Posted on 06/13/2022 10:58:45 AM PDT by Red Badger
The stock market plummeted more than 600 points when it opened on Monday over inflation while President Joe Biden crowed over a revisionist job market and non-existent savings by Americans.
“The job market is the strongest it has been since WWII, notwithstanding the inflation. […] Millions of Americans are moving up to better jobs and better pay, and since I took office, families are carrying less debt on average in America, they have more savings,” Biden said in a speech in Los Angeles.
The S&P 500 is now officially in bear market territory as global stocks tumble and bond yields jumped over skyrocketing inflation. The technology-focused Nasdaq Composite Index, which entered bear market territory in March, dropped another 3 percent as markets opened. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped more than 600 points.
Meanwhile, Americans are seeing the highest gas prices ever and a level of inflation not seen since the Jimmy Carter years. In fact, many contend it has now bypassed that level of inflation and we are in new, painful territory.
Biden’s blaming of Putin and the Ukraine war is not convincing most Americans as they increasingly struggle to make ends meet, and “stock market crash” trended on Twitter Monday morning.
Consumer data on Friday showed that prices rose 8.6 percent year-over-year in May. That’s the fastest rise in prices since 1981. Many Americans are now not only having trouble finding items, they also can’t afford them any longer, just as they cannot afford the cost of gas which is continuing to surge.
“The very fact that it overshot expectations has really frayed investors’ nerves even more and shown how difficult it is to try to keep a lid on inflation,” Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, told the Wall Street Journal. “The worry is that inflation is getting too hot to handle for central banks and they’ll have to dose economies with cold water in the form of tighter policy.”
On Tuesday, the Fed will meet and it is widely expected that the central bank will announce on Wednesday it is raising its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point adding even more pain for Americans. Expectations that the Fed will be forced to move even more aggressively this year have risen since Friday’s inflation report.
When will the catastrophe facing this nation be finally recognized by all its citizens? How could any rational voter remotely consider more of this administration for even another day, let alone two and a half years more? pic.twitter.com/77DgYKmVbs
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) June 13, 2022
“It seems as though inflation is staying for longer than expected,” Kiran Ganesh, a multi-asset strategist at UBS, stated evidently not getting what almost every American already knows. “People are now beginning to fear that the Fed will have to go further or faster in terms of interest rates.”
Tech stocks had big declines on Monday. Apple shares were down 2.5 percent in early trading. Amazon.com shares lost 4.3 percent. Chip maker Nvidia lost 4.8 percent and Elon Musk’s Tesla was down 3.1 percent. Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, also lost 2.9 percent.
“This is what you call a bear market where fear is taking place and pushing people out of the market and having people empty up portfolios and capitulate,” Todd Morgan, who is the chairman of Los Angeles-based Bel Air Investment Advisors, noted.
Cryptocurrencies also got hammered on Monday after interest-rate fears sparked a weekend selloff according to the Wall Street Journal.
Shares in Asia-Pacific plunged as well on Monday, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, Japan’s Nikkei 225, and South Korea’s Kospi all falling more than 3 percent. European stocks also tumbled, with the pan-European Stoxx 600 shedding 2 percent as a sea of red swept through global risk assets according to CNBC.
“I do think that the probability of falling into a bear market and indeed a recession has undeniably increased as a result of Friday’s punch in the gut, in a way,” Fahad Kamal, the chief investment officer at Kleinwort Hambros, told CNBC on Monday.
He added that there was “very, very little good” in Friday’s inflation report, which he said indicated that inflation has not peaked and has instead broadened throughout the economy. This comes as whispers of a depression are beginning to circulate.
Biden is literally being eviscerated on Twitter as the stock market dives off a cliff:
-——inflation is staying for longer than expected-—
The thought that there is an expected time length for inflation is indicative of gross ignorance. Inflation is a symptom, not an economic force.
Unless and until the economic force sickness that produce the inflation feaver is curtailed, the feaver will persist
Even in the best of times there is always some inflation.......................
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