Top Stories Of The Week - Ripped From The Headlines, May 10, 2024
Today, We Look Back At The Top Stories From This Week - Read, Share, & Subscribe - SherlocExposes.com
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Taking A Look Back At The Top Stories Of The Week
Ripped From The Headlines looks back at the top stories from this week.
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“Retailers are feeling jittery. Consumers aren’t shopping like they used to. In a game of chicken between stores and shoppers, it’s the stores that appear to be yielding first, by dropping prices on thousands of products.
The markdowns come as inflation has pushed prices higher for the past two years, squeezing Americans and forcing them to choose between wants and needs.
That’s a problem not just for individual shoppers or even big retail chains but for the whole American economy, of which about two-thirds comes from consumer spending.
Shoppers have pulled back for a year now as costs have risen 20% to 30% higher than they were three years ago and as incomes failed to keep up, said Sarah Wyeth, managing director, retail and consumer with S&P Global Ratings.
This is making consumers across income levels look for deals.
‘The ‘budget conscious consumer’ is no longer just low- or middle-income earners. By far the starkest decrease in intent to spend is coming from the higher-income groups, and those that were previously the most immune to an economic downturn are now tightening their belts,’ said Chad Lusk, managing director in global consultancy firm Alvarez & Marshal’s consumer and retail group.”
THINGS TO PONDER:
When people have nothing left to lose, they lose it…
So much for the “great economy” huh?
Here’s the reality: It’s not.
And the people have had enough of being squeezed, scammed, and bamboozled.
So they stopped spending…
What is most interesting though is this quote:
“The ‘budget conscious consumer’ is no longer just low- or middle-income earners. By far the starkest decrease in intent to spend is coming from the higher-income groups, and those that were previously the most immune to an economic downturn are now tightening their belts.”
What does that tell you about how things are going?
Kudos to the people for pushing back. We need WAY more of that.
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“Wounded and limping, doubting its own future, American journalism seems to be losing a quality that carried it through a century and a half of trials: its swagger.
Swagger is the conformity-killing practice of journalism, often done in defiance of authority and custom, to tell a true story in its completeness, no matter whom it might offend. It causes some people to subscribe and others to cancel their subscriptions, and gives journalists the necessary courage and direction to do their best work.
Swagger was once journalism’s calling card, but in recent decades it’s been sidelined. In some venues, reporters now do their work with all the passion of an accountant, and it shows in their guarded, couched and equivocating copy. Instead of relishing controversy, today’s newsrooms shy away from publishing true stories that someone might claim cause “harm” — that modern term that covers all emotional distress — or even worse, which could offend powerful interests.
Every aging generation of journalists must have complained, at one point or another, about swagger’s demise. But this time, the fall is demonstrable. A recent piece by Max Tani in Semafor attributed the new timidity to legal threats from subjects of news stories.
‘In 2024, it’s harder than ever to get a tough story out in the United States of America,’ Tani writes, citing the risk of lawsuits and increased insurance premiums. The new equation ‘has given public figures growing leverage over the journalists who now increasingly carry their water.’”
THINGS TO PONDER:
It’s all about the money, honey!
Most news outlets started to realize that:
Audiences had finally figured out they were being played by them;
That their ad masters held all the cards and could put them out of business;
And they had no choice but to bend to their money master’s will.
That’s the perfect storm for “fake news.”
But it’s deeper than that…
Here’s why: Operation Mocking Bird and the weakening of the Smith-Mundt Act were done by design so that this would happen… so that media could become polarized and controlled.
“Welcome to the desert… of the real.” - Morpheus, in The Matrix.
If you want to know what won’t be talked about on the news tonight, watch the commercials.
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“A majority of Americans think that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction, according to an exclusive poll for Newsweek, with many blaming Joe Biden's economic agenda—Bidenomics—for it.
But experts told Newsweek that the U.S. economy is doing relatively well, especially when compared to most other Western economies. The negative outlook on the economy that many Americans hold is likely linked to the fact that the economic picture is objectively complicated and hard to understand right now.”
Hard Stop. Commentary:
Remember, when “the experts” tell you something is doing well, chances are it’s the opposite… let’s continue.
“‘The combination of economic indicators is confusing even for economists who spend all their time looking at these numbers,’ Stephan Weiler, a professor of economics at Colorado State University, told Newsweek. ‘This is just a very unusual combination of fiscal monetary and global circumstances, and that uncertainty is translating into pessimism.’
According to John Van Reenen, Ronald Coase Chair in Economics and School Professor at the London School of Economics (LSE) in London and Digital Fellow, Initiative for the Digital Economy at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology (MIT), part of the unhappiness with the U.S. economy is also a ‘hangover’ from the rise of inflation which followed the pandemic.
‘Prices are coming down but that increase is still fresh in people's memories,’ he told Newsweek. ‘Governments all over the world are being punished for that bad experience, and I think that's part of what's happening in the U.S.,’ Van Reened added. ‘It's ironic, because, compared to other advanced countries, the U.S. is doing fantastically well in terms of growth.’
Hard Stop: Commentary:
There’s no “unusual combination” of numbers here… things aren’t good because the government is printing money non-stop, which lowers its buying power. That leads to inflation (at best) or “stagflation” - a stagnant economy combined with inflation - which we are dealing with now.
Also, it’s interesting to hear from an economist who basically tells us that “the world sucks, but hey… you’re the best at sucking!”
As the old saying goes, you can’t get a little bit pregnant. We’re not doing well.
Let’s continue.
Many Americans, however, don't see it like Van Reenen. Americans are also negative about their own financial situation. Some 42 percent of respondents said their financial situation has worsened in the last year. Only 26 percent said it has improved, while 32 percent said it has stayed the same.
Some 47 percent of Americans said they were now financially worse off than they were three years before, against 26 percent who said they were better off and 27 percent who said they were about the same. Some 45 percent said they were now worse off than before the pandemic, while 28 percent said they were better off and 27 percent were about the same.
The poll was based on interviews with 1,500 eligible voters in the country.
But despite the malaise shared by millions of Americans, economists insist that the U.S. economy ‘is in a relatively good place,’ as Weiler said.
‘The fact that we're talking about a soft landing coming out of a pandemic—an event that would normally be followed by a huge economic fallout—instead of a recession is tribute to the fact that there was both good monetary policy and fiscal policy during the key periods of 2020, 2022 and 2023,’ he added.”
Hard Stop. Commentary:
The people speak…
See, when you let people express to you what’s really happening to them, they will tell you…
Unlike many classically trained economists, who don’t seem to step outside of the bubble, where the streets are lined with milk and honey.
Which is why they can make statements like this one with a straight face:
“The fact that we're talking about a soft landing coming out of a pandemic—an event that would normally be followed by a huge economic fallout—instead of a recession is tribute to the fact that there was both good monetary policy and fiscal policy during the key periods of 2020, 2022 and 2023,’ he added.”
There’s no soft landing… there’s no good monetary and fiscal policy either, Mr. Weiler.
Folks, this is another indicator to get prepared with the things you’ll need to survive tough economic times and build wealth during a downturn.
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