ECONOMIC UPDATE: Powell Talks Inflation, Sends Cheap-Money Junkies Scrambling
The Federal Reserve called inflation "transitory" for months, and now indicated that the economy is still too hot
NOTE TO READERS: The following is our weekly Economic Update — Market Overview found in this week’s issue of The Trends Journal. Consider subscribing here for in-depth, independent geopolitical and socioeconomic trends and trend forecasts that you won’t find anywhere else.
All the mainstream media, as illustrated in this week’s Trends Journal cover, are whores. Nothing more than Presstitutes who get paid to put out by their corporate pimps and government whore masters.
When the COVID War began in China in January 2020—their Lunar New Year, “The Year of the Rat”—it was quickly transported overseas. Beginning with Italy, power-hungry politicians lacking a scintilla of hard data and scientific proof locked down entire nations to fight the COVID War.
While the masses marched off to war, as they have a long history of doing, and followed the orders of their political freaks and obeyed the arrogant bureaucrats called “health ministers” etc., we warned in great detail that the draconian mandates imposed upon the public would wrought socioeconomic implications of a magnitude unprecedented in human history.
Although we had sent out several hundred Trend Alerts® to the mainstream media warning them that the lives and livelihoods of billions would be destroyed, they were totally ignored.
SEYMOUR HERSH LAUGHS OFF NYT REPORT ON NORD STREAM
Among them was our trend forecast of an Office Building Bust. Ignored then, it is “big” news now:
Commercial real estate has a ‘shock coming’ as return-to-office plans fall short, CEO says
“There’s this assumption that people like commuting into a central business district. They don’t, it’s a complete waste of time and money and they don’t want to do it,” Mark Dixon, CEO of flexible office company IWG, said.
The Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of people to work from home for the first time, and they don’t necessarily want to go back, he added
There’s a “shock” coming for the commercial real estate industry, but the opportunities ahead are huge, according to Mark Dixon, CEO of flexible office company IWG.
Technology enabled a “fundamental seismic shift” in commercial real estate as the Covid-19 pandemic forced millions of people to work from home for the first time, Dixon said—and workers don’t necessarily want things to go back to how they were before. (CNBC, 7 Mar 2023.)
Blow me away.
Would have never known this would happen… been only warning about this in The Trends Journal week after week, month after month, year after year. Here are just a few examples:
● “Commercial Real Estate in a Tailspin” (20 Oct 2020)
● “Deloitte Abandons More London Office Space” (26 Apr 2022)
● “GM Softens Back-to-the-Office Requirement After Worker Backlash” (4 Oct 2022)
● “Business Office Bust Begins to Bite” (20 Dec 2022)
● “New York City’s Workforce Sharply Shrinking” (24 Jan 2023)
● “Office Occupancy Half of What It Used to Be” (7 Feb 2023)
TREND FORECAST: As we forecast in Office Building Bust, a Top Trend for 2023 (3 Jan 2023) this next phase of the office property crisis is accelerating as landlords face stiffer competition to get and keep tenants, wrangle with local governments to try to minimize their tax assessments, and see their margins shrink—many to the point of disappearing. And for many with adjustable-rate mortgages, the higher interest rates rise, the more they have to pay on their loans.
To survive, many landlords will let go of older buildings needing maintenance or repairs, either offering them at fire-sale prices or handing the keys back to lenders… which, as we have reported, they are now doing.
As property values are reassessed downward, cities will confront hard decisions about which workers and services to cut. And as for converting offices into residential apartments and/or condominiums, as we have noted in previous issues of The Trends Journal, thousands of office buildings, especially older ones, across the U.S., are not eligible for that kind of salvation for reasons we explained in “Plan to Turn New York’s Vacant Hotels to Housing Not Working” (5 Apr 2022) and “Wall Street, Dead Street. Office Buildings Going Condo” (28 Jun 2022).
TRENDPOST: Full of bullshit before, and still on the same BS page, on Monday, Fed Head Powell dismissed our Office Building Bust trend by ignoring the fact that office buildings constructed over the past 50 years are not apartment adaptable. He admitted that there are “pockets of concern” in the commercial debt market and moronically stated that “The occupancy of office space in many major cities is just remarkably low, and you wonder how that can be. Over time, some of that is going to be made into condominiums and things like that.”
Wonder how it could be? It’s no “wonder”… hybrid work is the way of the future. Again, we note this since the implications of the Office Building Bust (3 Jan 2023) are unprecedented and it will be a shock that will be felt from sea to shining sea.
As trend forecasters we analyze the current events forming future trends and provide trends analysis and trend forecasts that are not part of the mainstream narrative.
Again, we had warned that when politicians locked down much of the world, children were forced to stay home and when they did go back to school—which many did not as we have detailed—they would suffer severe mental disorders. Besides the drug overdose and suicide rates spiking, Gerald Celente warned that crime rates would soar, “When people lose everything and have nothing left to lose, they lose it.”
Mask Madness
And lose it they have. How about that mayoral election in Chicago last week where the incumbent lost because crime rates are out of control?
How about New York City where the egotistic mayor Eric Adams—a champion of the COVID War who forced public servants to get the COVID Jab and bragged about his “COVID-19 Booster Campaign” last September—is now telling people not to wear masks when they go into stores.
Why?
Because of rising crime and with a mask on you can’t see who the criminal is.
Adams declared that “We are putting out a clear call to all of our shops, do not allow people to enter the store without taking off their face mask.”
WATCH: CELENTE INTERVIEWS SEYMOUR HERSH
He went on to say, “Let’s be clear, some of these characters going into stores that are wearing their mask, they’re not doing it because they’re afraid of the pandemic, they’re doing it because they’re afraid of the police. We need to stop allowing them to exploit the safety of the pandemic by wearing masks, committing crimes.”
Total bullshit! “Characters?” How about crooks and criminals?
This is a city that imposed some of the most draconian COVID War mandates and forced people to wear the useless masks. And it was not a “pandemic.” Again, how many people do you personally know that died from the coronavirus? And if you do know someone, how old were they and how many preexisting comorbidities were they suffering from.
TRENDPOST: We have continually detailed the ineffectiveness of wearing masks. Here are just of a few of the past Trends Journal articles:
● “Blowing Up in Their Faces. Masks Don’t Work in Preventing COVID Spread” (14 Feb 2023)
● “Nevada: We Need Your Money. Take Off Your (Worthless) Masks” (15 Feb 2022)
● “Mask on a Plane = Mass Stupidity” (5 Oct 2021)
● “Wear Masks, Breathe Toxic Particles” (13 April 2021)
● “Danish Study: Masks Offer Very Limited Protection” (5 Jan 2021)
● “Masks Offer Little, If Any Protection” (20 Oct 2020)
● “European Health Officials Agree: Masks Don’t Work” (29 Sept 2020)
But again, while the socioeconomic, mental, physical and geopolitical consequences of the COVID War are incalculable, from the Office Building Bust to crime, etc., you can, but they—the politicians and mainstream media who launched and promoted the COVID War—won’t blame it on their draconian lockdown mandates.
Need another example?
PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) – Walmart’s departure from Portland shines light on rampant property crime (6 March 2023)
Got it? Not a word in their article that the spiking crime rate is a result of the COVID War lockdowns.
And the crime rates and economic decline will get worse.
Why?
Because in the fight to win the COVID War, the governments that destroyed lives and businesses artificially propped economies with countless trillions of free money and their Bankster buddies assisted them with ultra-low interest rates.
The facts are clear and undeniable.
For example, as the economy was locked down and going to shit, the housing boom drove up prices some 40 percent in the U.S. and across other developed nations as people were borrowing money at near record-low mortgage rates.
On the equity market front, the low interest rates created an artificial surge that spiked up the stock market which should have crashed as a result of the lockdowns and millions of businesses going out of business. Cashing in on the cheap money binge, the “Bigs” got bigger as their merger and acquisition activity hit an all-time high in 2021.
Game Over
And of course, there were the outright lies, or was it sheer stupidity, by the Central Bankster Bandits who bullshitted for nearly two years that as a result of the cheap money spree there was no real inflation… it was only “temporary” and then “transitory.”
And now, with inflation entrenched across much of the economic spectrum and it can no longer be denied, as we had forecast, the higher the central banks raise interest rates the deeper the economy and equity markets will decline.
Powell told the clowns on Capitol Hill that “The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated.” He warned that “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.”
However, while the economy may appear to be strong, we disagree. It was artificially propped up and as we continue to note, the higher interest rates rise, the deeper equities and economies will fall… and fall they are. Indeed, with the cheap money drying up, the U.S. manufacturing sector slid down for the sixth consecutive month through February according to Federal Reserve data.
Also on a down note, the U.S. Commerce Department reported that its measure of civilian capital equipment order fell 3.4 percent in January… after hitting a high in November 2021 when the nation was awash in cheap money and low interest rates.
It is all about inflation which, as we reported, jumped higher than expected in January. Therefore, with inflation still strong the bet worrying The Street is that Powell’s hawkish statement today signals that the Fed will raise interest rates 50 basis points when they meet in two weeks.
TREND FORECAST: We have warned that the stock market climate is ripe for March Madness 2023. Equities will not be able to take a 50 basis points hike.
Go back one year ago.
While the Dow is down a bit lower than it was this time last year, the broader stock market index, the S&P 500, is 6 percent lower than it was last March and the Nasdaq is more than 12 percent lower than it was in March 2022.
With interest rates rising, so too will the cost of servicing debt in both the government and private sectors. Therefore defaults will skyrocket especially in the office building and real estate markets. On the real estate front, on a seasonally adjusted basis, mortgage applications for the week ending 24 February hit their lowest level in 28 years according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
And as interest rates go higher it will push up the U.S. dollar and push down other currencies especially those in emerging markets that are saddled with dollar debt. Thus, the higher the dollar rises, the more it will cost them to service their debt… which many will not be able to do.
As a result demonstrations will escalate in emerging market countries as the masses take to the streets to protest lack of basic living standards, government corruption, crime and violence.
“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” — Henry Ford
PROTOCOLS OF THE MEETINGS OF THE LEARNED ELDERS OF ZION... Protocol No. 10 – Preparing for Power
❝. . . utterly exhaust humanity with dissension, hatred, struggle, envy and even by the use of torture, by starvation, by inoculation of diseases, by want, so that the GOYIM see no other issue than to take refuge in our complete sovereignty in money and all else.❞
http://www.renegadetribune.com/protocols-of-zion-protocol-x-preparing-for-power/
“The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debt.” ― Henry Ford
Protocols of Zion: Protocol VIII – Provisional Government
We shall surround our government with a whole world of economists. That is the reason why economic sciences form the principal subject of the teaching given to the jews. Around us again will be a whole constellation of bankers, industrialists, capitalists and – the main thing – millionaires, because in substance everything will be settled by the question of figures.
http://www.renegadetribune.com/protocols-of-zion-protocol-viii-provisional-government/