THE JAPANESE CARRY TRADE AS A PILLAR OF GLOBAL CREDIT MAY BE ENDING!

OBSERVATIONS: KAMALA HARRIS IS TALKING TOO FAST & LOOSE WITH THE FACTS

Watching Vice President Kamala Harris talk about her economic record would make even Pinocchio blush. With a straight face, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has claimed the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 would weaken middle-class America. Of course, she offered no specifics to support her claim, nor any evidence to defend her own record.

So here are the facts (not mistaken claims) about how the middle class has fared while Harris helped (mis)manage the nation’s economy.

1. 1. Annual inflation went from 1.4% in January 2021 to over 9% in June 2022.
   2. Just 1 1/2 years after the Biden administration took power and began implementing its radical agenda, prices were rising about as much in a single month as they did in the entire year before Harris was sworn in as vice president.
   3. Inflation has far outpaced wage growth.
   4. The average person can buy much less today than in January 2021, despite having a much larger paycheck. For the typical family, this has amounted to a loss of $4,000 in annual purchasing power.
   5. The impetus behind Inflation has been unprecedented overspending by the government, which Harris not only helped oversee but for which she also repeatedly advocated over the last 3 1/2 years.
   6. Since Harris took office, the federal debt has exploded by over $7 trillion.
   7. The Treasury has burned through about another $1 trillion in cash reserves, for a total cumulative deficit of over $8 trillion. By January 2025, that number will breach $9 trillion, according to her own administration’s estimates.
   8. The Treasury’s unparalleled need to borrow money has pushed up interest rates, including for the $35 trillion federal debt.
   9. Taxpayers are now shelling out an annualized $1.6 trillion just to finance the burgeoning debt.
   10. The Treasury paid $140 billion in June just for interest on the debt. That was over 75% of all the personal income taxes collected that month. Harris has helped oversee the worst deterioration of federal finances since at least World War II.
   11. Family finances are now being crushed by higher interest rates, hitting everything from mortgages to credit cards.
   12. With home prices and interest rates launching higher, the nation has been thrown into a housing affordability crisis.
   13. The monthly mortgage payment on a median-priced home has more than doubled since Harris took office, rising over 115%. That’s an extra $14,000 per year for the same house.
   14. People are also drowning in $1.1 trillion of credit card debt, even as the average interest rate on those outstanding balances is near a record high.
   15. Families are now paying $240 billion annually just in credit card interest, without putting a dime toward principal.

These are just some of the reasons people widely disapprove of the current administration’s handling of the economy. Families can’t make it from paycheck to paycheck with today’s stratospheric cost of living. They’re going into debt and depleting their savings just to make ends meet. In fact, the national savings rate is now less than half what it was before the pandemic.

Harris refuses to take any accountability for her role in this disaster. Worse, she claims that a conservative agenda would do precisely what her agenda has already done: eviscerate middle-class finances.

• • Far from hollowing out the middle class, conservatives aim to hollow out the unelected government bureaucracy that has morphed into a fourth branch of government, actively subverting the other three.
  • Instead of more spending and borrowing by the government, conservatives want this largess reined in and inflation ended.

Conversely, Harris was one of just 13 senators who voted against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, because she thought he was too tough on inflation—the same Powell who let inflation hit 40-year highs before raising interest rates above 1%.

Harris is an arsonist playing firefighter, simultaneously pushing for more government spending and taxes on the middle class while claiming conservatives are the ones to blame for her failures. People would be wise to remember who set the inflationary fire that burned their finances to ash.

H/T AJ ANTONI

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW!

COMMODITIES SENDING A MESSAGE

The carnage in commodities continues to send warning messages. With spot commodity prices one-percent away from three year lows, it’s not a message of a ‘soft landing’.

RESEARCH

THE JAPANESE CARRY TRADE – The MATASII Cross Can Be A Guide

• • The Yen/ $USD pair has ripped 12% higher. 
  • This, combined with the higher interest rate on the Yen, (the BoJ raised rates from 0.1% to 2.5% last week), is blowing up hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of the Yen carry trade.
  • When a carry trade blows up, investors are forced to panic liquidate their holdings. That is why the market melted down over the last few weeks contributing to companies like Apple and Nvidia collapsing in share price.

FOOD – Policies For Planned Scarcities?

• • The EU, under the control of what I will call the “Davos Crowd” (i.e. global elite), appears to be systematically crushing agriculture through its policies. Unfortunately, this is happening not only in Europe but also across the wider West. 
  • NORMAL LEADERS WOULD NOT DO THIS??
  • Behind it you sense left-liberal and globalist aspirations. This is what they believe, and it is now manifested in the fact that global warming is increasing in a devastating way, that the earth’s climate is becoming unbearable. But they believe that this is due to one single cause: human activity, mainly and decisively anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions.

DEVELOPMENTS TO WATCH

THE BUFFETT INDICATOR – Preparing For Lower Prices

• • Buffett quietly dumped half of Berkshire’s Apple shares in the second quarter in addition to 90M Bank of America shares.
  • This increased the company’s cash pile by a record $88 billion to an all-time high of $277 billion at the end of last quarter.

CHINA – Don’t Take Your Eye Off New Developments

• • The strategy is designed to bolster national self-sufficiency and resilience against external shocks, and ultimately allow the nation to withstand ‘extreme situations’ including protracted armed conflict.

GLOBAL ECONOMIC REPORTING

CONTINUOUS JOBLESS CLAIMS

• • This was the highest since November 2021 and above market expectations of 1,870,000.

US INTERNATIONAL BALANCE OF TRADE

• • The trade deficit in the US narrowed to $73.1 billion in June of 2024 from the revised 20-month high of $75 billion in the previous month, but above market expectations of a $72.5 billion trade gap.

GLOBAL PMI & ISM MANUFACTURING

• • The S&P Global US Composite PMI was revised lower to 54.3 in July 2024, from the preliminary estimate of 55 and a slight decrease from June’s 54.8.
  • The S&P Global US Services PMI was revised lower to 55 in July 2024 from a preliminary of 56, compared to 55.3 in June.
  • ISM Manufacturing PMI rose back into the expansionary territory at 51.4, above the expected 51.0, and the prior 48.8.