers) who describes herself as an activist “leading thought at the intersection of social justice and social media… According to the NY Post, the Harris campaign is looking to enlist some 5,000 online influencers by the November election.” In this ZeroHedge article there is a click on thingey that takes you to the social Tik Tok webpage of this Deja Foxx. I was curious what was happening at the what did she say I want to get this right, I wanted to see what an activist that leads thought at the intersection of social justice and social media. I clicked on her link and what I saw was thought provoking. She described her outfit and luggage. She started with her pants, then her shoes, then her shirt and her sweater and then her hat. Then she mentioned her over the shoulder fanny pack thingey then moved to her little bag that was on top of her big suitcase with wheels. The thinking done at this intersection was done by tumbleweeds and scarecrows. If you are going to talk politics, why not ask your candidate in her first big policy decision about why she thought 2% margin grocers were the price gougers she wanted to attack first. This was the first thing Kamala has mentioned about policy since her fabricated nomination, without votes which again is strange, but this influencer didn’t even show me pictures of her avocado toast so clearly she doesn’t know how to do social media. In the words of Gene Siskel and Robert Ebert, two thumbs down.
LF#2
Speaking of her fabricated nomination, there is a fun clip here at YouTube that I am sharing. It is regarding the Democratic election of Kamala Harris as recounted by California Governor Gavin Newsom. This from Brian Flood on Fox News quoting Newsom, “”We went through a very open process, a very inclusive process. It was bottom-up, I don’t know if you know that. That’s what I’ve been told to say,” Newsom said as he laughed during a talk with “Pod Save America” posted Friday… Democrats like Nancy Pelosi have claimed the nomination wasn’t orchestrated in Harris’ favor after Biden dropped out. The clip drew criticism as it began to circulate on social media on Friday.
“The Party of Democracy sits around guffawing at how anti-democratic and vote-free and secret was their process for choosing and then imposing the new Democratic presidential nominee on the country,” journalist Glenn Greenwald responded.
I am not allowed to vote in Democratic primaries so this doesn’t concern me very much, but as an American it does. Kamala couldn’t win a participation trophy in 5-year-old soccer unless the party has blessed it to be so and now she goes from Joe Biden’s anchor to this fresh new candidate bringing us great ideas like cracking down on price gouging by 2% margin grocers. I take you back to tumbleweed TikTok and what I learned at the intersection of social justice and social media. Wear a great outfit, and no one cares about the rest.
LF#3
Meanwhile to our north, Canada has itself a rail strike. This from Thomas Seal in Bloomberg, “More than 9,000 employees at Canadian National Railway Co. and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Ltd. were locked out after a deadline passed without an agreement on a new contract. Members of the Teamsters Canada Rail Conference had voted to strike over a number of issues, including scheduling and worker fatigue.
The economic consequences will be swift if the lockout lasts for days. Canadian National and Canadian Pacific control about 80% of the country’s rail network. The railways have had labor disruptions before, but it has been decades since both freight carriers had a major strike or lockout at the same time.
For many commodities, there are no good shipping alternatives. Companies that sell wheat, fertilizer, chemicals and other goods will feel the pinch right away. Grain futures rose slightly in early trading Thursday as traders assessed the impact. A lumber company in British Columbia announced plans to cut production at a sawmill within days.
The shutdown will have “ripple effects” across the continent, “especially given uncertainty toward potential strikes at US ports and given soaring global shipping costs driven by avoidance of the Red Sea and Suez Canal,” Bank of Nova Scotia economist Derek Holt said in a note to investors.
“Some of these shocks could be transitory (strikes, though of uncertain length and magnitude) and some longer-lived (geopolitical) but they risk feeding off of one another at an inopportune moment for sectors like agriculture and retail orders for the holiday shopping season,” Holt said.”
In the US, western ports are also racing to get shipments in before their union contracts are up for renegotiation in the fall. This Canadian strike should give us an idea of what exactly the west coast port shutdown could look like. The answer is higher prices due to shortages not inflation. Remember, the money supply is now increasing again so more money is chasing potentially less goods. I know most people are at the tumbleweed Tiktok level of critical thinking, but didn’t we just learn this lesson 3 years ago? Wait until Trump gets elected and raises tariffs and cuts taxes or Kamala wins and gives people $25,000 for new homes and forgives medical and student loan debt. I think I want to visit Tumbleweed Tiktok, it must be populated by nothing but scarecrows.
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
The Dow Jones finished trading …at 41,175,
The 10-year Treasury bond is at …at 3.79%
The price of Brent Crude is … at $ 79.02 per barrel.
The price of gold is … at an all-time high of $2,548/oz.
The price of silver is … at $29.86/oz.
I leave you with this from the information superhighway, when is a dad joke a dad joke, when its apparent.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.