ECONOMIC UPDATE: Main Street Detached From Wall Street
Separate from the hype that drives equity markets on The Street, on Main Street, happy days are not here again
NOTE TO READERS: This is one of the dozens of articles in this week’s Trends Journal. Please consider subscribing here for the world’s best trend-forecasting magazine.
While The Street is still on an equity market high, thanks mostly to so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks that spiked, and continue to spike, with the new AI juice they are gobbling up, it is a different world on Main Street.
As for AI, trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age, and then die. Yes, there may be an AI bubble that will pop, but unlike the dot-com bust, this is much different.
Back in the Fall of 1999, when The Trends Journal was just a quarterly newsletter (it is now a 170-plus-page weekly magazine), we had forecast, “Dot-Com This” … warning that, “Dot-com overload will short circuit many high expectations for huge profits in Internet commerce, entertainment and a wide array of dot-com services. Following the holiday season, many of today’s high-flying Internet stocks, the hottest IPOs, and newly emerging IPO-wannabees will have begun a descent from their overvalued heights.”
We went on to note that during that time—a time when the Internet revolution was just several years old—the companies that produced real-time profitability and performances would continue to grow and “win both a secure place on the net and investor dollars.”
However, all of us who are old enough to remember what was going on back then, the mainstream media was flooded with a desensitized cacophony of Geeks singing a chorus of made-up-services and empty Internet promises that belied reality.
AI is a different trip… this is artificially real and the trend has just been born. Will some companies go bust and the highest of high-flying stocks come down? Yes, of course, but the upswing on The Street has just begun. AI, as we have detailed continually in The Trends Journal, is—for better and for worse, like it or not—just the start of something big that will reshape “life” on earth. Indeed, AI, We Own You.
Main Street
Separate from the hype that drives equity markets on The Street, on Main Street, happy days are not here again and as we detail in this and previous Trends Journals, there is a long downward slope ahead for the working class… the Plantation workers of Slavelandia.
Today, consumer confidence for February fell for the first time since November.
This comes as no surprise to Trends Journal subscribers. We had forecast that consumer confidence often rides high during the Christmas season when people go on a holiday spending spree, but then they go on a down note when their debt levels rise and the holiday high is over: Welcome to February with debt levels, inflation levels up and wages down.
Back in January, The Conference Board’s preliminary reading of consumer confidence was 114, but they revised it down to 110.9.
Staying on a down note, the index registered a reading of 106.7 in February. Showing more gloom than boom, their Expectations Index, which measures how consumers feel about their income levels, the labor markets and business conditions slumped to 79.8 in February … down from 81.5 in January. An Index reading below 80 in that category signals recession.
The Conference Board’s chief economist Dana Peterson noted that, “The drop in confidence was broad-based, affecting all income groups except households earning less than $15,000 and those earning more than $125,000. Confidence deteriorated for consumers under the age of 35 and those 55 and over, whereas it improved slightly for those aged 35 to 54.”
As Trends Journal subscribers well know, this is our 73rd week of reporting job losses, something that no other magazine does, since we noted the layoff trend was escalating and had forecast it would hit the consumer marketplace.
Confirming our forecast, Peterson said, “February’s write-in responses revealed that while overall inflation remained the main preoccupation of consumers, they are now a bit less concerned about food and gas prices, which have eased in recent months. But, they are more concerned about the labor market situation… .”
Another major concern according to their findings is consumers’ concerns about the “U.S. political environment”… which again, we had long noted, has turned to shit. And this is not only a U.S. concern, name the country and pick out the freak show running it and how the public is disgusted with their political system.
TREND FORECAST: While consumers are concerned about inflation, which we detail in this and other Trends Journals, we disagree with JPMorgan’s chief market strategist Marko Kolanovic who was on FOX Business News today warning that the U.S. economy could be headed for 1970s-style stagflation.
Stagflation is when the economy stagnates while unemployment and inflation keep rising.
As we have noted, January’s Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index increased more than expected while consumer spending declined more than expected by The Street.
And, again, as we continue to report with our weekly list of corporate layoffs, as the Conference Board research concludes, people are worried about getting fired from their jobs.
Therefore, when all the data is added up, it is not stagflation. The economy will not stagnate as inflation and unemployment rises. It is DRAGFLATION, and it will go global: Economies will decline as inflation and unemployment rise.
And now, with The Street’s expectations that the Federal Reserve will only cut interest rates three times rather than six, it will increase unemployment, drive the economy deeper into recession and will do next to nothing to bring down real inflation.
Consumer confidence... I am not a consumer... I am not a machine... I am not a Number... I am Fritz Freud.
Declaration of no confidence in my Government
https://fritzfreud.substack.com/p/declaration-of-no-confidence-in-my
All the markets... all the economy... economists... it is all a lie.
It is based on Money which is based on Private Fractional Reserve Banking which is a Mafia Scam.
The same Families... the Jewish Banking Monopoligarchjs who finance war terror and chemical castration of the herd... poison our water and corrupt society.
The proverbial "Jew that poisons the well" comes to mind... and you know what... there is some truth in this ... a lot actually.
ECONOMIC UPDATE: Main Street Detached From Wall Street
Main Street and Wall Street have never ever been on the same path..........NEVER