On Top of an Upside Revision, Housing Starts Gained 4.9% in the Month; This Was Not Statistically Significant at the 90% Confidence Interval -- In contrast, the ShadowStats Corrected Alternate-GDP estimate, adjusted for the continual understatement of headline GDP Inflation, and the corresponding continual overstatement of growth in the Real GDP, showed a corrected 1q2023 real annualized quarterly contraction of 0.98% (-0.98%), against a 0.50% 4q2022 gain, with an annual contraction of 0.49% (-0.49%) in 1q2023, against an annual drop of 1.16% (-1.16%) in 4q2022. Including Commercial Aircraft, aggregate New Orders recovered pre-Pandemic levels in Third-Quarter 2020. At the same time, the Pandemic-distorted and disrupted year-to-year gain for February 2023 Basic M1 eased to 4.8% from and unrevised 6.2% in February 2023. (12) April 13th (Bureau of Labor Statistics). It remains ShadowStats contention that the surging headline inflation is due to FOMC-triggered massive growth in the Money Supply and Monetary Liquidity, as reflected in the highly liquid Basic M1 (Currency plus Time Deposits / Checking Accounts), not due to an Overheating Economy. ShadowStats is Williams' attempt to provide an alternative to the official consumer price index (CPI), which he views as a flawed measure of what members of the general public have in mind when. -- In line with FOMC rate hikes, annual Payroll Growth has been slowing for the last fourteen months, from 5.3% in February 2022 to 2.7% in March 2023, suggestive of softening economic activity. "John" Williams was born in 1949. Any solid developments in the ever-deepening U.S. Government Fiscal Crisis will be covered here in the SYSTEMIC RISK Section. The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate in order to attain a stance of monetary policy that is sufficiently restrictive to return inflation to 2 percent over time. Holding Physical Gold Protects the Purchasing Power of Dollar Assets, Irrespective of Any Near-Term Volatility in, or Manipulation of, Gold Prices, October 2020 Cass Freight Index Turned Positive Year-to-Year, Gaining 2.4% Against an Unusually Sharp, Unseasonable Decline the Year Before For those looking to subscribe, please go to the SUBSCRIPTION LINK at the upper left-hand corner of this Web page). ET]. That said, the aggregate series quarterly sales, have been in annual decline for each of the last seven quarters, up through the current 1q2023, in an otherwise deepening housing recession. On Top of a Downside Revision, October Building Permits Monthly Change Flattened Out at a Statistically Significant 0.0%, Analysis Behind and Beyond Government Economic Reporting, Some Biographical & Additional Background Information. GENERAL COVERAGE: Again, on the Inflation front, it is the bloated Money Supply and gasoline price disruptions that are driving or affecting higher inflation, at present, not an overheating economy. Revised year-to-year growth slowed to 0.88%, from 0.91% and an initial estimate of 0.96%, versus 1.94% in 3q2022. March 2023 Real New Orders for Durable Goods -- For fourteen consecutive quarters, through First-Quarter 2023, Real New Orders for Durable Goods (deflated by the Durable Goods PPI, and net of the volatile Commercial Aircraft orders), never has recovered its Third-Quarter 2019 Pre-Pandemic Peak activity. Part I --BOTTOM LINE Systemically Dangerous and Perilous FOMC Activity is Likely in the Week Ahead. Please note: Our Data Download is currently only providing the 1980-Based numbers, but 1990-Based numbers will be introduced shortly. March 2023 New Home Sales gained by a headline, statistically insignificant 9.6% +/- 15.2% month-to-month, with a statistically insignificant year-to-year decline of 3.4% (-3.4%) +/- 12.7% for this near-term unstable series. Annual growth in Payrolls has been slowing since February 2022. Jacinta Price named shadow minister for Indigenous Australians . (10) April 14th (Census Bureau, Bureau of Labor Statistics, St. Louis Fed, ShadowStats) [See the Opening Comments on the April 24th annual benchmark revisions to Retail Sales, which continue to show flat to negative annual contractions and quarterly contractions, net of inflation.] FOMC Has Trouble Forecasting Inflation One Quarter Ahead, Let Alone Two Years Ahead The Committee would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if risks emerge that could impede the attainment of the Committee's goals. Please note with the ALTERNATE DATA Tab, that the Money Supply annual growth rates after February 2021 instead are against the February 2020 Pre-Pandemic Level not year-to-year (although both measures are plotted in the subscriber-only graphs). Reserves jumped by a dominant 7.1% in the month, which would speak to new money creation, while the Currency in Circulation component gained by 0.6% month-to-month, to a new historic high. The Committee will closely monitor incoming information and assess the implications for monetary policy. Full-Year 2020 Existing- and New-Home Sales Were Highest Since 2006 (II) - REGULAR ALERTS Again, as noted after the February 2023 rate hike, despite Fed Chairman Jerome Powells continued downplaying risks for the FOMCs hoped-for imminent Recession, which otherwise ostensibly is why he was raising rates, that downturn already was and is in play. Background definitions and related detailed discussion, historical data and graphs for each of the Money Supply Series were covered in Benchmark Commentary No. The 2020 Pandemic-Driven Recession was timed by the defining National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), from Peak-to-Trough, as from February 2020 to April 2020 [2 months, the shortest on record] and from Fourth-Quarter 2019 to Second-Quarter 2020 [2 quarters]. Details and related graphs follow in the next Subscriber e-mail, with extended review and coverage of this Fed-acknowledged regular pattern of initial upside reporting and later downside benchmark revisions to this series, as otherwise pending in Commentary No. That 2021 shortfall reflected an operating deficit Net Position or operating negative net worth of $29.9 trillion in 2021, widening from a Net Position deficit of $26.8 trillion in 2020, plus deepening unfunded Social Security and Medicare net liabilities (Closed Group) of $93.6 trillion in 2021, versus $87.0 trillion in 2020. In contrast, the usually less meaningfully sampled Housing Starts, tend to be more volatile in revision. Where January 2021 Year-to-Year Manufacturing Contracted by 1.0% (-1.0%), It Also Contracted by 1.8% (-1.8%) from January 2019, Two Years Ago The annual drop of 22.0% (-22.0%) in March was against a 23.1% (-23.1%) annual decline in February, and was the eighth straight month of annual contraction deeper than minus 20% (go to https://www.nar.realtor/existing-home-sales for details). The aggregate Real Annual Merchandise Trade Deficit for 2022 was unrevised at -1,320.2 Billion Chained (2012) Dollars, again, its worst showing in history. The newsletter is published as part of my economic consulting services. Despite a small monthly narrowing in the headline March 2023 Unemployment Rate, details remained consistent with an unfolding recession. -- The University of Michigans full-month release of the April 2023 Consumer Sentiment reading held little changed at 63.5, against its initial estimate of 63.5, up from 62.0 in March 2023, holding shy by 37.1% (-37.1%)[previously by 38.6% (-38.6%) in March] of ever recovering its February 2020 pre-Pandemic peak level of 101.0. Broadly, the aggregate Monetary Base had been in decline since hitting a peak in January 2021, but it has turned higher in the last several months. Given mounting U.S. Banking System instabilities, the Federal Reserve continues to spike systemic liquidity with inflation-driving Money Supply creation, which exacerbates the inflation problem. -- In contrast, the ShadowStats Corrected Alternate-GDP estimate, adjusted for the continual understatement of headline GDP Inflation, and the corresponding continual overstatement of growth in the Real GDP, showed a corrected 1q2023 real annualized quarterly contraction of 0.98% (-0.98%), against a 0.50% 4q2022 gain, with an annual contraction of 0.49% (-0.49%) in 1q2023, against an annual drop of 1.16% (-1.16%) in 4q2022. -- A little closer to real-world numbers, initial year-to-year headline March 2023 PPI Construction Inflation eased to 15.6%, from a minimally revised 16.1% (previously 16.2%) in February 2023. At the same time, the FOMC keeps hiking interest rates, in order to kill economic activity that is neither overheating nor driving the inflation, despite the publicly expressed claims of the FOMC and its Fed Chairman. March 2023 New Residential Construction continued in statistically significant annual year-to-year collapse for both Building Permits and Housing Starts. 1461. Reporting problems have included methodological changes to economic reporting that have pushed headline economic and inflation results out of the realm of real-world or common experience. in Economics, cum laude, from Dartmouth College in 1971, and was awarded a M.B.A. from Dartmouth's Amos Tuck School of Business Administration in 1972, where he was named an Edward Tuck Scholar. CPI-adjusted, Real Retail Sales declined by 1.04% (-1.04%) month-to-month in March 2023, down by 1.95% (-1.95%) year-to-year, with First-Quarter 2023 Real Retail Sales declining 0.30% (-0.30%) year-to-year, down for the fourth time in the last five quarters, otherwise gyrating with extreme volatility in recent monthly automobile sales. (14) April 7th (Bureau of Labor Statistics BLS, and ShadowStats.com). Per the NAR Press Release, Existing-home sales retreated 2.4% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.44 million. -- In contrast, the ShadowStats Inflation-Corrected GDP Estimate (updated and graphed in full detail on the ALTERNATE DATA Tab) is corrected for the understatement of the headline inflation used in deflating Nominal GDP to Real GDP. As previously reviewed, the March Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised its targeted Fed-Funds Rate by a minimal 0.25%, to 5.00%, citing hopes that the Banking-System Crisis would dampen the Economy and the FOMC-driven Inflation. December 2020 Cass Freight Index Jumped Year-to-Year by 6.7%, but Its Two-Year Change Was Down 1.8% (-1.8%) from December 2018, Due to FOMC Tightening Contracting Intervening 2019 Activity Accordingly, the April 2021 to January 2023 growth rates here generally are shown against that February 2020 PPT, instead of year-to-year. Holding Physical Precious Metals Remains the Best Hedge Against Developing Inflation and Financial-Market Turmoil, Pandemic-Driven Unemployment Soared to an April 2020 Peak of About 32%, Worse Than in the Great Depression; Such Was Against a January 2020 Pre-Pandemic U.3 Unemployment Rate of 3.5% Commentary No. An old friendthe late-Doug Gillespieasked me some years back to write a series of articles on the quality of government statistics. New Numbers Indicate the Economy Was in a Deepening Recession, Well Before the Pandemic Shutdown and Collapse (8) April 18th, (Census Bureau). 1461. Minimizing Reporting of Such, the Fed Just Redefined Money Supply M1; Given Newly Defined M1-Like Liquidity Characteristics for M2 Savings Deposits, Savings Have Been Shifted Retroactively from M2 to into M1, Effective as of May 2020 Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen did not describe in her Opening Message for 2021, as she had in 2020, and as her recent predecessors had done, that the current Fiscal Path was Unsustainable. Yet that concept still appeared early in the Opening Summary: The debt-to-GDP ratio was about 100 percent at the end of FY 2021 [around 122% in November 2022 WJW]. March 2023 Industrial Production, Manufacturing and Capacity Utilization showed meaningful downside benchmark revisions to previously reported activity, but continued in a third month of upturn in context of Federal Reserve regular overestimation of headline Industrial Production. (I) - BOTTOM LINE COVERAGE: A ninth, consecutive FOMC Meeting Interest Rate hike is expected Wednesday, yet the U.S. Economy already is in intensifying Recession. (12) April 13th (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Surging Monetary Base, Reserves and Currency Indicate Intensifying Systemic Problems Consumer Liquidity, Depression, Money Supply. Battered, Non-Recovered May 2021 Payrolls and Unemployment Confirmed a Still-Ravaged Economy on Par With the Great Depression PLEASE NOTE: In 10 days (March 24th), this Retail Sales Series will undergo an annual benchmark revision. Job gains have picked up in recent months and are running at a robust pace; the unemployment rate has remained low. HEADLINE ECONOMIC, INFLATION AND MONETARY COVERAGE OF THE LAST MONTH AND OTHER KEY NUMBERS: (1) April 28th (University of Michigan). With a further quarter-point rate hike expected out of this weeks May 2nd to 3rd FOMC Meeting, following nine consecutive FOMC Meeting rate hikes (0.25% at the last three meetings, 0.50% and 0.75% earlier), the U.S. Central Bank appears intent on using surging interest rates to drive the U.S. economy into the ground. Evolving Circumstances Remain Extremely Strong for Gold and Silver, and Weak for the U.S. Dollar and Stocks, Despite Central Bank or Other Systemic Machinations to the Contrary, Intractable and Deteriorating Conditions Still Signal No Imminent Economic Recovery, Irrespective of Some Bounces in March Activity Against Weather-Driven February Collapses Inflation. ShadowStats Defined "Basic M1" -- Combined Currency and Demand Deposits -- Still Reflects the Extraordinary Liquidity Flight to, and Surge in the Narrower Money Supply Such Was the First Annual Gain in Freight Activity Since November 2018, When Excessive Fed Tightening Was Being Used to Constrain Consumer Liquidity and Domestic Economic Growth
Justin Bieber Changes Tour Setlist 2021,
What Happened To Parker On Chrisley Knows Best,
Riverside Market Ludlow, Ky Weekly Ad,
Guy Hovis Daughter,
Molesworth Funeral Home,
Articles S