Broke-Buck Mounting After Soft PPI; Crude, Crypto, & The Yield Curve Soar
Following a benign CPI release Wednesday, the June PPI release also came in softer than expected this morning (and initial claims fell), sparking calls for “mission accomplished” headlines for The Fed.
But tomorrow marks the kick-off for the bulk of earnings season (with the banks reporting) which could spark some renewed volatility (although many suggest the bar for earnings season is already set so low that even Zelenksy could step over it).
The ‘good’ inflation news sent rate-change expectations for the rest of the year tumbling (July remains a lock for 25bps). The market is now pricing in a 25bps hike in July, no move through year-end, and a rate-cut in Jan ’24…
Source: Bloomberg
The biggest headline-maker in the markets today was the USDollar. The DXY tumbled for the 6th straight day – the longest losing streak since July 2020 – down 4.5% in that period (the biggest such drop since Nov 2022).
Source: Bloomberg
The Dollar Index is back to pre-COVID-lockdown levels…
Source: Bloomberg
Nasdaq soared higher today as The Dow lagged (barely in the green) with Small Caps and the S&P up comfortably too…
The S&P 500 is now 3% above the level it was at when The Fed first hiked rates in March 2022…
Source: Bloomberg
Meme stocks are now up 17% in the last few days…
Source: Bloomberg
As ‘most shorted’ stocks continued to get squeezed, now up 20% in the last two weeks…
Source: Bloomberg
If those charts don’t make you laugh, nothing will…
Treasuries were bid once again today with the belly outperforming once again (5Y-15bps, 30Y -5bps), and all notably lower in yield on the week…
Source: Bloomberg
With 2Y Yields now down over 50bps from last week’s highs, having thoroughly rejected the 5.00% and pre-SVB levels…
Source: Bloomberg
The yield curve (5s30s) surged steeper again today, edging ever closer to un-inverting…
Source: Bloomberg
Bitcoin soared to it highest since May 2022, helped by the SEC losing its case against Ripple. Ethereum also ripped today, back above $2000.
Source: Bloomberg
Oil prices extended gains today, helped by news that Libya’s Sharara oil field will be halted, and the weak PPI easing restrictive Fed fears. WTI topped $77, back above pre-OPEC spike levels from March…
Gold held on to yesterday’s gains…
Finally, as cash exits the Fed’s reverse repo facility, it appears the US equity market is benefiting…
Source: Bloomberg
Is this what The Fed wants? Another wealth-creating bubble that will re-juice inflation?
Biden Loses Cool, Berates Female Finnish Journalist Over NATO ‘Instability’ Question
All we have to say is, “what if this were Trump?”
President Biden while in Helsinki on Thursday got testy with a young Finnish reporter. He lost his cool in response to a legitimate question related to the atmosphere of NATO infighting on display in Vilnius, connected with Ukraine’s hopes of joining the alliance being dashed. A female journalist posed: “Hearing this answer that ‘no one can guarantee a future’ – are you worried that the political instability in [the] U.S. will cause issued in the alliance in the future?“
Biden gets testy with a Finnish reporter:
“I didn’t say we couldn’t guarantee the future! You can’t tell me whether you’re gonna be able to go home tonight!” pic.twitter.com/96TfxtCpMo
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) July 13, 2023
In response, a visibly angry Biden went so far as to get somewhat personal with her in the response, with voiced raised: “You can’t tell me whether you’re gonna be able to go home tonight!” the president said.
The scolding of the female journalist took place as Biden met with President Sauli Niinistö of Finland. It was certainly a fair question considering the controversial events of the NATO summit the prior two days in Lithuania, which we detailed here.
In moments where he wasn’t seen scolding reporters, Biden was desperate to paper over the prior days and events which evidenced forth cracks in the alliance, by declaring that Putin is ‘losing’–or has supposedly “already lost”…
All of this provides more indicators that things aren’t going well for White House policy in Ukraine, and in its attempts to lead a ‘unified’ front on behalf of the West.
Even when meeting with Zelensky, things were clearly tense and testy, with Biden not doing well when Q&A sessions are not perfectly scripted, as he’s used to having during typical pressers at the White House…
REPORTER to ZELENSKY: “How soon after the war would you like to be in NATO?”
BIDEN INTERJECTS SARCASTICALLY: “An hour and 20 minutes! You guys ask really insightful questions!” pic.twitter.com/U2wwwR4HfK
Yesterday’s hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray was another maddening experience of faux contrition and open evasion.
Wray apologized for violations that have already been established by courts or Congress (often over the best efforts of the FBI). However, on ample public evidence of new violations, Wray continued to use his favorite testimonial trilogy to dismiss any questions: expressing (1) lack of knowledge, (2) ongoing investigations, and (3) promises of later answers or briefings.
He did, however, hold forth in detail after Rep. Eric Swalwell asked him about FBI Family Day.
Despite the near total lack of substance, Wray did make one surprising denial.
He insisted that the FBI does not engage in censorship efforts, focuses only on “foreign disinformation,” and does not pressure companies to censor others.
Those denials are not only directly contradicted by the recent 155-page opinion of a federal court and the Twitter Files, but a new release from the Twitter Files and journalist Matt Taibbi.
Wray said that “…The FBI is not in the business of moderating content, or causing any social media company to suppress or censor.”
He then added that these companies are not under any pressure in making their own decisions whether to censor people or groups flagged by the FBI.
The statement is obviously false.
The FBI maintained a large operation of agents actively seeking the censorship of thousands, as discussed in my prior testimony.
Taibbi, however, has released another example of how aggressive the FBI was with social media companies. In the latest Twitter Files release, there is one email exchange where Twitter “immediately” suspended accounts flagged by the FBI without investigation.
Taibbi explained:
“In one shot, you can see the FBI asks to remove three accounts, that gets forwarded to Twitter, Twitter immediately suspends them, the accounts. But more importantly, when there’s a glitch, and the accounts remain up, the FBI immediately writes back and says, what’s the deal? We just wrote to you, why is it still up? So, that shows the nature of the relationship basically that it’s not really a collaboration. It’s much more like somebody reporting to an authority.
… [W]hat happens in these instances in the ones that I was showing, they’re just forwarding names of accounts that they say are associated with foreign threat actors. It’s very vague. And Twitter is taking them down before they even investigate. In this case, they later determined that they couldn’t find anything connecting them to any bad actors. In fact, one of them was from Canada. And so, that’s the problem. If it’s not connected with a crime, they’re just asking to take accounts down because they don’t like the profile of them.”
We also have hundreds of emails that show the FBI and other agencies targeting individuals for a wide array of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation. The latter category is truly Orwellian. It covers true statements that can be used for a misleading purpose.
The latest email does not suggest that the FBI was the passive, helpful agency portrayed by the Director. For most people reading the email, it sounds like it is my Wray or the hard Wray.
Saudi Arabia will lose its status as the largest OPEC+ oil producer to Russia as it begins the unilateral cut of 1 million barrels per day (bpd), with the Kingdom pledging to pump around 9 million bpd in July and August—the lowest level in two years.
Excluding the deep cuts during the pandemic, a Saudi production of just around 9 million bpd would be the lowest level the world’s top crude oil exporter has pumped since 2011.
“The Kingdom’s crude output is set to plunge to a two-year low of around 9 mb/d in July and August, leaving it trailing behind Russia as the bloc’s top crude producer,” the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in its Oil Market Report on Thursday.
In a bid to push oil prices higher, or “stabilize the market” as Saudi Arabia and OPEC put it, the Kingdom announced last month a unilateral cut of 1 million bpd to its production levels for July, while the OPEC+ producers who had pledged cuts between May and December extended those cuts into 2024. Last week, Saudi Arabia said it would extend its unilateral production cut into August, and will be producing around 9 million bpd in both July and August.
“This additional voluntary cut comes to reinforce the precautionary efforts made by OPEC Plus countries with the aim of supporting the stability and balance of oil market,” Saudi Arabia said on July 3.
Minutes after the Saudi announcement, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia would cut its crude oil exports by 500,000 bpd in August in a bid to ensure a balanced market. However, the top oil official in Russia and lead OPEC+ negotiator, didn’t give any figures as to the volume of the Russian production and exports for August, nor the baseline from which the cut would be made.
The August cut in exports would mean an additional cut in oil production by 500,000 bpd in August, Novak’s office told Russian daily Vedomosti.
Lavrov: No Choice But To Treat F-16s In Ukraine As Nuclear Threat
White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan reaffirmed while at the NATO summit in Vilnius that there “will be the transfer of F-16s [to Ukraine], likely from European countries that have excess F-16 supplies”.
Russian Foreign Minister hit back at the confirmation that advanced Western fighter jets will soon make their way to Ukraine, after the allies complete the first wave of training for Ukrainian pilots, which could take considerable time. “Moscow can’t ignore the nuclear capability of US-designed F-16 fighter jets that may be supplied to Ukraine by its Western backers,” Lavrov said, per Russian media. He went so far as to say that it will be seen as a threat from the West “in the nuclear domain.”
In giving such advanced systems to Kiev, “the US and its NATO satellites create the risk of a direct armed confrontation with Russia, and this may lead to catastrophic consequences,” Lavrov warned an interview Wednesday. He called the F-16s in particular “an extremely dangerous development.”
According to more, wherein he mentioned the operability of the F-16s and their ability to carry tactical nuclear weapons:
“We have informed the nuclear powers – the US, UK and France – that Russia can’t ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons,” the foreign minister continued.
“No assurances [by the West] will help here,” he warned. In the midst of fighting, the Russian military isn’t going to investigate whether any specific jet is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not, he added.
“The very fact of the appearance of such systems within the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be considered by us as a threat from the West in the nuclear domain,” Lavrov said.
Previously, in June comments Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the West’s F-16s “will burn” soon after they appear on the battlefield, after also vowing to target all other NATO arms in the conflict.
#UPDATE Russia will regard Western F-16 fighter jets sent to Ukraine as a “nuclear” threat because of their capacity to carry atomic weapons, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says.
Modern warplanes have been at the forefront of Kyiv’s demands for military aid from its Western… pic.twitter.com/NZOY7XwJtd
The Ukrainians have continued pressing their more powerful backers to provide air superiority, saying that without jets all other weaponry such as tanks become exposed. This as a consensus has emerged on the much-vaunted counteroffensive and its slowness, or even outright failure at this point.
The U.S. Administration will refill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), which saw millions of barrels of drawdowns last year, but the reserve will not be filled up soon, U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told CNN in an interview this week.
“The bottom line is we are going to replenish,” Granholm said, adding that it was unlikely that the refill would be completed before the end of the term in office of President Joe Biden.
“The first term’s over in a year and a half. So, I’m not sure it’ll be fully replenished. But certainly, the plan is this term and the next term to be able to do that,” Granholm told CNN.
In October of last year, the administration announced that it would repurchase crude oil for the reserve when prices were at or below about $67-$72 per barrel.
The move would be dual purpose in that not only would it replenish the nation’s depleted reserves, but it would boost demand when prices were low instead of sending them into orbit at a time of regular prices.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced that it plans to purchase by August 2023 around 6 million barrels of crude oil for the SPR, with delivery scheduled for October and November.
So far, the Biden Administration has bought 6.3 million barrels at an average price of $72.67 per barrel, compared to around $95 per barrel that SPR crude was sold for in 2022, DOE said.
Earlier this year, Secretary Granholm had suggested that the Administration would start repurchasing crude oil for filling the SPR in the autumn of this year and that the refilling could take years.
[ZH: Bear in mind that the Biden admin has been draining the SPR for 15 straight weeks…]
The Administration has previously said that repurchases could begin in the fourth quarter of this year after maintenance is completed on two sites storing the nation’s crude oil reserves in Texas and Louisiana.
Ripple Wins Case Against SEC As Judge Rules On XRP Being A Security
Ripple Labs scored a victory in the United States district court in the southern New York district today as judge Analisa Torres ruled in favor of the company in a case brought forth by the SEC dating back to 2020.
According to documents filed on July 13, Judge Torres has granted summary judgment in favor of Ripple Labs with regard to whether Ripple (XRP) token is or is not a security.
The judge ruled that the XRP token “is not necessarily a security on its face” – except when it was sold to raise funds from institutions.
The SEC lawsuit sought to compel Ripple to stop offering its XRP token under the premise that XRP was a security and, thus, required additional regulation.
Per court documents viewed by Cointelegraph:
“Defendants’ motion for summary judgment is GRANTED as to the Programmatic Sales, the Other Distributions, and Larsen’s and Garlinghouse’s sales, and DENIED as to the Institutional Sales.”
Federal district judge Analisa Torres ruled that programmatic sales to public buyers and distributions of XRP to Ripple Labs employees did not constitute the sale of unregistered securities.
The court did not address secondary market sales of XRP on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Institutional buyers who directly purchased XRP from Ripple had a reasonable expectation that their investment would contribute to improving the XRP ecosystem and increase the value of XRP.
However, programmatic buyers (meaning the broader public) accounted for less than 1% of global XRP trading volume, and the sales were “blind bid/ask transactions” where buyers could not have known if their payments went to Ripple or any other seller of XRP.
The court further noted that Ripple did not make any promises or offers concerning programmatic sales, as the company did not know who was buying the XRP, and the purchasers did not know who was selling it.
This provides much-needed regulatory clarity for the cryptocurrency industry and clarifies the legal status of XRP. However, the SEC may appeal the decision, and the legal battle is likely far from over.
Nonetheless, Ripple’s victory is a significant boost for the company, which has long argued that XRP is a legitimate cryptocurrency used for cross-border payments and not subject to SEC regulation.
[ZH: we do note, however, the summary judgment is a split decision in that the judge ruled that a crypto token sold to the public may be a security…
…so, crypto is a “schrodinger’s security” – it depends on who is observing it?
The bottom line is that this ruling appears to offer a lot of leeway in the interpretation of whether a crypto token is a security.]
Furthermore, the court’s decision to cite the Howey test to determine whether XRP sales constituted investment contracts is a major blow to the SEC’s case.
The judge concluded that the SEC had failed to prove that XRP sales met the criteria for such contracts.
Within a matter of minutes after the news broke, the price of XRP has catapulted from $0.45 to $0.64. This puts the token up over 30% as of the time of this article’s publishing.
As CoinTelegraph’s Tristan Greene reports, the case against Ripple has been ongoing since December 2020 when the SEC sued Ripple and its two chief executives, Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen over allegations the company was offering an unregistered security.
Along with the palpable movement demonstrated by the XRP token pumping on the news, the overall sentiment across the crypto community appears to be one of jubilation.
The SEC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision. Garlinghouse seemed to claim victory in a tweet on Thursday.
“Thankful to everyone who helped us get to today’s decision – one that is for all crypto innovation in the US. More to come,” he wrote.
“A Complete Failure”: Secret Service Suddenly Closes White House Cocaine Investigation Without Naming Suspect
Update (1211ET): The Secret Service on Thursday announced that it’s closed the investigation into how cocaine ended up at the White House without identifying a suspect.
“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” the agency said in a statement. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered. At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”
According to the statement, the Secret Service said the bag of cocaine was “subjected to advanced fingerprint and DNA analysis.”
Lack of physical evidence? Nothing on the bag, and there’s an area of the White House that isn’t surveilled? Do we need to call the paw patrol to figure this one out?
Nothing to see here
Just a video of Hunter Biden allegedly doing a bump of cocaine at the White House in front of children
But don’t worry – the media said the bag of blow found at the WH wasn’t Hunter’s! pic.twitter.com/Bt5hCT2ghf
In response to a Thursday closed-door briefing to members and staff of the House Oversight Committee, Republicans called the case a ‘failure’ of the agency.
“And to say that they don’t know who it is, to me, somebody should lose their job over this. This thing’s a trash can. Everybody wants to pick and choose they need to shut the whole thing down put the garden hose to it and clean it out,” said Rep. Tim Burchett, who called it a “complete failure” and said that the Biden administration is “thumbing their nose at the American public.”
Biden critics are accusing the White House of a “cocaine cover-up” as the Secret Service investigation into “CocaineGate” drags on with no resolution.
Amid growing skepticism regarding the trustworthiness of the “ongoing investigation,” the Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Tuesday didn’t have an update for reporters.
“Do you have any update on the investigation into the cocaine at the White House?” a reporter inquired.
“I don’t have any updates,” Jean-Pierre responded. “I just don’t have anything updated. I would refer you to the Secret Service on that particular question.”
“Do you have any update on the investigation into the cocaine at the White House?”
Karine Jean-Pierre: “I don’t have any updates … I just don’t have anything updated.” pic.twitter.com/WWumCUu8A4
The USSS have not been answering to press inquiries about the discovery, however, telling news outlets that they cannot comment on ongoing investigations. The Secret Service will be briefing Congress on Thursday, after House Oversight Chairman James Comer Comer fired off a letter to USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle demanding to be briefed on the White House security failures that led to the “unacceptable and shameful” discovery of cocaine in the West Wing.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) also called for a briefing in a letter on July 5.
“If the White House complex is not secure, Congress needs to know the details, as well as your plan to correct any flaws,” the Republican senator wrote, demanding a list be provided of every individual who has access to the White House without passing through a security screening.
Congress and the American people deserve to know how cocaine got into the White House. pic.twitter.com/Fps9AJ6hSQ
According to the Daily Mail, Cotton has not yet received a reply from Cheatle.
Details about where the cocaine baggie was found have changed multiple times since the discovery was made on July 2.
Initially, a spokesman for the USSS told reporters that Secret Service officers “located an unknown item on the White House complex.” Then, an audio recording from the Hazmat team sent to the White House to investigate the substance indicated it was located in the library. Next, the White House said it was found in the highly trafficked West Wing lobby.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday strongly suggested that a member of the public on a tour may have left the drug in a “heavily-traveled area” of the West Wing.
“This is a heavily, heavily trafficked – heavily traveled to be more accurate – area of the campus of the White House. And it is where visitors to the West Wing come,” Jean-Pierre insisted.
“I just don’t have anything else—I’m not going to speculate on who it was.”
Finally, on Thursday, NBC News reported that the contraband was found in a cubby near the “much more secure” West Executive entrance—not the West Wing lobby.
According to NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, “average people just can’t get in” where the cocaine baggie was found.
Although fingerprint and DNA analysis were done last week on the “dime-sized zipper baggie” the drug was found in, no results have yet been shared. The investigation was expected to be concluded by Monday.
Now, some are accusing the Biden White House of engaging in a cover up to protect the culprit.
On Fox News Monday, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) said the Biden White House is refusing to hand over the results of the finger print analysis.
“If the cocaine was found on a bag, doesn’t it have fingerprints on it? And how long would it take to answer that question? Weeks, days, hours?” asked Fox News host Martha MacCallum.
“I asked some of our State Troopers, Texas Rangers and Sheriffs—those kinds of people who do this for a living—and they all said to me that on very porous surfaces like bags and envelopes, you’ll be able to determine within an hour if there’s fingerprints on it,” Rep Fallon replied.
“By my math we’re 192 hours from the time it was discovered yet we don’t know.” Fallon noted that “if there were no fingerprints, they could have told us immediately.”
The Texas congressman also said the fingerprints may have been run through a database and pointed out that the cocaine was found in an area “where high level aides and staffers are,”
most of whom “have been fingerprinted at one time or another.”
Fallon told MacCallum that the Secret Service “very well may already know who it belongs to and aren’t sharing with us.”
Rep. Pat Fallon on the cocaine found at the White House: “If there [were] no fingerprints, they could have told us immediately. So I suspect there are fingerprints…” pic.twitter.com/o7OovkXoE3
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) July 10, 2023
Kash Patel, a former House Intelligence Committee staffer, and chief of staff to the acting United States secretary of defense under President Donald Trump, told former Trump official Sebastian Gorka on Tuesday that local law enforcement, not just the Secret Service, should be involved in the investigation.
“The White House is subjected to law enforcement and we’re talking about felony levels of narcotics,” he said.
I talk to @KashsCorner, author of the new book “Government Gangsters,” about the bizarre cocaine scandal in the Biden White House.
In an interview with Just the News, former FBI agent and acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection Agency Mark Morgan said last week that the White House cocaine mystery should take “about 30 minutes to solve.”
“I was there countless times, I put my cell phone in that exact box that they’re talking about. I know it well. Oftentimes, there is a marine that’s standing there. This literally should take them about 30 minutes to solve,” Morgan said on Wednesday.
According to former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, the culprit has to be a member of the Biden family because everyone else has to go through a strict security checkpoint. “It had to be one of the protectees—there’s no other explanation,” Bongino declared in a video posted on Rumble. “That would never have gotten through the checkpoint. Not a chance in Hell.”
On Friday, even an MSNBC reporter questioned the Secret Service’s line that the mystery may never be solved, saying it’s “hard to believe” the Secret Service can’t figure out who brought the cocaine to the White House, given the heavy security.
“The cocaine cover-up is officially ridiculous,” said Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton in a video commentary posted onto Twitter.
The Biden White House cocaine cover-up is officially ridiculous. But, per usual, @JudicialWatch stepping up with independent investigation. pic.twitter.com/4x5HLbA0iE
As Challengers Clear Debate Hurdles, Trump ‘Unlikely’ To Show Up
As two GOP presidential candidates clear qualifying hurdles for the party’s first debate next month, former President Donald Trump is “unlikely” to show up, says an advisor — but there’s a chance he will.
“At the moment, President Trump has indicated that he’s unlikely to participate, at least in the first two debates. He’s up by 30, 40, and even new polling shows he’s up by almost 50 percent in certain places,” Trump advisor Jason Miller told The Hill. “It really wouldn’t make much sense for him to go and debate right now with a bunch of folks who are down at three, four and five percent. Even [Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis], who’s the second-place candidate in the race currently, is at least 20, 30 or 40 points behind.”
Of course, few people love a television audience as much as Trump, and Miller did hedge, saying, “Ultimately, President Trump will make a decision as we get closer. He has not said anything definitive, one way or the other. I’m not expecting him to participate, though.”
In an effort to lure Trump into the cage, DeSantis on Wednesday criticized the frontrunner’s debate disinterest. “Nobody is entitled to this nomination. You have got to earn the nomination,” he told radio host Howie Carr. “And … doing things like these debates — they’re important parts of the process.”
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie was more pointed:
Aww poor Donald Trump. He might have to defend his record on the debate stage?
If Donald Trump doesn’t show up, then he’s a coward. I’ll tell the truth directly to his face.
To earn an invite to the August 23 Republican debate in Milwaukee — which will also be the site of the party’s 2024 national convention — candidates must check two boxes:
Garner 1% support in either three national polls or two nationals plus one early-primary state, and
Amass at least 40,000 donors across a minimum geographic distribution.
The first such qualifying poll was released this week, and brought good news for seven candidates who hope to overtake frontrunner Trump. A national Morning Consult poll with an unusually large, 800-likely-voter sample found Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson all at 1% or higher. “Someone else” also hit 1%.
On Wednesday, Chris Christie announced that he’d eclipsed the requisite 40,000 donors. “Last night, we went past 40,000 unique donors in just 35 days,” he told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “There is a donor in every state in America, and we have over 200 donors in 36 states.” Among the GOP field, Christie is arguably the most aggressive of Trump’s detractors.
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who tied Christie at 3% in the first qualifying poll, has also hit the donor mark. DeSantis was already near 40,000 donors back in May, and raised a hefty $20 million in just the first six weeks after announcing his run.
Aside from the poor risk/reward dynamic of exposing himself to fire when he’s up 33 points on the nearest challenger in the RealClear Politics average, there may be another disincentive for Trump to debate: The GOP also requires participants to pledge their support of the eventual nominee. Along with DeSantis, Trump has yet to say if he would do so.
Bidenomics Fail: Nationwide Spike In Family Homelessness
In June, the White House revealed a new public relations campaign called “Bidenomics” to define President Biden’s economic agenda ahead of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
“I don’t know what the hell that is, but it’s working,” Biden stated at a June 17 rally in Philadelphia, begging the question, is it actually working?
Americans, particularly middle-class ones, have been crushed in the inflation storm. They’ve been battered by two years of negative real wage growth, forcing many to quickly draw down on savings while using credit cards in a high-interest-rate environment to make ends meet.
And, of course, the Biden administration is taking credit for the decline in the inflation rate from its 9.1% peak in June of 2022 to the 3.1% last month. But inflation is still rising above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.
The latest sign Bidenomics has not been particularly rewarding to middle America is new data from Bloomberg that shows the number of families experiencing homelessness skyrocketed this year across 20 major cities.
“Family homelessness in the US is on the rise in an alarming sign of how the increasing cost of goods, the ever-tightening housing supply and the end of most pandemic-era benefits are putting pressure on Americans,” Bloomberg said.
“The Bureau of Labor Statistics says real average hourly earnings have fallen 3.16% during the Biden Presidency.”
A shocking 72,700 people in families with children were homeless in 20 cities across the nation as of January, a massive 37.6% jump from a year before, according to an analysis of data provided by jurisdictions. Some of the most significant year-over-year changes in family homelessness were in major metros run by Democrats.
Bloomberg noted, “The situation is likely even more grim than the numbers show: so-called point-in-time samples often are a significant undercount, and cities including San Francisco and Seattle — which have dire homeless crises — were excluded from the analysis because they only counted the number of people in their shelters this year.”
The explosion of family homelessness is another sign that Bidenomics is failing middle of America.
