Anybody with a brain bigger than a walnut or any shred of reasoning ability - i.e., non-(D)imbos - knew the economy was teetering thanks to the ice-cream gobbling, child-sniffing grifter polluting the White House. But the bad news on the economy is worse than you may have expected - much worse. Let's take a look, shall we?
- Job growth has stalled. Job growth is the primary catalyst of economic growth since our labor force needs more and more workers to replace those who have retired or died, and the new workers pump money into social security and the economy.
- According to ADP, which runs payrolls for millions of employees and is a very good source for such information, private sector jobs - the ones that drive the economy since they pay the taxes that fund government jobs - grew by a piddly 127,000 last month. That is a disaster since a LOT of private employers hire in November for the upcoming Christmas season.
- The economy LOST 100,000 manufacturing jobs. Yikes.
- Inflation continues to rage, causing interest rates to increase by more than 75% in the past 18 months. (Huh. What happened 18 months ago?)
- The increasing interest rates are crushing the housing market, a key component to a healthy economy.
- The job increase last month was due to service industry jobs, but most economists agree that such jobs are ephemeral and will not survive an economic downturn. If people don't have the money to go out for dinner or go to a hotel or go on vacation, service industry jobs take a steel-toed boot to the nuts.
- The ratio of job openings to job applicants has declined from nearly 2-1 (1.86) to 1.54 and is expected to go as low as 1.2 with recent terminations and post-Christmas slowdown.
- Because of the terrible systemic inflation, the Fed will continue to boost interest rates for the next 8 months. That means we will see mortgage interest rates of 8% in the near future, personal loan rates of 12%, and credit card interest of 14% or more.
