Fed Chair Janet Yellen keeps citing consumer confidence and jobs as reasons consumer spending and inflation will pick up.
Curiously, the New York Fed Survey on Consumer Spending Expectations keeps trending lower and lower, despite survey-high expectations for wage growth.
The report for July 2017 was released today. I downloaded the survey results and produced the following charts.
Household Spending Projections
Household Income Projections
Projection Comments
- Income projections are volatile but at least they are trending higher across the board.
- Spending projections are less volatile and trending lower at every level.
- At the 25th percentile level, a group that no doubt spends every cent they make, spending expectations are zero. Those projections were in negative territory in April.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen does not believe the Fed’s own reports. Instead, she relies on consumer confidence numbers that tend to track the stock market or gasoline prices more than anything else.
Perhaps New York Fed President William Dudley does believe in the report.
Earlier today I commented NY Fed President Wants Consumers to Tap Home Equity: Didn’t We Try That Before?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Consumer confidence numbers are a total scam and have been for years. We have watched RETAIL literally collapse since the start of the year. Where is the confidence? In the phony stock market………..
The discount chain stores near me (Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc) are absolutely mobbed with shoppers and sales people. I have little doubt its back to school sales, but they are busy.
The middle and high end stores are ghost towns. Maybe “the rich” are busy at their vacation home on the Cape or something — but they aren’t shopping. The Mercedes and BMW dealerships are out washing cars, not selling them… Honda and GM dealerships are ironically selling cars (not super busy, but they are selling some).
Necessity shopping doing OK. Discretionary shopping dead.
I noticed the same thing in my area. Walmart, Target and Ross are packed with people. The parking lots are full. If you go into the Kohl’s across the street it is empty. The high end specialty retailers are the same as well. In my area Ross is the rock-star. We do almost all our clothes shopping there. I went on Sunday for back to school shopping and the shelves were bare when it came to kids stuff.
The Fed is past its prime, and in long-term decline. Fed policies seem designed to lower USA standards of living, perhaps unintentionally or out of incompetence. Congress enabled the Fed and gave it expanded powers (e.g. consumer protection under Obama regime), and Congress should take back some of what it gave. Central Planning Politburos eventually ossify and become corrupt, and the Fed in all its hubris is not bucking the trend.
Three letters (not even three words) suffice.
IYI.
DavidC
The Fed is going to tune monetary conditions according to what their Keynesian and Phillips curve models say SHOULD BE happening, in the fantasy world of their economic models.
Whatever is happening out in the real world hasn’t factored into Fed policy for more than a decade, and it still doesn’t matter.
The Fed should have normalized interest rates back in 2012, instead of launching QE2 and QE3… they screwed up according to the real world. But according to their models, they were self declared geniuses.
It doesn’t matter what consumer surveys say or how over-loaded with debt people are. That is not how central planning works.
The economic models all say the Fed is infallible, and we can’t have reality interfering or sending conflicting signals. Yellen has book deals to ink, and can’t be bothered to worry about a stagnant economy choking on too much debt.
O/T — its looking more and more like the lunatic that drove his car into a crowd in Charlottesville over the weekend was an antifa activist, not a white supremacist.
The individual apparently voted for Obama and is a noted Occupy Wall Street activist (media photos and police records indicate such).
And the man is from Ohio … not anywhere in Virginia or anywhere near Charlottesville. He showed up for the single purpose of causing trouble.
Did you notice when POTUS condemned hate groups by name he left out ANTIFA….
Source? We’ve already had his Mom and his teacher say he loved Nazis.
Any confirmation yet via authorities?
The driver was doing what the city would not do – breaking up an illegal assembly.
“Conrad ruled that the city’s attempt to revoke Kessler’s “Unite the Right” rally permit and move the protest to another park “was based on the content of his speech.”
The judge noted the city did not try at the same time to move counter-protesters to another location.”
http://www.khou.com/mb/news/thousands-descend-on-charlottesville-for-unite-the-right-rally-counter-protest/463869251
The US has its “Baghdad statue moment”, took a while… but what follows ? Sure nation building in the US will go a bit more smoothly… maybe.. 0% sort of says ” out of delays “.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H-uAZa4H1vk
The masses are so easily manipulated by media outlets its scary.
I don’t know about all the other cities, but the General Robert Lee statue in Charlottesville was actually part of a reconciliation effort after the civil war.
Maybe people in the south feel the “war of northern aggression” (their name for the civil war) was really about state’s rights versus federalism. That debate has been going on since 1776 (see articles of confederation that preceded the Constitution). The debate continues to this day.
Its frightening that supposedly educated people (like the UVa faculty) are editing history for their own selfish political gain. Its bad when uneducated people (like the KKK) modify history to suit their warped agenda, but when the educated class does so, its time to be really worried.
Yes, I have read through a lot on the federalist / state question, and a lot of the arguments and philosophy would also apply to how EU is being formed. In Spain for example there is the avoidance/erasure/dealing with Civil war monuments and events, very complex, played out and with strong sentiments. Another example is ‘voluntary’ cessation of sovereign powers, the implication of a word or sentence or treaty.
General Lee was moderate in his views as far as I make out, and pragmatic. History is being very poorly interpreted, a reason we don’t learn from it in spite of endless ‘education’. General Lee even later advised obliterating the differences the civil war itself might have created , was against battle memorials that would stir resentment.
Taking down his statue is just like rubbing people’s faces in it, as he likely represents the highest set of Southern values. Folk who won’t appreciate that should learn how they ended up as slaves, find those who captured their ancestors, but they will be looking at people same colour as themselves, and that does not fit the narrative. Not justifying anything, nor the Kurklos people people either, but there is no need to stir up hate – that tends to be someone’s political agenda and it serves no good either way.
If you don’t like history, being reminded of it, respecting it, acknowledging and overcoming your own discrimination of it, then maybe you will end up tied to it.
That is a persons choice, history goes nowhere so it is up to the person to move if he is not comfortable with it, and without upsetting others in the present. There are plenty of real symbols of oppression in the world today that need dealing with, and state power was a safeguard from some of those.
“General Lee even later advised obliterating the differences the civil war itself might have created , was against battle memorials that would stir resentment.”
Meaning – his statue was judged to be not protected as war history and therefore able to be withdrawn, that implies though that it is not what General Lee advocated against, but instead a posthumous celebration of his persona. Cannot have it both ways.
As a consumer, I have great confidence in the Fed—To continue distorting financial markets, debase the dollar, and expropriate wealth from the middle class…
Retail sales were way up in July and revised way up for June. Hard data.
The FED knows–certainly by now anyway–that it can’t engineer a recovery of the magnitude we expect. The only thing it can do, with the broader media’s complicity, is to “direct the dialog” so to speak. Any uptick or original estimate du jour will be trumpeted as proof of continuing recovery, despite the broader backdrop of gathering weaknesses and negative data revisions. Consumer CONfidence is always good for a headline. And headlines really are all they are able to produce.
Sorry, off topic. Looks like Hartford is experiencing trouble due to politicians who don’t grok math or, perhaps, who have no compassion for future generations of tax payers.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/nyregion/hartford-with-its-finances-in-disarray-veers-toward-bankruptcy.html
I would guess that this dynamic is in play.
https://www.nationalreview.com/sites/default/files/republican-mayors-are-rare.jpg
A lot of the statements in that NYT article are misleading or just plain wrong.
Hartford USED TO BE an insurance center. That ended long ago. Aetna moving their HQ away is something of a formality, since most of the company moved away years ago. The HQ moved away because the state tried to tax the global revenue of any company headquartered in CT … that is why GE moved its HQ also. Sikorsky moved their HQ to Maryland for the same reason. Why should CT collect taxes for business that happens 100% outside the state? The state legislature’s greed caused numerous companies to relocate their HQ.
The photo accompanying the article was taken from an angle that doesn’t show all the large buildings in Hartford that have been vacant for decades. Connecticut National Bank abandoned its building in the 80s. The massive factory that used to house Colt Firearms (as in the Colt 45 pistol) has a huge blue Turkish dome on top — a gift from the country of Turkey to Samuel Colt…. that factory has been empty since the early 1970s.
7 of the 10 largest employers in the state are tax exempt entities, as are many of the largest land holders. UConn, Yale, the state of CT, the federal government (navy base and coast guard academy), Columbia hospital system, Sacred Heart university, the catholic diocese — all tax exempt, very large land holders. Hartford Hospital pays no taxes — and its located in the middle of a gang warzone. Trinity College pays no taxes. Yale is the largest landholder in the city of New Haven and has the second largest college endowment in the US… and it pays zero taxes.
UConn is expanding in / around Hartford, but the NYT forgot to mention that UConn is tax exempt and contributes zero to any municipal budget. UConn pays its professors $75K-$200K (depending on lots of variables, same as elsewhere) — but it pays its basketball coach seven figures. UConn also took over most of the buildings formerly owned by GE in Stamford. When they were GE buildings, GE paid taxes. As UConn buildings, they are tax exempt.
CT’s governor, Dan Malloy, used to be mayor of the city of Stamford. He was forced out because the city’s DPW was doing work at Malloy’s private residence while he was negotiating a new contract for the DPW. The state’s Attorney General (now Senator Blumenthal) decided not to criminal press charges on a fellow democrat.
Before that, former governor John Rowland was charged (and convicted) because state contractors “voluntarily” decided to do thousands of dollars work at his vacation home for free… and those contractors mysteriously won state contracts. Rowland was a Republican, so AG Blumenthal did press charges, and unsurprisingly Rowland was just as guilty as Malloy.
Malloy got himself elected governor, and then promptly jammed through the largest tax increase in the states history (at that time). Several years later, he ran for re-election promising that huge increase was it… and right after election jammed through a second, even bigger tax increase. The state does not have a revenue problem.
Malloy gave massive tax incentives to movie / TV production companies, several property developers, and tried to give $100 million in tax breaks to Bridgewater hedge fund. All the movie companies, property developers and Bridgewater’s CEO are Democrats — all contributed to Malloy (and Obama)’s campaigns.
Blue collar workers got a massive tax increase. White collar workers got a massive tax increase. Large campaign contributors got tax rebates. Public unions got big raises and big pension promises.
The mayors of Bridgeport and Waterbury are both convicted criminals, returning from jail sentences. The previous mayor of Hartford was a convicted gang member.
The unofficial nickname for the state is “Corrupticut”, and under Dan Malloy the corruption actually got worse.
Hartford’s problems have been building for decades, they are just coming to a head now because of all the damage Malloy did to the state economy. Neglected highways, neglected railways, massive taxes, massive corruption, and an anti-business government.
The state was unable to reach a budget agreement (there is a huge deficit despite the massive tax increases) — so Malloy appointed himself emergency conservator and is spending whatever he wants on his pet projects while keeping state beaches closed. Malloy wants to address the corruption with… even more taxes
All devoted practitioners of pseudo science, at least in progressive dystopias where such are touted as de facto replacement for scripture, use “data” somewhere between primarily and entirely for the purpose of rationalizing pre formed beliefs. Yellen, and the rest of the Fed, is no different. Managing to come up with some contrived “study,” or “measure,” that they can pretend “proves” their faith based assumptions, is what passes for ‘clever” and “scientificcy” in those circles.
All Fed officials predominantly socialize and interact with the small number of people who benefits from the Fed’s and governments’ mission of robbing everyone else for the benefit of those few well connecteds. Wherever any of them go, they run into people that are feeling flush and confident. Simply because the Fed is handing exactly those people the loot it steals from everyone else. Hence, what shapes their pre formed beliefs. The “studies” and “statistics” are just smoke and mirrors, intended to “prove” their point, to the strawmen they have convinced themselves are “less knowledgeable” than themselves, by virtue of them possessing fewer state sanctioned arbitrary degrees and credentials.
That’s really all it is to it. Emphasis really and all.