Thursday, November 20, 2014

Why Lower Gas Prices Are NOT “Bullish Indicators”

I don’t think the data is bullish at all.Lower gas prices put more money in consumers’ pockets.

But there’s an alternative to spending… Which is saving or reducing debt – which is the same thing.

I don’t consider these bullish indicators. They tell me an economy is running out of steam.

An economy is nothing more than two things: How many people are working and how productive are they?

Labor force participation is going down – which means fewer people are working. And productivity is also going down. Real wages are stagnant. 50 million people are on food stamps. 7 million people have part-time jobs who wish they had full-time jobs.

These data points are not bullish indicators.

We’re in a global depression.

There’s a slow down in Japan, China, Europe and the U.S. — the whole world is in a global depression.

There’s enough fights to go around, but in a fight between the ECB (European Central Bank) and Germany, Germany wins.

The ECB is only doing $2.5 billion worth of asset buying, while the FED has been doing almost $1 trillion a year. So the ECB is going through the motions but they’re not doing anything like QE. They’re not buying soveirgn debt. They’re buying some asset-backed securities, but there aren’t even enough of those to have much of an impact.

The ECB’s Mario Draghi is the best Central Banker in the world. He understands that Central Banks are essentially impotent.

When you’re impotent you have to talk a good game — so Draghi says little and does less.

The U.S. FED is the opposite. They don’t understand how impotent they.

China is the biggest credit bubble in the world.

The U.S. has created a bubble in housing and stocks with easy money, but there’s no bigger bubble in the world than China. They have a greater capacity to keep it going because their investors have fewer alternatives.

Project Prophecy 2.0 with Jim Rickards