The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...say, did you know that the GDP has fallen by the largest amount since 2008?

More "surprised face" news

Seattle raises minimum wage to $15 per hour and discovers the law of supply and demand.

//According to this, that whole minimum wage hike that liberals have been losing their minds over and screaming for - and they finally got it out in Seattle - well, we're seeing how that's working out for them.

The Seattle suburb of SeaTac got what they wished for - the minimum wage was raised to $15 - and months later, they're seeing the ramifications. 

Here's what's happened so far:

Managers have taken more responsibilities on themselves, instead of hiring more workers.
Businesses have laid off workers, or eliminated their plans to hire more.
Area parking now comes with an added “living-wage surcharge.”
Hotels have cut employee benefits, free food, and overtime.
And that's not all!

Business owners are seeing more applications, because of course - people want $15 an hour, but they're not hiring more.  In fact, the opposite is happening, because only higher-qualified folks are being hired for the fewer jobs that are being offered at a higher hourly rate.  GO FIGURE.

This is my shocked face..//

Hidden inflation, no recovery, collapsing gasoline consumption....

...Welcome to the era of Hope and Change.

//If you choose to measure the amount of gasoline leaving U.S. refineries and entering domestic inventories and call this “gasoline consumption”; you can hide the actual collapse in gasoline consumption – until those retail inventories are overflowing, and there is simply no more room in the storage tanks.

This is what we see today in the U.S.: a gasoline market which had been deliberately-and-dramatically over-supplied with gasoline at the wholesale end of the supply-chain (the refineries) has now practically ground to a halt. The same nation which previously amazed the world as it accumulated more automobiles and more miles of highways per capita than any nation on Earth (and by a huge margin) now has such an insane glut of gasoline that it’s massive chain of refineries have had to simply turn off the taps – until this pathetically anemic economy manages to burn-off some of that glut.

This conclusion becomes even more visible/obvious when we view the gasoline data just from the start of the mythical “U.S. economic recovery” to the present. At the start of the “U.S. recovery”; U.S. gasoline consumption was at a rate of 52 million gallons per day (already more than 20% below the 1998 all-time peak). In the five years since the start of this pretend-recovery; U.S. gasoline consumption has fallen all the way to 18 million gallons per day.

Since the beginning of “the U.S. economic recovery”; U.S. gasoline consumption has plummeted by nearly 2/3. As the pseudo-recovery began, and supposedly “strengthened”; U.S. refineries were ordered to fill up the inventories of their dealer network, in anticipation of the increased gasoline consumption which would have occurred in any real “recovery”.

But there never was an increase in U.S. gasoline consumption, because there never was a U.S. economic recovery. Rather, the Greater Depression has simply (and relentlessly) continued to pulverize the U.S. economy like a meat-grinder. To hide this devastation (as well as is possible), the government produces a wide array of its pseudo-statistics, that all contain myriad “adjustments” – which make it possible for these liars-with-numbers to distort the statistical picture of the U.S. economy beyond recognition.

Meanwhile, any/all statistics which measure raw data (and thus cannot be perverted with “adjustments”) are either suppressed (like the civilian participation rate), or not even measured, at all – as is the case with U.S. gasoline consumption. At the retail end; none of the “sales” statistics are adjusted for inflation, not even with the absurdly-fraudulent “CPI” numbers.

By not deflating sales data (at all) the collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption “at the pump” is hidden within all this unreported inflation. As explained in previous commentaries; it is this same, unreported inflation which allows the U.S. to convert its large, negative, GDP readings (which would otherwise reveal the Greater Depression) into “economic growth”. It is this same, unreported inflation which allows the government (and employers) to hide the fact that U.S. wages have collapsed by more than 50%.

But what the liars-with-numbers cannot hide (any longer) is the collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption which has accompanied the continued, downward spiral of the Greater Depression. The storage tanks are now all full. The only way to (temporarily) hide the collapse in U.S. gasoline consumption any further would be to construct even more storage facilities. However, there is no possible economic justification for increasing storage capacity in a market of steadily/relentlessly declining demand.

Indeed, the exact opposite is true. The U.S. economy of the 21st century (a mere hollowed-out husk of what it was only 20 years earlier) will require less and less gasoline storage facilities over time, reflecting a supply network for a steadily shrinking market. As the One Bank completes its plundering of the U.S. economy, and completes its transformation of the U.S. Middle Class into the Working Poor, it is also simply using up more and more of its economic lies.

The Great Inflation Lie will continue to allow the U.S. government (and other Western governments) to crank-out absurd/imaginary positive numbers for GDP. It will continue to allow the U.S. government to crank-out absurd/imaginary numbers for retail sales (and hide the ongoing collapse of the entire U.S. retail sector).

The Carter Era Returns

Return of the Misery Index

Inflation is starting to really mean something when it comes to food and energy.  The government stats on inflation conveniently omit food and energy when reporting things like the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  Let’s see what Janet Yellen has to say this week.  I bet she isn’t worried about inflation in the least.

US Consumer Price Index data by YCharts

Whenever economic reports are released, the headline number is “without the volatile food and energy sector”. Food and energy are very volatile. As quick as prices can go up, they can come down. But, over the past several years there is one reason the price of energy isn’t going down-government regulation and policy.

For evidence, all you need to do is look at the arduous debate over things like the Keystone Pipeline ($CL_F). Environmentalists, who mostly caucus with Democrats have held it up. The EPA, OSHA and other government agencies are writing all kinds of expensive rules and regulations to make exploration, refining, and distribution of energy products cost more. That gets passed on to consumers.