First time ever, Dow closes above 40,000....

May 17, 2024, 4:49 PM

I know the Stock Market is not the economy.

But this is an expression of the market's confidence that the FED has engineered a soft landing on taming inflation without engineering a recession.

So, this is a good time to re-visit some basic publicly-known metrics that show the strength of the economy, and serve as a reminder that Joe Biden and his policies have pulled us out of the pandemic and the huge mess he inherited from his predecessor.

The Red Hats will hate this or deny it or pretend it means something bad. Because they hate the reality that the country didn't collapse under Biden, but in fact re-built itself.

Enjoy:

1) Unemployment below 4% for 27 months in a row, a historic run -

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

2) The more expansive U-6 unemployment also at very low levels, currently at 6.9% -

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/U6RATENSA

3) Prime-Age Employment at its highest since 2001 -

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060

4) Real Wages increasing faster than inflation, and especially strong for lower and medium-wage employees -

https://x.com/arindube/status/1755568054501609646/photo/1

5) GDP Growth faster than any of the other developed economies since the pandemic -

https://www.businessinsider.com/economy-us-gdp-inflation-federal-reserve-economic-growth-canada-germany-2024-1

6) US Oil/Gas production highest ever -

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus2&f=m

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n9050us2a.htm

7) % of Uninsured Americans lowest ever -

https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2023/08/03/new-hhs-report-shows-national-uninsured-rate-reached-all-time-low-2023-after-record-breaking-aca-enrollment-period.html

8) Inflation tamed, with underlying multi-variate core inflation currently at 2.6% -

https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/policy/mct#--:mct-inflation:trend-inflation

9) Manufacturing investment exploded -

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RL1Q225SBEA

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Look, Tig can speak for himself - but again, he's no MAGA shill. I personally would argue that Biden deserves credit mostly for damping down the daily crazy that made most of us dreading checking the news after 5pm to see what atrocity the Orange Menace had wrought today, but broader economic trends tend to be global.

Our resurgence is mostly because China is in free-fall and most Western industry leaders now know it, and the last vestiges of the Bretton Woods System that shaped globalism and the last 80 years of history are disintegrating.Basically, we turned the world into a giant shopping mall where anybody could trade with anybody else, and us playing the role of Mall Cop. People came to regard it as the world's "normal", but it absolutely isn't...the thing most people simply don't get is, globalism was not a permanent or sustainable model, it was always about keeping the world on our side against the Soviets and later on the Russians.

And that system is ending. Western companies are shortening their supply lines and reshoring industry on a vast scale at the moment, and that is bringing a flood of high-paying (and blue collar) manufacturing jobs back to the US...and incidentally, driving up wages even as the tech industry is radically scaling itself down.

The reasons China is collapsing before our eyes are manyfold and I won't get into them here, but it's a trend that's only going to accelerate. The world's cheap labor is moving now to Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and the US's foreign interests are pretty much devolving down to whoever the cheap labor source is at the moment plus Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan...though England will probably join our little family once they finally realize that now that they've Brexited there's no other game left.

But globalism as we've known it over the last 80 years is all but dead. And the US is going to profit hugely from it. We already are, actually. And this is what's happening to China...and that's on top of those dozens of so-called Ghost Cities that have literally 60+ million homes that will never be lived in.

https://youtu.be/4LKhertp1Kg

First time ever, Dow closes above 40,000....

Well

When you post a non-response response, that tells me you know I'm right****

Uh huh...***

It was very much a response. Two people got it.***

Oh, I "got" your non-response....but it was substantively a non-response...***

I didn't pay $300 at the grocery store until Biden was in office.

Brandon must have the highest approval rating ever..***

Re: First time ever, Dow closes above 40,000....

Given this, it's very telling that his approval numbers are so poor.***

Re: Given this, it's very telling that his approval numbers are so poor.***

The Rich

Re: First time ever, Dow closes above 40,000....

If Trump were President, most of you would say this is a great economy....

Re: If Trump were President, most of you would say this is a great economy....

So, I post about the economy, and you try and turn this into a DEI conversation?

Re: So, I post about the economy, and you try and turn this into a DEI conversation?

Re: First time ever, Dow closes above 40,000....

Re: First time ever, Dow closes above 40,000....

You and I agree on some of this....

"The communique"... Spot frickin' on!***

TigerBoard POTD