Karl Denninger of Market Ticker takes a not so green shoots view of the current retail sales and unemployment numbers.
Denninger on Retail Sales
Here’s a reality check – consumer credit capacity has hit the wall.
I noted this over a year ago, and started yelling about it. The shift of consumer spending to credit cards – the highest-interest means of financing payment – became apparent in the consumer credit report about that time.
This marked the final desperate attempt to keep spending beyond our means by the average American sheeple, and it was doomed to failure.
Now the failure is evident in consumer spending numbers across the board – including at bargain outlets like COSTCO.
Walmart stopped reporting their numbers. Gee, do you have to wonder why? They’ve got one of the best internal systems in existence for tracking who’s spending and how much on what. In the months leading up to their cessation of reporting the shift to “necessary” items (e.g. food) was obvious in their reports.
Its against the law to lie, but nobody says you have to report this at all, so Walmart took the “easy way out” and simply stopped talking, rather than expose the truth where people could see it.
Denninger on Unemployment
Rick Santelli threw the appropriate amount of cold water on this report, given that continuing claims are now up to 6.88 million – up more than 170,000 over estimates!
As I have repeatedly said, continuing claims are what count – it is not whether you lose your job, it is whether you can find a new one. If the answer is no, the continuing claims number will continue to ramp even though the “initial claims” number comes down.
The answer is “no” to the question of “if you get laid off, can you find a new job.”
Don’t listen to the fools – there is no “green shoot” in that report.
Denninger is solid.
Yeah, the guy definitely knows his stuff. He made a great call last September by watching the liquidity numbers. You can backtrack to a post of his on his website to Sept 24, 2008, where he called out the Fed about the banking collapse and suggested they were trying to make it happen. The very next day, we say the final turning point in stock markets and subsequent collapse into November. If Denninger rings the alarm, pay attention!