This report was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse
We just got more evidence that the U.S. economy is starting to slow down. The U.S. economy must produce somewhere around 200,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth, and last month we were way below that number. In fact, the employment numbers that the government released on Friday were the worst that we have seen in an entire year. In late 2018, the IMF is openly warning of “a second Great Depression”, and indications that another economic crisis is coming are emerging all around us. Many had been hoping that very strong employment numbers on Friday would change that trend, but instead it was “the worst performance since last September”…
Nonfarm payrolls rose just 134,000, well below Refinitiv estimates of 185,000 and the worst performance since last September, when a labor strike weighed on the numbers.
But even though the number of jobs created did not even come close to keeping up with population growth, we are told that the unemployment rate actually declined, and some media outlets are proudly touting this as some sort of “success”.
Of course other numbers actually show that the unemployment rate is rising. The following comes from CNBC…
A separate measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those holding jobs part-time for economic reasons — sometimes called the “real unemployment rate” — edged higher to 7.5 percent.
And according to shadowstats.com, the actual unemployment rate in the United States right now is 21.3 percent. That is down slightly from the peak, but it is nowhere even close to where we were before the last recession.
There are many out there that desperately want to believe that the U.S. economy is “booming”, but that simply is not accurate.
If the U.S. economy really is “booming”, then why has “the largest ever homeless encampment” that Minneapolis has ever seen just gone up?…
The Associated Press (AP) has revealed a troubling story of the largest ever homeless encampment site mostly made up of Native Americans has quickly erected just south of downtown Minneapolis, Minnesota.
City officials are scrambling to contain the situation as two deaths in recent weeks, concerns about disease and infection, illicit drug use and the coming winter season, have sounded the alarm of a developing public health crisis.
We also got another really bad piece of economic news on Friday.
According to official government numbers, the U.S. trade deficit increased once again in August…
The US Census Bureau reported Friday that the trade deficit increased to $53.2 billion in August for both goods and services, up from $50.0 billion in July. The goods trade deficit, which draws most of Trump’s attention, also increased to $86.3 billion, a $3.8 billion increase from the month before.
The primary reason for the increase in the deficit was a collapse in exports, especially soybeans, which fell off by $1 billion, a 28% drop from the month prior. China, the largest buyer of US soybeans, imposed tariffs on the American crop and it appears the restrictions are taking a toll.
One of the primary goals of the trade war is to decrease the size of our trade deficit, and so far it is not working.
Financial markets responded very negatively to all of the bad economic news. Stocks plunged for a third straight day on Friday, and the Nasdaq was hit particularly hard…
US equity markets were pressured for a third straight day Friday, with all of the major averages sporting losses of at least 1% at their lows. Heavy selling pushed the tech-heavy Nasdaq down by as much as 2.1%, before rebounding and finishing with a loss of just more than 1%.
Overall, it was a very tough week on Wall Street. The following is how Zero Hedge summarized the carnage…
- US Stocks – worst 2-day drop since May
- Small Caps, Nasdaq – biggest weekly drop in 7 months
- Small Caps – biggest 5-week drop since Nov 2016
- China (closed) ETF – biggest weekly drop in 7 months
- Semis – biggest weekly drop in 6 months
- FANGs – biggest weekly drop in 7 months
- Homebuilders – worst.losing.streak.ever…
- USD Index – best week in 2 months
- HY Bonds – biggest weekly price drop in 8 months
- IG Bonds – biggest weekly drop since Nov 2016
- Treasury Yields – biggest weekly yield spike in 8 months
- Yield Curve – biggest weekly steepening in 8 months
- Gold – best weekly gain in 6 weeks
In particular, it is absolutely stunning what is happening to homebuilder stocks. They have now fallen for 13 days in a row, and that could be another very clear indication that a housing crash is coming.
None of the problems that caused the crash of 2008 have been fixed. It absolutely amazes me that some people think that you can “fix” our economy by tinkering with the tax code a little bit and getting rid of a few regulations. A handful of marginal changes is not going to alter our long-term outlook one bit.
The truth is that our economic system requires extensive emergency surgery. We need to abolish the Federal Reserve, abolish the IRS, abolish the income tax and start using currency that is not created by debt. And that would just be for starters. Our current economic system is fundamentally flawed, and in the long-term it is inevitably going to fail. The best that anyone can do in the short-term is to keep inflating the bubbles so that things will hold together long enough until they can become somebody else’s problem.
Right now, the only way that we can achieve economic growth is by growing debt at a far faster pace than the overall economy is expanding. That is a recipe for a long-term disaster, and everyone knows that we are in the process of committing national suicide, but nobody is really doing anything to stop it.
Sadly, it is probably going to take another major crisis before people start calling for real change, and that is extremely unfortunate.
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About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.
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94 million americans 18-62 don’t work and get a monthly check from you stupid working taxslaves. I think it is time you get fucking mad!!
Plenty of parasite cons at the higher levels. They just wear a mask of respectability.
Trump is likely a patsy.
The Fed could easily send us into GDII and the only analysis the imbeciles on the left will have to do is, ‘Republican X was President, this is all the fault of republican, capitalist policies’.
If Repubs gain bigly in the midterms, we dont make it out of a Trump Presidency without some kind of huge financial disaster.
That and/or rabid violence is all they’re gonna have to grab a win.
Has anyone heard of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)?
It’s why Dick Cheney claimed “…deficits don’t matter”. It is what the government operates under since decoupling from precious. MMT claims that any sovereign government that prints it’s own currency is in no danger of default. It can print whatever it needs to operate. It doesn’t use taxes to pay expenses. It uses taxes as a control mechanism and to keep it’s scrip in demand and circulating.
As long as the FRN is in demand, people have confidence in it, and there are sufficient cheap resources to back it up, there is little chance of default. Solvency can be restored with an entry into a computer.
Personal bankruptcy and debt is a different story.
Something worse than debt will be the downfall of empire. That could very well be when the energy it takes to bring a barrel of oil to market exceeds the energy contained in said barrel. Then Mad Max commences and it’s root hawg or die.
BS doom and gloom Snyder articles are what happened to this site.
Snyder has done a good job summarizing and documenting the decline. Give credit where credit is due. 🙂
DK, did you get my email?
Isn’t a roth better than traditional since you don’t pay taxes on the backside years from now when taxes will inevitably be higher? But it sucks because it wont help in the here and now on taxable income.
Everything ends. Nothing is forever and soooo the doom and gloom will end and the, “Oh Shit” will follow. Do your best to prepare.
The next bailout will be a bigger scam than the last.
Lucky 13.
It all started in 1913.
Most people in homeless camps are native Americans.
Salutrians (white people) arrived here (North America) before Asians (ancestors of the other Native Americans).
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The largest homeless encampment in the US is in Minniapolis, MN. Why, you ask. Perhaps it has something to do with all the lovely Somali and other Refugees. Supposedly, the number coming in from Somalia has dropped because of Trump policies, but the problem pre-dated the Trump Presidency.
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Some say the Adena mound builders had Celtic ancestry.
Native Americans had accounts of a white race living in North America before Columbus.
Some say the Hopewells were sea-faring Japanese that wandered inland and settled.
Worst job growth in a year, unemployment, poverty and homelesness now the new norm for America.
Trump has got to go. We need to put the Democrats, led by Hillary and Obama, back in power to return to the vibrant economy of the Obama years or we’re finished as a nation.
Anon, Good sense of humor.
Okay, so we have the worst job growth in a year; so what?? At least it is job GROWTH. That is more than obama did, and yet obama is taking credit for Trump’s successes. Is obama also going to take blame for what Trump hasn’t fixed yet?
This article did a good job of showing President Trump’s shortcomings, but if you notice, it only compared data during his term in office. If you are going to show historical data, be intelligent enough to show a good subset of that data. Don’t cherry pick, and don’t try to act all high and mighty while trying to pitch a leftist narrative.
I remember, back about 30 years ago, we needed 300,000 new jobs every month, just to stay even with the population growth. We have millions more people here now, so we need even more jobs per month, just to stay even. 150,000 new jobs per month means that over 150,000 other people aren’t getting jobs. If they are new job seekers, then they won’t show up on the unemployment numbers. Also, the work place participation rate is not going up. A lot of people took early retirement because their jobs were eliminated. Others put in for SSI because they could get just as much on SSI as they could by working. Or they took unemployment or welfare for the same reason. Or they are working off the books. Or they are engaged in criminal activity to support themselves. The underclass. Need more better paying jobs. Bring all the jobs home. It’s a start. But I think we still need a reset. And sooner or later, we’ll get it, even if we’re not ready for it.
Contrary to popular belief the government controls the borders. The government controls the supply of labor this way. Thus, the government controls the cost of labor. The government controls the money supply. They made the purchasing power or money go down. American workers needed more money just to stay even. Employers couldn’t do it. So the government opened the borders. Understand? And to make matters worse, the AFL-CIO supports open borders. WTF?