Shoppers delivered the strongest holiday sales increase for U.S. retailers in six years, according to early data.
Total U.S. retail sales, excluding automobiles, rose 5.1% between Nov. 1 and Dec. 24 from a year earlier, according to Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks both online and in-store spending with all forms of payment. Overall, U.S. consumers spent over $850 billion this holiday season, according to Mastercard.
and gloom… Stocks rise in volatile trading
Update.
More numbers here.
YES! It’s true!!!
Stocks have reached a “permanently high plateau.”.
The monetary “authorities” have finally learned how to prevent recessions and market declines. The knobs and dials have been recalibrated and refined.
If you’re interested in historical analogues to Kate’s “2 year recession watch on high alert” joke, google the phrase “permanently high plateau”.
And of course Drudge uses the oldest trick in the books: point gains gains vs. percentage gains.
I haven’t understood all the doom and gloom in the media. The Fed keeps raising interest rates to dampen the economy. They never did so to Obama. I think the press was down on the economy to help Democrats in the mid-terms. The stock market is likely to catch fire.
For those who don’t understand the title — it’s about the media default setting on the economy: recession watch for Republicans, recovery watch for Democrats.
So inflation and high unemployment is considered a recovery by the Dummycrats? They certainly are by the Liberals.
Some more on those numbers
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/12/26/wait-a-minute-are-financial-analysts-media-playing-games-with-holiday-growth-rate-of-consumer-spending/
Ah, I didn’t understand that. Thanks Kate.
Stocks plunged because the smart money are in on the Fed’s plan to take down Trump by engineering another financial crisis, to be blamed on him. That’s how they got the Former Occupant into the White House, after all.
Today’s rally is what they call a deas cat bounce—rubes rushing in and “buying the dip” where their betters fear to tread.
Don’t laugh, Kate. There will be a recession if our masters have anything to do with it.
Dead cats don’t bounce a 1,000 points.
Normally, true. However, with the huge volume of programmed trading, a dip gets exaggerated (a lot), and a recovery gets exaggerated (a lot).
High frequency and programmed trading needs to end.
Agreed. I believe the 2008 crash was triggered intentionally (though there’s no argument that the disaster was waiting to happen) and I think the same cast of characters are at work to make it happen again.
A great way of distracting people from their world geopolitical machinations…that’s what it’s really about. Just theatre, there won’t be any great depression…Amos 8:11. They know most people’s greatest concern is for their pocketbook…and that fear is played upon.
1Ti 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.
Politics: The Gateway Drug To 666
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqnmygGbpeg
So does this mean that after a brief flirtation with another Trump economy we are back to the Obama economy?
While it’s good to see spending up, the GDP advancing, and unemployment declining I hope Trump doesn’t put too much store in the performance of the stock market.
After all the economy was dismal for 8 years under Obama and yet the stock market did pretty good. There seems to be a disconnect between the economy and the stock market.
the market did “pretty good” because of Q E and the 4 trillion of unsupported fiat currency pumped into the market by the FED. That 4 trillion was given back a short while ago. a valid market correction.
This constant media wishing for recession is simply in order to attempt to denigrate Trump. I really wonder if the Fed is working for the US economy or against Trump. Anything to downplay the best US economy in decades.
Meanwhile in Canada, our useless leader is trying to tear down our economy and the media cheers.
This constant media wishing for recession is simply in order to attempt to denigrate Trump.
“Comedian” Bill Maher is one of them. Destroy the economy, restore democracy. Logical, huh?
Meanwhile in Canada, our useless leader is trying to tear down our economy and the media cheers.
“Our” economy as in anything in western Canada that didn’t worshipfully vote for Prinz Dummkopf.
I guess I better learn how to skin a buffalo, eh?
If you can find a buffalo that’s not protected somehow.
If it gets to that point nothing will be protected and very little will survive.
The market is like any other betting pool.
Its the house that wins no matter who loses.
The only time the stock market starts to lose is if everyone stops trading.
Its not stock prices Wall Street or Bay Street cares about nor if share prices are inthe crapper. What they care about is trading volume as that is where they get their cut.
No trade = no cut.
If the trade houses lose they look for a designated blamee, for the perfomance of the stock market can have nothing to do with their scheming and machinations.
I’ve been an investor for more than 30 years and, no, it doesn’t work that way.
Vegas is still open for business.
Don’t be complacent about the downdraft in the financial markets. This goes way beyond Trump. He should never have tried to own the stock market rise because all that does is attract blame when things go south. The problem lies with the very idea of central banks; i.e. the notion that credit markets can be centrally planned. There is no more warrant for the government to try to regulate the price of credit than there is for them to regulate the price of cars. In a normal credit market with an open process of price discovery, interaction between investors and entrepreneurs determine interest rates. Since the invention of central banks, this process has been short-circuited with disastrous results. Does anyone on this blog seriously believe that zero percent interest rates are even remotely realistic? Do they believe that capital literally replicates itself with no effort on the part of savers to create it? That is what a zero percent interest rate implies. For almost a decade, businesses have been acting on this mistaken notion, incurring vast debts in the belief that the capital to fund their ventures to completion actually exists, when in fact all they have been doing is eating the seed corn of the economy. Governments, and that includes the present federal government of the United States, have added fuel to the capital consumption fire by using the excuse of falling interest rates to load up on debt that they have neither the intent nor the means to repay. Even if Trump actually opposed this carnage, he is essentially powerless to prevent a severe reckoning.
Excellent Dennis,
The politicalization of financial markets likely spells the death knell of capitalism. The undeniable reality is that the world is swamped by debt. Not just government debt but also personal, corporate and institutional. No, USA debt is not the $21 Trillion we hear endlessly. The USA government has long term debt commitments that exceed $200 trillion. At some point the collective conscious of humanity will realize the ’emperor’ has no clothes. The unspoken fallback seems to be a monetization of world debt, in otherwards a haircut to creditors and the cutting of social promises. Not a pretty scenario.
This situation predates Trump by decades but I do not put it past progressives to have him take the fall for it. His antics make him the perfect patsy. He was my last hope for pulling this out but even at that his chances for success were very small.
Regardless of the market,up, down or stagnant, bucks-ing day is the day the idiots spend way more than they have, then have to scrimp for months to pay off their impulse buys for 75 inch TV’s to sit in a ten X twelve foot room.
F*** me, but people are sheeple.
extreme market volatility always preceeds a big fall. Grab a beer and keep watching folks.
Dennis: well stated.
Look at the numbers. Debts, deficits, credit crisis, years of zero interest. Think central planning can fix this?
The recession is coming. How bad will it be? We Canadians have been cruising along on the Trump economy. Lucky us.
No Harper givenment to steer the economy this time.
recession? what recession?
recessions, for those arranging them, are a BEA-U-TIFUL opportunity to buy out companies for a song.
for those with deep deep pockets, aka ‘deep state’ backers.
this is why oBOMBa the great AND dubya before him used the ‘ooooh!! banks mustn’t fail’ excuse to *guarantee* any future leading banks’ ‘dabbling’ disasters WILL be fully funded by the taxpayers. google it.
Or maybe the stock market is a piss poor economic indicator?
At least Trump is restoring conditions (deregulation, energy policy) for well run companies to survive the next Probably Nothing event, which I think everyone sensible knows is coming down the chute.