Posted on 01/24/2022 6:55:16 PM PST by Pollard
The U.S. IHS Markit flash composite purchasing managers index, one of the first comprehensive looks at economic growth this year, fell to 50.8 in January from 57.0 in December, severely undershooting expectations and signaling almost no growth in the economy. Economists had forecast a reading of 56.7.
“Soaring virus cases have brought the U.S. economy to a near standstill at the start of the year, with businesses disrupted by worsening supply-chain delays and staff shortages, with new restrictions to control the spread of Omicron adding to firms’ headwinds,” said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit.
The flash composite measures economic activity in both the services and manufacturing sides of the economy. Readings above 50 indicate growth.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
Not to mention mandated energy dependence.
Precious metals, Market? I know nothing of those thing. I’m an old blue collar poorboy. Lived off grid for 5 years and can again if need be. Got four legged meat walking around out back. Gonna be busy this Spring with gardening. Gonna have my son digging a root cellar.
No, it’s not because of Omicron, or any other variant.
It’s because of malfeasance by government policies and officials who are actively trying to destroy this country.
One thing that can help is garage sales and thrift store shopping.
Energy dependance was such an important issue to the Biden Junta that it was the very first thing it did on day one. No wonder these stickers have gone viral. I love how the left hates them!
SOB Brandon
I’ve never seen one of those at a gas pump.
I have! Northern California (county north of the Bay Area) last Thanksgiving.
I have at the Sam’s club in Concord, NH.
Defacing private property is something that Conservatives have traditionally opposed. That some are now using this tactic of the left shows just how angry and divided this country has become.
From Jeremy Grantham,
the famed investor who for decades has been calling market bubbles, said the historic collapse in stocks he predicted a year ago is underway and even intervention by the Federal Reserve can’t prevent an eventual plunge of almost 50%.
In a note posted Thursday, Grantham, the co-founder of Boston asset manager GMO, describes U.S. stocks as being in a “super bubble,” only the fourth of the past century. And just as they did in the crash of 1929, the dot-com bust of 2000 and
the financial crisis of 2008, he’s certain this bubble will burst, sending indexes back to statistical norms and possibly further.
That, he said, involves the S&P 500 dropping some 45% from Wednesday’s close — and 48% from its Jan. 4 peak — to a level of 2500. The Nasdaq Composite, already down 8.3% this month, may sustain an even bigger correction.
GMO’s Grantham Says Fed Can’t Stop Stock Crash
“I wasn’t quite as certain about this bubble a year ago as I had been about the tech bubble of 2000, or as I had been in Japan, or as I had been in the housing bubble of 2007,” Grantham said in a Bloomberg “Front Row” interview. “I felt
highly likely, but perhaps not nearly certain. Today, I feel it is just about
nearly certain.
In Grantham’s analysis, the evidence is abundant. The first sign of trouble he points to came last February, when dozens of the most speculative stocks began falling. One proxy, Cathie Wood’s Ark Innovation ETF, has since tumbled by 52%.
Next, the Russell 2000, an index of mid-cap equities that typically outperforms in a bull market, trailed the S&P 500 in 2021.
Finally, there was what Grantham calls the kind of “crazy investor behavior” indicative of a late-stage bubble: meme stocks, a buying frenzy in electric-vehicle names, the rise of nonsensical cryptocurrencies such a dogecoin and
multimillion-dollar prices for non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.
It could, he said, rival the impact of the dual collapse of Japanese stocks and real estate in the late 1980s. Not only are equities in a super bubble, according to Grantham there’s also a bubble in bonds, “the broadest and most extreme” bubble ever in global real estate and an “incipient bubble” in commodity prices. Even without a full reversion back to statistical trends, he calculates that losses in the U.S. alone may reach $35 trillion.
Grantham is a dyed-in-the-wool value manager who’s been investing for 50 years and calling bubbles for almost as long. He knows his predictions are fodder for skeptics. One obvious question: How could the S&P 500 advance 26.9% in
2021 — its seventh-best performance in 50 years —
if stocks were poised to plummet?
Rather than disprove his thesis, Grantham said the strength in blue-chip stocks at a time of weakness in speculative bets only reinforces it.
“This has been exactly how the great bubbles have broken,” he said.
“In 1929, the flakes were down for the year before the market broke, they were down 30%. The year before they’d been up 85%, they crushed the market.”
Seeing the same pattern that played out in every past super bubble is what gives him so much confidence in predicting this one will implode similarly.
Grantham pins the blame for bubbles of the past 25 years mostly on bad monetary policy. Ever since Alan Greenspan was Fed chairman, he argues, the central bank has “aided and abetted” the formation of successive bubbles by first making money too cheap and then rushing to bail out markets when
corrections followed.
Never? WOW - do you live in a blue state or something?
Some more sh*ts and giggles.
I finally saw one last week in NM. It made my day.
I have seen them in Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Dallas, Odessa and even Houston.
I’ve thought about buying a couple thousand and helping out the cause.
Conservatives have traditionally been very polite and respectful—and have gotten their rear ends kicked as a result.
A really smart guy once said “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.”
Polite and respectful is not working—a lot of folks have figured out it is time for Plan B.
Is there ANYTHING that the Obama/Jarrett/Biden cartel can’t f*** up?
Yep. Easy excuse instead of having to look at all the policies he supported/took action on that caused these issues.
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