CELENTE: Equity Markets Keep Going Up, as Global Economy Goes Down
Not a peep from the mainstream business media is the Office Building Bust that will make the Banks Go Bust.
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While the equity markets keep going up, the global economy, as we report with factual data in this and previous Trends Journals, keeps going down.
Statistics Canada reported that manufacturing sales slumped 2.1 percent in June, the worst report in two and a half years and down some six percent from its May 2023 peak.
The Conference Board of Canada also noted last week that:
Nominal sales fell in 17 of the 21 manufacturing subsectors. Sales of transportation equipment (-$328 million) experienced a significant drop. Meanwhile, sales of wood products (+$30 million) saw the steepest rise.
Manufacturing sales fell in 8 of 10 provinces. In relative terms, sales decreased the most in Newfoundland and Labrador (-13.5 percent) and increased the most in New Brunswick (+6.1 percent).
New orders fell by 4.7 percent, while unfilled orders decreased by 0.8 percent.
The Raw Materials Price Index fell by 1.4 percent (m/m) in June, while the Industrial Product Price Index was virtually unchanged.
In the U.S., the Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that 4.4 percent of average Americans, i.e. plantation workers of Slavelandia, expected to become unemployed in the next four months and that 28.4 percent of respondents said they were looking for a new job, hitting the highest level in a decade.
And today, Bloomberg reported that the “Fed Confronts Up to a Million US Jobs Vanishing in Revision.” They note that “US job growth in the year through March was likely far less robust than initially estimated,” and quote economists from Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo & Co. who project that tomorrow the U.S. government’s preliminary benchmark revisions will lower payroll growth in the year through March by 600,000… a loss of about 50,000 jobs a month.
Going Down
With job growth slowing, and, as we report, real wages falling way behind real inflation—illustrating the fact that is ignored by the mainstream business media that people are spending more money to buy less—week after week, month after month, and year after year, we have been reporting on the decline of retail sales of major corporations…from the luxury top to the chain store bottom.
Yes, while Walmart had a good year, part of it is because more people are shopping there because they are earning less as prices go up and they have to scale down. And, overall, the numbers across the corporate retail spectrum are weak.
Today, Lowe’s reported that its quarterly sales declined because home improvement spending weakened.
And looking at the big picture, we report in this Trends Journal how many commodity prices, such as oil, are going down because the global economy is going down.
Office Building Bust, Banks Go Bust
Again, not a peep from the mainstream business media is the Office Building Bust that will make the Banks Go Bust.
Totally ignored by the Presstitutes, the media whores who get paid to put out by their corporate pimps and government whoremasters, is the factual data that supports our trend forecasts. Kastle Systems reported yesterday that the office occupancy rate in the 10 largest U.S. cities is just 48.8 percent.
And as for the work-at-home trend, a big front-page article in the Business Section of The Wall Street Journal is “Starbucks’s CEO to Work Remotely.”
The WSJ wrote: “To woo its new chief executive, Starbucks offered a $10 million cash signing bonus and millions more in stock-based compensation. The coffee giant also didn’t insist that he move to the company headquarters in Seattle” and that Brian Niccol, “will be able to live in his home in Southern California,” and take a jet to Starbucks’s head office on a corporate jet whenever he feels like it.
Again, the more people working from home the fewer tenants. And the fewer the tenants, the less money comes in to pay off the commercial real estate loans of which some $4 trillion are coming due over the next two years.
This is not rocket science to figure out the economic damage being inflicted on building owners who will default on their debts that will bring down the banks holding a large number of loans. And, of course, all the business that depended on commuters that will be going out of business—and how cities will take a hit as tax revenues decline as a result of the vacancies and business outflows—is not “news” in the mainstream media.
TREND FORECAST: The very worst is yet to come. When the Banks Go Bust, the phony propped-up equity markets will crash as will the global economy.
Golden Year for Gold
As Trends Journal subscribers well know, we were the only media publication in the world that had forecast on 2 January 2024 that this year would be a Golden Year for Gold. And here we are, eight months later and today gold hit an all-time record high of $2,532 per ounce… up nearly $500 per ounce since we made that trend forecast.
TREND FORECAST: With the continuing escalation of the Ukraine and Israel wars, the global economic instability, and the reality that the U.S. will lower interest rates (the lower interest rates fall, the deeper the dollar declines, and the higher gold prices will rise) gold, the world’s #1 safe-haven asset is on a historical upswing. Should these geopolitical and socioeconomic trends continue their course, gold prices may well hit $3,000 per ounce by year-end.
Yet, again, our forecasts are being ignored, and instead, gold sites like KITCO report that a “precious metals analyst at Commerzbank, raised his year-end gold price target to $2,500, an increase of $200 from the previous forecast.”
Oh, we get it. They were $200 off on their forecast, predicting that gold would only hit $2,300 per ounce, but now they say it’s topped… so I guess Commerzbank’s expert knows best.
And when you read more of his reasoning as to why gold has topped out, totally ignored are the Israel and Ukraine wars. As we say, “Opportunity misses those who view the world through the eyes of their profession,” and the Banksters can’t look past the dollar sign.