- Upcoming Appearances
- Thursday morning panel at the SkyBridge Capital SALT Conference in Las Vegas
- Liberty Forum – Salt Lake City
- MoneyShow – Las Vegas
- Economic News for the Week: March Factory Orders met expectations, but downwardly revised February number for 5th straight year-over-year monthly drop
- March Trade Deficit: $51.4 billion, a miss greater than $10 billion and the single worst trade deficit since October 2008 and largest monthly gain in nearly 20 years
- If the economy is so good, why do we have such a large trade deficit?
- Rising oil prices, along with other rising prices are putting additional pressure on consumers
- April U.S. Auto Sales fell, missing expectations for the 5th month in a row – sales at lowest year-over-year start since 2009
- The auto bubble has burst
- The United States has been spared the discipline of the market by virtue of the dollar being the reserve currency
- Gold is still just below $1,200/ounce – we will eventually run out of sellers who are keeping prices down, and when it goes up it will go up in a spectacular way
- Aussie dollar is up a percent and a quarter
- Canadian dollar up half a percent
- Euro up a third of a percent
- Swiss Franc up almost a full percent
- There was some good news: April ISM Service Non-Manufacturing Index rose, to 57.8, beating estimates
- New orders plunged into negative territory
- April PMI dropped from 59.2 in March to 57.4, a bigger drop than expected
- No one is looking for the April jobs number to be lower
- The consensus is also for unemployment to keep falling from 5.5% to 5.4%
- If we have all these jobs, why isn’t the consumer spending?
- The answer is the jobs don’t pay very much or the hours are reduced
- Meanwhile, as much as the Fed wants to pretend there is low inflation, the cost of living is rising
- The one safety net for the consumer was oil prices, and now that is gone
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