(HAZLE TOWNSHIP) Long lines of customers were at several Hallmark gift shops in our region Thursday.
Hallmark Heritage Shops in Hazleton, Scranton, Shamokin, Bloomsburg, Lehighton, and Williamsport are expected to close soon as the greeting card business changes.
The owner of the shops blames declining business, but stores expected to close were very busy Thursday.
At Hallmark Heritage Shops in the Keyser Oak Shopping Center in Scranton and the Laurel Mall near Hazleton, the lines were out the door.
All the business is a little too late.
Customers were there to shop as the store prepares to close its doors.
“We’ve shopped Hallmark for years and years, and we’ll miss it,” said Pat Scarpati of Hazleton.
Scarpati didn’t mind waiting in line for up to a half hour to for a chance stock up on traditional Hallmark goods.
“I was surprised [at the lines],” said Theresa Holly of West Hazleton. “I am surprised they are closing because they have such nice things.”
The independent owner of nearly a dozen Hallmark Heritage Shops sent a letter to loyal shoppers inviting them to the liquidation sale. It’s a thank you for shopping at his stores over the past 45 years.
“I’m really going to miss this, so I stocked up. I have a basket full and my husband is in there watching it. I hope I get back there to ring it up before he sees what’s in there,” said Renee Greenwood. “[I have] about 100 cards in my basket!”
“We like the Hallmark brand. We come here to shop. It’s at the Laurel Mall, we come here to shop. So now we’ll be down to one at the other mall,” said Donna Yannuzzi of Hazleton.
The shop at the Church Hill Mall near Hazleton is the next closest Hallmark store. It’s run by a different owner who says business is good. They want people to know they plan to stay around, and even honor current coupons or reward certificates from the closing stores
“We have the phone ringing off the wall,” said Karen Forte, Angelique Boutique. “Hopefully, I need to get in touch with all the new customers. I need to find out what they need.”
FRA Co-founder Gordon T. Long is joined by Professor Michael Hudson in discussing his concept of the FIRE economy and its influence on the production and consumption economy, along with some of his writings.
Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of Killing the Host (2015), The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971), amongst many others.
ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East. Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law.
FIRE ECONOMY
FIRE is an acronym to the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector. Basically that sector is all about assets, not production and consumption. Most people think of the economy as being producers making goods and services and paying labor to produce them, and then labor is going to buy the goods and services. But this production and consumption is rife in the asset economy of who owns assets and who owns other things.
The Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate sector is dominated by finance. For instance, 70-80% of bank loans in North America and Europe are mortgage loans against real estate. The only way of buying a home or commercial real estate is on credit, so the loan to value ratio goes up steadily, banks lend more to the real estate sector, and real estate is worth whatever banks are willing to lend against it.
As banks loosen credit terms, lower interest rates, take lower down payments and basically lower amortization rates, interest only loans, they’re going to lend more hand more against property.
“Property’s bid up on price, but all of this rise in price is debt leverage.”
A financialized economy is a debt leveraged economy, whether it’s real estate or insurance or just living, and debt leveraging means a larger portion of assets are represented by debt, raising debt-equity ratios, but also that more and more of people’s incomes and tax revenue is paid to creditors. So there’s a flow of revenue from the production and consumption economy into the financial sector.
WE’RE STILL IN CAPITALISM, NOT CREDITISM
There’s a huge amount of gross savings, about 18-19% of the US economy, coded in part in debt. The savings that are lent out to borrowers are debt. So you have the 1% lending out their savings to the 99%, but the gross savings are higher.
“Every economy is a credit economy.”
“The IMF has this Austrian theory that pretends money began as barter and capitalism operates on barter, and this is a disinformation campaign. This is a very modern theory that is basically used to say “oh, debt is bad”, an what they really mean is that public debt is bad, the government shouldn’t create money or deficit, and you should leave it all to the banks who should somehow run off debt and in-debt the economy”.
“You can usually ignore just about everything the IMF says, and if you understand money you’re not going to be hired by the IMF.
They impose austerity programs that they call “stabilization programs” that are actually destabilization programs, almost wherever they’re imposed.
“When you have an error repeated year after year, decade after decade, it’s not really insanity doing the same thing thinking it’ll be different. It’s sanity. It’s doing the same thing thinking the result will be the same again and again.”
The result will be austerity programs making the budget deficit even worse. The successful era of monetarism is to force countries to have self-defeating policies that end up having to privatize their natural resources, public domain, public enterprise, their communications and transportation, and sell it off.
Everything that the classical economists saw and argued for – public investment, bringing costs in line with the actual cost of production – that’s all rejected in favor of a rentier class evolving into an oligarchy. Financiers in the 1% are going to pry away the public domain from the government and privatize it so that they get all of the revenue for themselves. It’s all sucked up to the top of the pyramid, impoverishing the 99%.
“As long as you can avoid studying economics, you know what’s happened. Once you take an economics course you step into the brainwashing of an Orwellian world.”
KILLING THE HOST
Finance has taken over the industrial economy. Instead of banks evolving from usurious organizations that leant to governments, finance was going to be industrialized. They were going to mobilize savings and flow it back into financing the means of production, starting with heavy industry. In Germany in the late 19th century, banks worked with government and industry in a kind of triangular process. But that’s not what’s happening now. After WW1 and especially after WW2, finance reverted to its pre-industrial form and instead of allying themselves with industry, they allied with real estate and monopolies because they realized they can make more money off real estate.
You had David Ricardo arguing against the landed interest in 1817. Now the banks are all in favor of supporting land rent, knowing that today people can buy and sell property, renters are paying interests, and they’re going to get all of the rent.
“You have the banks merge with real estate against industry, against the economy as a whole, and the result is that they’re a part of the overhead process, not part of the production process.”
THE WALL STREET ECONOMY
“The Wall Street economy has taken over the economy and is draining it.”
Instead of the circular flow between producers and consumers, you have more and more of this flow being diverted to pay interest and insurance and rent. In other words, to pay the FIRE sector, most of which is owned by the 1%. The agency is active politicking by the financial interests and the lobbyists on Wall Street to obtain all of the growth of income and wealth for themselves, and that’s what happened in America and Canada since the late 1970s.
INVESTMENT STRATEGIES FOR TODAY
What all the billionaires and heavy investors do is they’re simply trying to preserve their wealth. They’re not trying to make money, they’re not trying to speculate, and if you’re an investor you’re not going to outsmart the billionaires because the markets are basically fixed. It’s the George Soros principle.
“If you have so much money, billions of dollars, you can break the Bank of England. You don’t follow the market, you don’t anticipate it, you actually make the market and push the market up.”
You have to be able to control the prices and you have the insiders making money but the investors are not going to make money.
The Canadians don’t buy stocks until they’re up at the very top and then they lose all the money, and finally when the market’s all the way at the bottom the Canadians begin selling because they can see a trend, and then they miss the upswing.
“J” IS FOR JUNK ECONOMICS
“It begins as a dictionary of terms just so I can provide people with a vocabulary. The vocabulary that is taught to students today, used by the mass media and government spokesmen, is basically a set of euphemisms. Almost all the words we get are kind of euphemisms to conceal the actual dynamics that’s happening. For instance, “business cycles”. Nobody in the 19th century used “business cycle”. They spoke about “crashes”. They know that things go up slowly and then plunge very quickly. It was a crash, not the sine curve you have in Josef Schachter’s business cycle. A cycle is something that is automatic, and if it’s a cycle then you’d think “oh, okay, everything that goes up will come down and everything that goes down will come up, just wait your turn.” And that means you should be passive. That is the opposite of everything that’s said in classical economics in the progressive era, when they realized that economies don’t recover by themselves”.
“You need the government to step in, you need something exogenous, as the economists say. You need something from outside the system to revive it.”
This idea of the business cycle analysis is, somehow you leave out the whole role of government. If you look at neoliberal and Austrian theory, there’s no role of government spending or public investment. And the whole argument of privatization, for instance, is the opposite of what was taught in American business schools in the 19th century.
The first professor of economics at the Wharton School of Business, Simon Patten, said public infrastructure is a fourth factor of production but its role isn’t to make a profit. It’s to lower the cost of public services and basic inputs to lower the cost of living and cost of doing business to make the economy more competitive.
“The privatization of this adds in interest payments, dividends, managerial payments, stock buybacks, and merges and acquisitions, and obviously bills all of these financialized charges into the price system and raises the cost of living and doing business.”
MORE ON FIRE ECONOMICS
We’re going into a debt deflation and the key is to look at debt. If the economy has to spend more and more money, then the reason he economy isn’t recovering isn’t simply because this is a normal cycle.
“It’s not because labour is paid too much, it’s because people are diverting more and more of their income to paying their debts, so they can’t afford to buy goods.”
Markets are shrinking, so real estate rents are shrinking, and profits are shrinking. Instead of using earnings to reinvest, hire more labor to increase production, companies are using their earnings for stock buybacks and dividend payouts to raise the share price so that the managers can take their revenue in the form of bonuses and stocks and live in the short run.
“They’re all setting up to take the money and run, leaving the companies are bankrupt shells, which is pretty much what hedge funds do when they take over companies.”
The financialization of companies is the reverse of everything classical economists were saying. They can get wrap themselves in this cloak of classical economics by dropping history of economic thought from the curriculum. Following the banks and the Austrian school of the banks’ philosophy, that’s the road to serfdom. That’s the road to debt serfdom.
“It lets universities and its government be run by the neoliberals, and they’re a travesty of what real economics is all about.”
(Wolf Richter) Rail freight volumes are an indicator of China’s goods-producing and goods-consuming economy, not just manufacturing, construction, agriculture, and the like, but also consumer goods. Thus they’re also an indication of consumer spending on goods. Alas, rail freight volume is collapsing: the first quarter this year puts volume for the whole year on track to revisit levels not seen since 2007.
While China’s economy was strong, rail freight volumes were soaring. For example, in 2010, when China was pump-priming its economy, rail freight volume jumped 10.8% from a year earlier. In 2011, it rose 6.9%. It had soared 44% from 2005 to 2011! But 2011 was the peak.
In 2012, volume in trillion ton-kilometers declined one notch and in 2013 stagnated. But in 2014, volume skidded 5.8%. And in 2015, volume plunged 10.5% to 3.4 billion tons, accordingto Caixin, citing figures from the National Railway Administration. It was the largest annual decline ever booked in China.
It was a year that the People’s Daily, the official paper of the Communist Party, described in this elegant manner:
Dragged by a housing slowdown, softening domestic demand, and unsteady exports, China’s economy expanded 6.9% year on year in 2015, the weakest reading in around a quarter of a century.
Which is precisely where things stop making sense: rail freight volume plunges 10.5% in 2015, and the economy still increases 6.9%? I mean, come on.
At the time, Caixin said that China’s central planners aimed to increase rail freight volumes to 4.2 billion tons by 2020. This would assume an average annual growth rate of 4.3%. So these declines are not part of the planned transition to a consumption-based economy. They’re totally against that plan or any other plan. They’re very inconvenient for the rosy scenario!
Then came the first quarter of 2016.
Rail freight volume plunged 9.4% year-over-year to 788 million tons, according to data from China Railway Corporation, cited today by the People’s Daily. At this rate, rail freight volume for 2016 will be down 20% from 2014, which had already been a down year! At this rate, volume in 2016 will end up where it had been in 2007!
China — hobbled by soggy domestic demand, perhaps even soggier demand overseas, rampant factory overcapacity, cooling investment, an insurmountable mountain of bad debt, and a million other domestic problems — may be trying to transition from a manufacturing-based economy to an economy based on consumption.
But even consumer goods must be transported, even those purchased online! Only services don’t require much transportation. But we doubt that service sales have jumped in two years to the extent that they would even halfway make up for the crashing demand for goods transported by rail.
The World Bank just figured that China’s economy would grow 6.7% in 2016, the IMF pegs it at 6.5%, both kowtowing to the GDP declarations issued by the Chinese government. Whose Kool-Aid have they been drinking? This would make 2016 another year when rail freight plunges by a dismal 10% or so while economic growth soars nearly 7% – which would make China one of the fastest growing economies in the world. So something in this convoluted, government-imposed math doesn’t add up here.
Add this to the major global risks: No one knows what’s going on in the second largest economy in the world, perhaps not even the Chinese government. And perhaps just about everyone – possibly even the much-maligned hard-landing gurus – overestimates China’s growth and its demand for global goods.
After years of big wage increases in China, the supply of cheap labor is coming to an end. As the cost of labor has soared, the manufacturing base is migrating to cheap-labor countries, leaving less work in Chinese cities for migrant laborers. With few options left, they’ve started to return to their villages. This leaves China with massive challenges, just when its debt-burdened economy can least afford them. Read… China “Could Push Whole World into Fresh Economic Crisis”
http://www.dianomi.com/cms/register-interest/?utm_source=network&utm_medium=smartad_sponsor_link Used car prices falling, inventories building up, new car sales slowing, a disaster in the making. Retail sales decline back to 2005 levels.Business inventories slide and sale decline. Baltic Dry Index pushes back up to 555, but this is still at an all time low. Obama now allowing law students and disabled students write off their student loans. This is part of the plan so the US tax payer can bailout the student loan bubble. FDIC reports banks will collapse in the next financial crisis.Bankers and Finance Ministers gathering for meeting in Washington DC. IMF reports a 20% or more drop in the stock market. The economy is about to crash.
(Dave Hodges) In the midst of the looming economic Armageddon, some are reporting that the banks have just begun to horde gold. Run from these authors. For over three years, I have been imploring people to buy gold in order to replace the cash that will soon be gone. Three years ago, Goldman Sachs was ordering its brokers to short gold.
The fact is, the criminal elite have solidified their hedges against currency collapse by focusing on the acquisition of gold by any means possible.
The bankers and government are meeting this week. At issue is the confiscation of your assets to facilitate a bailout of the banks. This time they are playing for keeps.
“The Federal Reserve Board of Governors just held an “expedited special meeting” on Monday in closed-door session.
The White House made an immediate announcement that the president was going to meet with Fed Chair Janet Yellen right after Monday’s special meeting and that Vice President Biden would be joining them.
The Federal Reserve very shortly posted an announcement of another expedited closed-door meeting for Tuesday for the specific purpose of “bank supervision.”
A G-20 meeting of finance ministers and central-bank heads starts in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, too, and continues through Wednesday.
Then on Thursday the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund meet in Washington.
The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta just revised US GDP growth for the first quarter to the precipice of recession at 0.1%.
US banks are widely expected this week to report their worst quarter financially since the start of the Great Recession.
The European Union’s new “bail-in” procedures for failing banks were employed for the first time with Austrian bank Heta Asset Resolution AG.
Italy’s minister of finance called an emergency meeting of Italian bankers to engage “last resort” measures for dealing with 360-billion euros of bad loans in banks that have only 50 billion in capital”.
What does this all mean? If we are lucky, there will be a new round of austerity (i.e. bail outs). This is not likely as bail-outs will not have much of an effect on the banks given the gravity of the economic condition of the banks.
On this front, there is bad news and really bad news. The bad news is that your money could be rationed back to you with capital limits (i.e. how much you can withdraw). All deposits will be made electronically. Cash withdrawals will soon be outlawed. All paychecks must be direct deposited into a bank before the bank customer has access to their paycheck. This will give the Federal Reserve complete control over earned income in the United States.
What this adds up to is that all world currencies will soon collapse. Private gold ownership will soon be made illegal. In other words, you will not be able to obtain private gold ownership much longer, so you better get in now. Why? Because the criminal elite want to have a complete monopoly over all mediums of exchange.
The rest of this article deals with the circumstantial and historical proof that the assertions made in the previous paragraph will become reality. I think that there is no question that we will soon be in the early stages of the total elimination of all private property and private income. The world will soon have come full circle back to a feudal society.
The Federal Reserve and the Bank of England Have Already Rehearsed the Theft of Your Bank Account
The theft of the people’s money has already been rehearsed by the powers that be in the banking industry. Regulators from the United States and the United Kingdomgot together in a war room to see how they will cope when the next big bank failures come.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, on Monday (11/10/)4), ran a joint exercise simulating how they would prop up a large bank (e.g. Bank of America) with operations in both countries that has landed itself in trouble. Also taking part in the “bank failure drill” was Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, and the heads of a large number of other regulators, in a meeting hosted by the U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Then they brought in the military into the drill and they practiced how they would protect their assets from the public when the banks fail and retirement accounts are seized as collateral by the government.
Your Bank Account Has No Protection
The FDIC has only about $25 billion in its deposit insurance fund, which is mandated by law to keep a balance equivalent to only 1.15% of insured deposits.
If a banking collapse were to be on the near horizon, the banksters are not going to notify you because they would not want to incite a bank run. With only 1.15% of all deposits being insured by the FDIC, your money would be left vulnerable and only the elite would be warned as they quietly transfer their money to a safer haven, such as gold. How do I know this? Please read on.
In November 2014, Goldman Sachs Opened the Gates to Hell-Today, the Federal Reserve Is Now Taking Up Residency In Hell
Silver prices have dropped dramatically covering an aggregate period of 36 months. Panic selling dominated the market as investors and financial institutions could not dump their holdings of silver and gold fast enough. The market clearly shows signs of mass manipulation by the Globalists. The globalists have been moving their fiat currency holdings to gold since the Spring of 2013. The price of gold was artificially manipulated by Goldman Sachs to drive down the price of gold in order to make it cheaper for the powers-that-be to purchase gold cheaply. You see, they know that very soon, there will no money left in the banks. You want proof? The best proof that the globalists are manipulating the price of gold comes from “Goldman Sachs (who), in the Spring of 2013, told their that they recommend initiating a short COMEX gold position.” This is your last chance to buy gold. Please remember, your cash will still be gone. Gold and silver will be your last chance to preserve what you have.
This has been going on for over 36 months!
Please remember that this is the same Goldman Sachs that shorted its stocks on 9/11. This is the same Goldman Sachs that placed put options on Transocean stock the morning of the Gulf oil explosion. This is the same Goldman Sachs that got caught shorting the housing market in advance of the housing bubble burst. Basically, when Goldman Sachs starts shorting anything, we should all become apprehensive particularly if our individual investments are anywhere in the neighborhood of the commodities being impacted by shorting. When Goldman Sachs begins to short anything, it is time to take your money and run for the hills. That time would be now.
Why Would Goldman Sachs Dramatically Drive the Price of Gold Down?
Beside trading and bartering, if the dollar and the Euro were to collapse tomorrow, what currency of exchange would the left standing? The obvious and simple answer would be primarily, gold, and secondarily, silver. Ask yourself this question, if you knew that paper monies all around the world were to collapse, what action would represent your best option? The obvious answer would be to dramatically drive down the price of gold and silver if one had the ability to do so, and then buy as much as gold as one possibly could. Goldman Sachs has the ability to do so by utilizing their ominous shorting strategy and it is precisely what they have done.
ONE MORE DOT TO CONNECT
Additionally, your bank account has been collateralized against the derivatives debt. Hence, you had, in 2008, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and the Secretary of Treasury, Hank Paulson, telling a closed session of Congress that if they did not authorize the bailouts, there would be tanks in the street an ultimately, REVOLUTION! This was necessitated by the credit swap derivatives Ponzi scheme and the debacle that followed.
Further, the bankruptcy reform laws stemming from the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005, the credit swap derivatives counter-parties are given preference over all other creditors and customers of the bankrupt financial institution, including FDIC insured depositors.
In the action taken by the G20 nations in that your bank account is no longer considered to be money. The bankers holding the bag on the credit swap derivatives will move to the head of the FDIC compensation line.Therefore, the regulations requiring that your money be insured by the FDIC are no longer in effect! This devaluation of “money to something other than money gives what the experts call “super priority” in terms of the line of succession from which to collect bankruptcy monies. TAKE YOUR MONEY OUT OF THE BANK!
To make matters worse, Bank of America has conspicuously co-mingled their credit swap derivatives debt with your savings account and as such they have every legal right use your money to cover their debt. The derivatives debt is conservatively estimated to be one quadrillion dollars which is about 16 times the entire GDP of the planet. Even before today, your money is as good as gone. Today’s action by the G20 only further cements this new reality that you, your labor your possessions are all slave capital to the banksters. Your value as a human being has been monitized.
To The Dumbed Down Sheep of America
I have also discovered that JP Morgan is in the same exact boat as Bank of America as is Wells Fargo. Oh, they would never do that and steal your money, you say? I have bad news for the uninformed sheep of this country, they already have done that very thing.
In the MF Global debacle, the reason that MF Global customers lost their segregated account funds was because the MF Global debt load was caused primarily because of their credit swap derivatives debt which, under bankruptcy laws, gave derivatives claimants super-priority in the bankruptcy proceedings. This is why Corzine and his fellow criminals did not go to prison as former Goldman Sachs executive, now the head of the Securities and Exchange CME gave Corzine, a former Goldman Sachs executive, a free pass on the theft of investors money at MF Global. This was a beta test.
Conclusion
Will the bankers, this week, decide to take all of the money, or only part of it at a time. However, all roads lead to ultimate and complete confiscation of all private assets. As I will discuss in a future article, military assets are already being prepositioned to enforce whatever dictates come out of this week’s banker/government meetings.
Regardless if the theft of your money happens quickly or gradually over time, there are some ancillary policies which are going to be put into play which threatens the welfare of every American. In the next article, America will soon discover why I have been so seemingly obsessed with Executive Order 13603.
i was told that Donald Trump’s waking up America has increased the the desperation of the criminal elite.
This is only the beginning. It is going to get far worse.
For example, even Whole Foods, which has engaged in a variety of questionable actions, including their not-so-environmentally-friendly move of selling pre-peeled oranges in a ton of plastic, has made their commitment to better health clear; they’ve promised to have all of their products labeled with GMO content by 2018.
Even Campbell’s recently took a history-making stand against GMOs when they announced their, “… support for mandatory national labeling of products that may contain genetically modified organisms (GMO) and proposed that the federal government provide a national standard for non-GMO claims made on food packaging.”
But greedy Monsanto? Nope. Regardless of how health-conscious others have become, Monsanto – the biggest seed maker in the United States – remains dedicated to what matters most to them: their bottom line.
The numbers speak for themselves, as industry analysts warn of Monsanto’s dwindling profits
But according to industry analysts, the biotech giant better watch out. They’ve been experiencing dwindling profits since last year, a trend that hasn’t shown signs of letting up in 2016.
Just last month, Monsanto cited pricing pressure in farm chemicals and seeds as its reason for cutting its full-year earnings forecast. Furthermore, the company lowered second-quarter earnings from ongoing operations from $2.45 per share to $2.35 per share. The changes have analysts confident that Monsanto will likely report an 8.5% revenue drop to $4.756 billion, as well as a 16% decline in per-share profit.
Monsanto’s profit woes didn’t just happen overnight, either. In fact, they’ve been brewing for several months. Late last year, they announced plans to cut 2,600 jobs as part of a cost-savings plan. Although cutting these jobs meant reducing about 12% of their workforce, the company said it was necessary in order to address their reported loss of 19 cents per share during the fiscal fourth quarter. They also noted that they expected theirprofits would stay weak through 2016; the aforementioned per share earnings and revenue jobs suggest that their prediction is on track.
A recent April 2016 Monsanto press release reporting on the their second quarter financial results, shows the stark contrasts in cash flow between this year and last. It states:
For the first half of fiscal year 2016, net cash provided by operating activities was a source of approximately $1.4 billion, compared to approximately $1.5 billion the same period last year. Net cash required by investing activities for the first half of fiscal year 2016 was $483 million, compared to $532 million for the same period of fiscal year 2015. Net cash required by financing activities for the first half of 2016 was approximately $3.5 billion, compared to net cash required of $406 million for the same period of fiscal year 2015. Free cash flow was a source of $906 million for the first half of fiscal year 2016, compared to a source of $986 million for the first half of fiscal year 2015.
Struggling farmers seek options to offset falling crop prices … and they don’t include Monsanto
So, why the plunge in Monsanto’s profits?
Despite the fact that more acres of soybeans and corn are expected to be planted in the United States than ever before, Monsanto’s profits have been impacted by farmers who are searching for more affordable crop options. The reason is simple: Farmers are struggling, as grain prices have dipped to near five-year lows, not to mention the fact that farm incomes are at their lowest in about 14 years. As such, they’re looking to save money, which means cutting back on fertilizer, seed and chemical use. Translation: Monsanto’s profits are hurting, as people are turning towards more cost-effective, healthier options.
North Dakota farmer Randy Thompson is one such person. This year, he says he plans to apply 30 percent less nitrogen fertilizer to his corn in order to save money in the wake of falling crop prices.
Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Andy Pulk found a more reasonable price for crop nutrients. As a result, he’s trucking the nutrients to his farm, despite the fact that they’re 350 miles away. “We’re on a complete spending hold across the farm,” Pulk said.
Monsanto, it’s time to wake up. More people are shunning what you have to offer, getting wise to the fact that your efforts are costly and unhealthy options for themselves and the planet. They’re ready for a food revolution that keeps their health interests in mind, and it certainly doesn’t include what Monsanto stands for.
(Jim Quinn) The Census Bureau put out their monthly retail sales report yesterday morning. During good times, the MSM would be hailing the tremendous increases as proof the consumer was flush with cash and all was well with the economy. Considering 70% of our GDP is dependent upon consumer spending, you would think this data point would be pretty important in judging how well Americans are really doing.
It’s not perfect, because the issuance of debt to consumers to purchase autos, furniture, appliances and electronics can juice the retail sales numbers and create the false impression of strength. That’s what has been going on with auto sales for the last two years.
The retail sales figures have been propped up by the issuance of subprime auto loans to deadbeats, 7 year 0% interest loans to good credit customers, and an all-time high in leases (aka 3 year rentals). Despite this Fed induced auto loan scheme, retail sales have still been pitiful, as the average American has been left with stagnant wages, 0% interest on their minuscule savings, surging rent and home prices, and drastic increases in their healthcare costs due to Obamacare.
The retail sales for March, reported this morning, were disastrous and further confirmed a myriad of other economic indicators that the country is in recession. GDP for the first quarter will be negative. And this time they can’t blame it on snow in the winter. They have already doubly seasonally adjusted the figures, and they will still be negative. Retail sales in the first quarter were atrocious. It might make a critical thinking person question the establishment storyline of solid job growth being peddled by politicians and their MSM mouthpieces. If people had good paying jobs, they would be spending money.
The Ivy League educated “expert” economists expected March retail sales to increase by 0.1%. They only missed by $6 billion, as retail sales FELL by 0.3%. They have fallen for three straight months. At least gasoline sales were strong, as prices have risen 22% since mid-February. That should do wonders for the finances of American households. If you exclude gasoline sales, retail sales fell by 0.4%. As the chart below reveals, the year over year change in retail sales has been at or near recessionary levels for most of 2015, and into 2016.
Digging into the details reveals some worrying trends for the establishment purveyors of propaganda. It seems every deadbeat in America has been convinced to buy a car on credit. They’ve run out of useful idiots. Auto sales plunged by 2.3%, the fourth decline in a row, and the biggest decline since last February. This ongoing plunge in auto sales is happening in spite of dealers offering tremendous levels of incentives, rebates, extended 0% financing, and low priced leases. The TV commercials from the automakers offering once in a lifetime offers are endless.
The Fed induced auto loan bubble is bursting, as default rates on the billions of subprime slime loans issued in the last few years skyrocket, and the prices of used cars crash as the millions of leases come due. Dealer lots are overflowing with overpriced automobiles with no demand. The implications of this bubble bursting are far reaching. The fallacious demand created by easy money kept the union manufacturing plants humming and allowed Obama to crow about saving the auto industry. As demand collapses, layoffs will surge, and the minimal profits being generated by GM, Ford, and Chrysler will turn to huge losses again.
The two retail areas which had remained strong over the last few years, restaurant sales and internet sales, both went negative in March. Their growth rates have slowed dramatically over the last three months. It might make you wonder whether paying $600 per share for Amazon stock is really a smart investment. With restaurant sales petering out, how many more waiters and waitresses are going to be hired to keep the Obama jobs recovery on track? With year over year retail sales, excluding autos, up by a pitiful 1.3%, and real inflation for real American families of at least 5%, real retail sales are falling. That might explain the plunging retail profits.
The free fall in department store sales continues unabated, with year over year sales down 6.1%. Anyone buying into the JC Penney, Sears, Macy’s, Kohl’s revival storyline is a fool. Wall Street can sell that tripe to their “clients”, but the bricks and mortar department stores are dead retailers walking.
You would think real journalists working for real business websites like Marketwatch (owned by the Wall Street Journal/Rupert Murdoch) would report these disconcertingly bad economic numbers in great detail. But shockingly, when I clicked onto the Marketwatch website to find their brilliant detailed analysis of the horrific retail sales report, I found absolutely nothing. It was as if this report never existed. I checked back all day long, and nada. It’s almost as if they wanted to bury the story.
Evidently, recessionary levels of retail sales doesn’t fit the agenda of the establishment. They prefer concentrating on the rising stock market, driven by short covering and HFT machines buying from each other. The mainstream media is controlled by six corporations. Their job is not to tell you the truth. Their job is to keep you sedated, distracted, and amused. Any critical thinking individual can discern they are in the midst of a recession, but those in power will never allow the truth to reach the masses. Bad news reflecting reality is unacceptable to an entrenched ruling class who are not quite done pillaging the remaining wealth of the nation.
