GDP fell 0.9% in the second quarter, the second straight decline and a strong recession signal

Thanks for your input.

I'm very familiar with the political game of hyper-overplaying the bad news and ignoring anything positive, to make the enemy look bad. The Dems did it daily to Trump, and they also looked pathetic when we'd note the robust economy and full employment, and they could only hyperventilate about a mean tweet.

A recession is temporary, as is inflation and the rise in debt service. Both are the result of fiscal ineptitude and an intentionally destructive energy policy from the Bidet Admin. Make no mistake - this Administration makes Carter look competent.

However,,, That downside is temporal.

America will recover...she always does. She recovers because of the hearty stock in her labor force, the untethered ingenuity of her citizens, and the unwillingness of at least half of the nation to not go willingly into the night. THAT is "thriving" vs a municipality in long-term decline like England, Greece, Italy, or California.

As for the debt, as I said it's a problem but not insurmountable. There is plenty of stuff in the ground under federal lands that can cover not only the on-balance sheet borrowings but the off-balance sheet commitments. Whether we, as a nation, have the will to exploit those resources or clutch pearls is a separate issue.

I totally get that some people love staying in bondage. Antifa is a great example of this mindset...blame everyone and everything else in the world for every problem and ignore the miserable personal life choices and the resulting life in Mom's basement.

A great sub-tragedy on 9/11 was that many people died in the South Tower because they were told to wait for help, and they did just that. A handful of people ignored that announcement, and made the trek down. It turned out that one of the staircases wasn't destroyed by the impact of the aircraft. It was a tough, perioulus trek, but they made it out alive.

I refuse to stay above the point of impact, cursing the dark. Thanks for listening.

Tucker Carlson did a very good segment on it. It IS a recession.

TUCKER CARLSON

If it's not a recession, then what is it?
The White House press secretary, who informs us it's not a recession, say that it's “a transition.”

https://politicrossing.com/if-its-not-a-recession-then-what-is-it/

“Larger-than-forecast”

Fri, July 29, 2022 at 9:23 AM

(Bloomberg) — Two key US inflation gauges posted larger-than-forecast increases on Friday, heightening concerns that prices will remain persistently high and prompt continued aggressive interest-rate increases from the Federal Reserve.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-employment-costs-top-estimates-123833281.html

It is one thing to be optimistic and positive, but another to be divorced from reality. We have another 30 months of the illegitimate Biden Administration, which will only make things worse whether it is at the border, the rapidly rising national debt, or the corruption of our electoral system. There is no deus ex machina to save us.

Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen?

A recession is temporary, as is inflation and the rise in debt service

Define temporary. And you are flat wrong about the continuing rise of debt servicing costs, which are the direct result of deficit spending, which has been going on for decades regardless of who is in the WH.

America will recover...she always does. She recovers because of the hearty stock in her labor force, the untethered ingenuity of her citizens, and the unwillingness of at least half of the nation to not go willingly into the night. THAT is "thriving" vs a municipality in long-term decline like England, Greece, Italy, or California.

Empires rise and fall. There is no guarantee that the US can recover from the current downward decline. Our leadership is craven and weak. The Swamp still runs things. The welfare state continues to increase. The un-elected Administrative state remains dominant. The demography of the country is changing rapidly. We are being divided along racial, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural lines with the Democrats, one of the two major political parties, being the catalyst. Since Biden took office, over 2 million illegal aliens have entered this country with millions more to come.

As for the debt, as I said it's a problem but not insurmountable. There is plenty of stuff in the ground under federal lands that can cover not only the on-balance sheet borrowings but the off-balance sheet commitments. Whether we, as a nation, have the will to exploit those resources or clutch pearls is a separate issue.

It is not only a separate issue, it is THE issue. All of these ethereal solutions mean nothing if no action is taken. Who bells the cat?

I refuse to stay above the point of impact, cursing the dark. Thanks for listening.

What exactly are you doing to change the trajectory of this country?

“Larger-than-forecast”

I'm surprised they didn't wait 12 hours to tell us this!

Fri, July 29, 2022 at 9:23 AM PM

Thanks for posting these charts. My wife, our siblings, most of our friends, and we are/will be in the basically healthy over 85 group. (more on that below).

Our 50 something adult offspring will see a lot of removal of those in their age group, who are unhealthy, overweight and total lack of good health habits/routines.

The first two seasons of Covid took out a large % of the basically unhealthy in our age group. That, included a few who didn't get their regular yearly checkups or were delayed re special procedures like knee/hip replacements and cardiac procedures like installation of stents due to Covid flare ups requiring more hospitalizations, aka, "No room at the Inn"!

We learned that moving into expensive adult housing often meant dying without family members at your bedside. That reaffirmed my wife and my motto, "We will be carried out feet first and never go to adult housing nor to a hospital to die!"

The importance of good hospice care in our homes was re affirmed several times in the past 2 years. 2 more examples this past month of good hospice care versus the horrible alternative involving senior homes and of course a hospital for final care.

I am 79. The takeway from a public policy standpoint is that SS and Medicare will be paying out benefits for a longer period of time coupled with the ten thousand baby boomers who turn 65 daily until 2030. The system is unsustainable given these data. I can see means testing Medicare beyond what is already being done now.

There is no doubt that the printed numbers are signaling a decline in economic activity.

But, at the risk of sounding like a Dem shill, unemployment is low, labor markets are super tight, business demand for financing is ok, residential real estate remains super strong with many homes going for more than asking, and I see people still going out to dinner and bars. I know of a family portrait photographer who has shootings and bookings through the end of the year. This doesn't feel like a recession.

That said, I see the carnage from inflation and energy prices. I went on a trip and the hotel parking lot was pretty empt. The Museum I visited wasn't teeming with customers. There are ripples to that contraction in activity.

The fact that the Dems are ignoring that carnage is a sign of how out of touch they are with reality. The Dems being oblivious to the GDP declines and gas prices is the equivalent of Bush Sr being clueless about checkout scanners at the grocery store.

What exactly are you doing to change the trajectory of this country?

One man can only do so much. It starts with homeschooling, and minimizing (if not eliminating) the demand for government services that raise outlays across the family. It also includes a primer on the inherent damage caused by taxation - a fire goes out when deprived of feedstock. Where are you on repealing the 16th Amendment? - if you are concerned about spending, you should be more concerned about personal income tax.

There is also a need for being genuine. Many citizens would see your charts and be immediately turned off...they have good data, but they convey a sentiment of imminent doom (more on that later). Even the syntax and flow of your post is designed to send the reader down a cattle chute to despairville. That won't change our trajectory - Reagan won on a campaign that had hope in it.

I could spend a long time, critiquing your post and having a tit-for-tat exchange, to counter the despair. For example, interest burden can flatten or even decline with a rise in debt levels if interest rates decline OR with a shuffling of the maturity ladder - indeed, your chart shows this during the Obama years. So it's not a zero-sum game. As for defining temporary, please...if we are complaining about the Admin ignoring the 2 consecutive quarterly decline in real GDP first-pass test for "recession" then by proxy you can't implicitly say we will not EMERGE from recession. Recession and expansion go hand in hand, they always have.

If you're REALLY saying that The Fall is right around the corner, and THIS TIME we really ARE doomed - Empires rise and fall. There is no guarantee that the US can recover from the current downward decline. - I can find a zillion other predictions of THE END...and yet, Godot never comes but doom newsletters and the Peterson Foundation rally. This is not to say all is well - being Pollyanna serves nobody - but TEOTWAWKI isn't here YET, in part because there are way too many citizens who ARE productive, who HAVE wealth, who ARE concerned, and who DO SEE the signs you posted. We aren't Greece, where decades of socialism has converted a nation, that gave us western civ and shipping innovations, into a mass of public sector workers who strike frequently.

I can tell when there is an agenda. Again, I am familiar with the accentuate-the-negative-and-ignore-the-positive dance. It's great political sport. But people in the know can tell when the umpire is tightening the strike zone. Indeed, if I carry your message to the extreme, we should go back to Clintonomics when we had surpluses.

I don't disagree with the crux of your thesis - runaway fiscal insanity has created a massive debt and commitment problem. I simply disagree with the defeatism and the failed back testing of the hypothesis. If I'm wrong, I apologize. We probably agree on 95% and can move mountains there, and I'd like to avoid the waste of bickering about that 500 basis points. Thanks for listening.

I know. The person I was talking to did not.