The Keynesian End Game Is Near: No Escape Velocity This Year, Either
by David Stockman
Davidstockmanscontracorner.com
June 27, 2014
The economic releases of the past few days are putting the lie to the Keynesian escape velocity myth. The latter is not just around the corner—-and 2014 is now virtually certain to mark the fifth year running when the boom predicted by Wall Street economist at the beginning of the year fizzled as actual results unfolded.
In that context, yesterday’s punk number on personal consumption expenditures during May was the inflection point. Not only did American consumers not come bounding out of their winter ice caves as predicted by virtually every “sell side” economist, the number actually embodied a case of groundhog economics. That is, the May constant dollar PCE (personal consumption expenditure) print of $10.881 trillion suggested that consumers went back into hibernation! It was nearly the same as that during frigid February and actually below the March level of $10.916 trillion. Stated differently, the American consumer is dropping, not shopping, and the winter weather—-that surprising thing called snow and cold—had nothing to do with it.
So this is the time to call out the Wall Street amen chorus. Its impudent insistence that the Fed’s mad money printing campaign is the magic elixir that will revive the main street economy has gone altogether too far.
In that context, a bubblevision guest on Wednesday dismissed the shocking Q1 GDP shrinkage as stale news that reflected events……well, 100 days ago! Only in a world were Wall Street stock peddlers masquerading as economists think the world turns on the weekly maneuvers and word clouds of the Fed could 100 days ago be considered irrelevant ancient history. But the young man in question—-one Dan Greenhaus, chief investment strategist of BTIG—-had an even more preposterous point. Based on the sentiment surveys and other factoids, he had divined that the negative Q1 number reflected January and February results and that the US economy had strongly rebounded in March.
The Rest…HERE
