- Markets on roller coaster ride final two trading days of this week
- Bad news parade marches on in April
- The players are still clinging to fantasy of U.S. economic recovery
- Dollar finished down substantially on the week – April was the first down month in 10 months
- Dollar has seen its highs and is heading lower
- Gold back below 1200
- Oil prices added to gains closed above $59 – moving opposite to the dollar
- Friday – March Personal Income & Spending flat below expectations
- Personal Spending also lower than expected; .4% gain
- Savings dropped from 5.7 to 5.3 – the lowest savings rate of the year
- April PMI Manufacturing Index – dropped more than expected to 54.1 even as weather warms
- ISM Manufacturing expected to rise to 52 – remained flat
- Employment Index dropped two points – the first drop in 2 years
- March Construction Spending fell by .6 missing expectations
- Atlanta Fed correctly forecasted Q1 GDP at .2, forecasting Q2 at .8
- Article on Zero Hedge: Goldman Sachs warning Europe about severe “Lowflation”
- Article in Bloomberg: Chinese can’t “kick” savings habit
- Blames problem on “not enough government”
- The reason America is in so much trouble is that we don’t save
- Once the Chinese have built up a cushion, then they will spend
- When our phony economy bursts, it will be apparent that we did not save enough and had too much debt
- America gives capitalism a bad name – we preach it but do not practice it
- We rely on a giant government-run ponzi scheme of socialized savings
- We are telling the Chinese they have too much free market capitalism
- We have been indulging our present and sacrificing our future
- The Chinese will be rewarded for their prudence
- The most ironic thing about the Bloomberg article is that they suggest Chinese would be better off under Communism
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