Target (TGT.N) is seeing shoppers trim spending even on groceries as household budgets are stretched due to higher prices and borrowing costs, the U.S. big-box retailer’s CEO Brian Cornell said in an interview aired on CNBC on Thursday.
“But even in food and beverage categories, over the last few quarters, the units, the number of items they’re buying, has been declining,” Cornell told CNBC.
Related – The trend for the Google search “give car back” is skyrocketing.
“The future is batteries”, they said. “We’re going to store the wind in ginormous batteries the size of Pluto“.
Mining remains a deeply divisive industry, as manifested by the explosion of popular rage that’s paralyzed Panama in recent weeks.
After spending the best part of a decade and more than $10 billion building one of the world’s biggest copper mines, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. now finds the project hanging in the balance.
The country’s president this weekend caved to pressure and agreed to hold a referendum on its future, sending the Canadian company’s stock plunging the most on record.
While Panama’s electoral court has since offered a lifeline, saying such a vote can’t proceed without congress first passing legislation, prospects for development look deeply uncertain.
The drama in Panama highlights a growing global trend. Many people don’t want new mines built, judging the environmental impact to be too great despite the boost to jobs and local coffers.
Yet mining has never been more important. It’s impossible for economies to decarbonize without hundreds of millions more tons of metals such as copper, nickel and lithium being pulled from the earth.
In the past decade, the industry has transformed the way it engages with those on the receiving end of massive mining upheaval. Aware of the need to have a social license to operate, companies have gone to great lengths to win over community leaders and politicians.
But they still often fail to garner wider public support. Some of the world’s most crucial new mines are currently stuck in limbo in the face of local opposition.
The development of Europe’s biggest lithium deposit was brought to a sudden halt last year after thousands of protesters took to the streets of Belgrade, Serbia. In the US, what would be the country’s largest copper mine has been stalled for years.
Give the people more stuff. Ban all the things.
The arc of the renewable universe is long, but it bends toward bankruptcy.
Wind companies losing billions, prompting fears a federal bailout could be coming […]
Mounting financial losses in the wind industry over the last few months are taking a toll on the Biden administration’s clean energy drive. Despite the billions in subsidies that came down the pipeline in 2022 before the Inflation Reduction gave away even more money, energy experts don’t expect that the need for more money will deter the nationwide momentum to build more wind and solar farms.
Writing in his “Energy Absurdity” Substack, David Blackmon, an energy analyst with over 40 years of experience in the oil and gas industry, said that the lobbying for more renewable energy dollars is likely near.
“Everyone should prepare themselves to see an effort in Washington, DC to allocate billions more dollars to bail out Big Offshore Wind developers soon,” Blackmon wrote.
Since the Obama administration, the federal government has been pouring billions into projects to meet environmental goals, only to have the companies go bankrupt.
In 2009, the Obama administration co-signed $535 million in loans to solar panel manufacturing startup Solyndra. Two years later, the company went bankrupt, laying off 1,100 workers.
With all the talk of a cashless society afoot, it’s worth exploring what the consequences might be. In short, nothing good can come of this.
Now, let’s say that cash has been eliminated by some legal means and that you have angered the powers that be for some reason—probably for opposing them and asking others to oppose them too. All the banks must do is to freeze your bank account or eliminate it entirely. There are two examples of this very thing happening in the recent past.
First, the government of Canada froze the bank accounts of all those participating in the Canadian truckers’ general strike plus those who helped them. Second, British politician Nigel Farage had his accounts closed for political reasons and found that no other British bank would serve him. Without the means to use money, Farage came very close to emigrating. Just think about that for a moment. You could not fuel your car, buy groceries, pay your rent, or do a hundred other things without access to a bank account.
Shut down “non-essential” businesses for a year, get involved in a ruinously expensive war in the Ukraine, wreck supply chains all over the world as a matter of policy, and now raise the cost of capital to levels unseen for a decade. How could this not result in a recession?
The decline in manufacturing, therefore, has not been accompanied by several of the typical warning signs. Nevertheless, things have clearly deteriorated.
Firms are still struggling to pass their input costs on to consumers, profits are dwindling, and growth prospects have all but evaporated. Their backlogs of unfilled orders are all but gone, and there aren’t enough new orders to sustain current production or employment levels.
The second thing the regional Fed banks are telling us is that the broader economy will follow manufacturing into contraction within the next six months.
The ACT (American College Testing) is a standardized test used for college admissions.
Via Instapundit – BUT THE CLASS OF 2023 LEADS IN PERSONAL PRONOUN USAGE AND IN HOURS SPENT WITH DRAG QUEENS
Related – “Harvard’s Leading Antisemites.”
One can assume that Canadians are in the same, or perhaps an even leakier, boat. These figures, by the way, do not include mortgage interest.
JUST IN: Personal interest payments in the US hit a record $506 BILLION in July.
During the first 7 months of 2023, Americans paid a total of $3.3 TRILLION in personal interest.
This is up a staggering 80% since 2021 and nearly above the entire 2022 total.
The worst part?… pic.twitter.com/VbQC0ANUbP
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) September 17, 2023
This is exactly how they gaslight and manipulate people with fear and trauma based mind control to get the vaccine. Please show this to anyone considering getting another booster. They have to know they're being manipulated intentionally.
It's never about your health, it's all… pic.twitter.com/tIRhIpughV
— Inversionism (@Inversionism) September 14, 2023
We have this thing in Canada called MAiD. Let me get you their number. https://t.co/thVu0ltn82
— Katewerk (@katewerk) September 10, 2023
Investor home purchases fell 45% from a year earlier in the second quarter, outpacing the 31% drop in overall home sales. That’s the biggest decline since 2008 with the exception of the quarter before, when they dropped 48%. The decline comes as this year’s relatively cool housing and rental markets makes investing in homes less attractive than it was during the pandemic-driven homebuying frenzy of 2021 and early 2022. […]
This marks a retreat from a boom in investor activity during the pandemic, which was driven by record-low mortgage rates and huge homebuying and rental demand, creating opportunities for investors to make a lot of money.
“Offers from hedge funds have dried up; I haven’t received an offer from one in a long time, except unrealistically low offers,” said Las Vegas Redfin Premier agent Shay Stein. “From mid-2020 until early 2022 when interest rates started going up, hedge funds bought up a ton of properties and immediately turned them into rentals, pricing out local buyers. Now a big portion of our homes are owned by investors, but they’re not adding to their portfolios.”
In dollar terms, the drop in investor purchases is almost as big. Investors bought a total of $36.4 billion worth of homes in the second quarter, down 42% from a year earlier. That’s still above pre-pandemic levels, but dropping closer to it: Investors bought a total of $34 billion in the second quarter of 2018, and a total of $31.9 billion in the second quarter of 2019. The typical home purchased by investors in the second quarter cost $470,120, comparable with the $467,885 median price a year earlier.
Via @Wallstreetsil: Without transactions, many jobs that are commission oriented are seeing huge declines in incomes. Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, title insurance, home inspectors. All of the various categories are entering a depressions from lack of transactions.
The aggressive pace of interest-rate hikes is hitting mortgage books at Canada’s biggest banks, leading to slowing loan growth, longer amortization periods and a rise in impairments. Higher borrowing costs cut into mortgage growth, with would-be homebuyers sitting on the sidelines. At the country’s five largest lenders, including Royal Bank of Canada and Toronto-Dominion Bank, residential loan growth slowed to four per cent in the fiscal third quarter, compared with annual growth of 9.8 per cent a year earlier.
"Bioethicist", S. Matthew Liao: In order to tackle "climate change", humans should be genetically modified to be intolerant to meat.
"If we eat less meat, we could significantly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Now, some people would be willing to eat less meat, but they… pic.twitter.com/0kM4I8mnf0
— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) September 5, 2023
Would left wing authoritarianism by any other name smell as sweet?
Real house prices up to 2022 pic.twitter.com/1Z0Du0csot
— Polling Canada (@CanadianPolling) August 31, 2023
Transmission control module for a John Deere dozer:
5 years ago: $1,800.00
2 years ago: $2,800.00
1 year ago: $3,600.00Last weeks price: $4400.00
This is not sustainable.
Businesses are going to fail.— Some Welder (@SomeWelder) August 29, 2023
These 14 American Cities Have A ‘Target’ Of Banning Meat, Dairy, And Private Vehicles By 2030
Fourteen major American cities are part of a globalist climate organization known as the “C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group,” which has an “ambitious target” by the year 2030 of “0 kg [of] meat consumption,” “0 kg [of] dairy consumption,” “3 new clothing items per person per year,” “0 private vehicles” owned, and “1 short-haul return flight (less than 1500 km) every 3 years per person.”
C40’s dystopian goals can be found in its “The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World” report, which was published in 2019 and reportedly reemphasized in 2023. The organization is headed and largely funded by Democrat billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Nearly 100 cities across the world make up the organization, and its American members include Austin, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Seattle.
Daily Mail- Nine out of 10 ULEZ cameras have been vandalized in southeast London
From next week, the controversial scheme will cover all London boroughs and will force drivers of non-compliant vehicles to shell out £12.50 a day. The pricey plans have been met with much resistance and armour plating is now being used to protect the cameras.
TfL has said the vandalism will not stop the Ulez changes going ahead next week as planned and that all vandalised cameras will be replaced or repaired. A spokesperson added that more than 1,900 cameras are in place in outer London.
Activists have also put stickers over the cameras so that drivers aren’t caught out by the new rules.
So it’s goodbye, manufacturing. No more German automobiles, among other products. Of course, the issue isn’t whether the government should subsidize energy prices on behalf of the manufacturing sector. The issue is whether the government should continue to intentionally and catastrophically drive energy prices higher.
With all the hoopla about defunding the police over the past three years, what other outcome did anyone expect? What’s worse is the inevitable move towards a recruitment standard of simply having a pulse.
In Newfoundland, for example, the vacancy rate for RCMP positions was at 17 per cent. The vacancy rate is the gap between the number of officers the force is committed to under policing contracts with the province and the numbers the RCMP is actually providing.
In Prince Edward Island, the Mounties providing 16-per-cent fewer officers than the province has contracted for. In Alberta and the Northwest Territories, it is 15 per cent.
The vacancy rate is 13 per cent in New Brunswick, 10 per cent in Manitoba and eight per cent in Nova Scotia.
Evacuating thousands of people ahead of wildfires and hurricanes is gonna be lit when we're all forced into EV's. #masscasualtyincidents https://t.co/5TqsqF8Pw7
— Katewerk (@katewerk) August 19, 2023
Evergrande, one of China’s real estate giants, just filed Chapter 15 bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, China’s HY real estate index is down a massive 82% in just over 2 years.
This puts the index back down to 2008-levels.
All while China just “unexpectedly” cut interest rates.
Is China… pic.twitter.com/p3yuIqPmxL
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) August 18, 2023
An affiliate, Tianji Holdings, also sought Chapter 15 protection on Thursday in Manhattan bankruptcy court.
A lawyer for Evergrande did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Evergrande’s filing comes amid growing fears that problems in China’s property sector could spread to other parts of the country’s economy as growth slows.
Since the sector’s debt crisis unfolded in mid-2021, companies accounting for 40% of Chinese home sales have defaulted.