US Economy Is Collapsing – Americans Are Out Of Money
SilverDoctors.com
November 20, 2015
Retail sales this holiday season are setting up to be a disaster. Already most retailers are advertising “pre-Black Friday” sales events. Remember when holiday shopping didn’t begin, period, until the day after Thanksgiving? Now retailers are going to cannibalize each other with massive discounting before Thanksgiving.
Anybody notice over the weekend that BMW is now offering $6500 price rebates? The collapsing economy is affecting everyone, across all income demographics.
Submitted by PM Fund Manager Dave Kranzler, Investment Research Dynamics:
Wall Street, fearful that consumers are running out of cash heading into the crucial Christmas retail season, are selling off retail stocks and everything else sensitive to consumer spending. – New York Post
The retail sales report for October was much worse than expected. Not only that, but the Government’s original estimates for retail sales in August and September were revised lower. A colleague of mine said he was chatting with his brother, who is a tax advisor, this past weekend who said he doesn’t understand how the Government can say the economy is growing (Hillary Clinton recently gave the economy an “A”) because his clients are lowering their estimated tax payments. Businesses lower their estimated tax payments when their business activity slows down.
In September the Fed released its Consumer Expectations survey which showed a collapse in consumer income and spending expectations. This does not occur in an economic system which is experiencing growth.
The price of oil traded below $40 briefly this morning. The propaganda machine would have you believe that OPEC is driving the price down to put the U.S. shale industry out of business. This has to be one of the most idiotic rationalizations for a negative economic occurrence I’ve ever seen (that, and “the bad weather ate my homework”). The price of oil is collapsing because demand for oil is collapsing. Demand for oil is collapsing because economic activity globally, including and especially in the U.S., is collapsing.
Once again the Empire Fed Manufacturing survey for November continued to plunge deeper into negative territory. It missed Wall Street analyst expectations once again by a wide margin. The index fell to negative 10.74 vs the -6.34 forecast. The average work week fell for the fourth straight week. I have news for everyone, if the average work week falls, it means people are making less money. Less money translates into a disaster for holiday sales.
Retail sales this holiday season are setting up to be a disaster. Already most retailers are advertising “pre-Black Friday” sales events. Remember when holiday shopping didn’t begin, period, until the day after Thanksgiving? Now retailers are going to cannibalize each other with massive discounting before Thanksgiving. Anybody notice over the weekend that BMW is now offering $6500 price rebates? The collapsing economy is affecting everyone, across all income demographics.
Last week we saw the stocks of Macy’s, Nordstrom and Advance Auto Parts do cliff-dives after they announced their earnings. I mentioned to a colleague that the Nordstrom’s report should be the most troubling for analysts. Nordstrom in their investor conference call said that they began seeing an “unexplainable slowdown in sales in August in transactions across all formats, across all catagories and across all geographies that has yet to recover.”
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