There’s a new Martenson Report ready for enrolled members.
This week I take a stroll through the consumer data – after all most of the economy rests with the consumer – to determine if I can find any ‘green shoots.’
Link to Green Shoots? Not Yet.
A snippet:
Executive summary
- No green shoots in the consumer data
- Mortgage Equity Withdrawal (MEW) is negative
- Consumer credit is negative
- Retail sales are negative
- Rail and port traffic is deeply negative
- Unemployment not as positive as presented
- State tax revenues are negative
- Federal tax receipts? Don’t ask.
Again this week I find myself sifting through mountains of data that are telling me one thing, while I read news accounts and official proclamations that suggest another. We do ourselves no favors by shielding ourselves from the hard truth.
There is much that we need to confront with respect to energy, transportation, food production, and living within our economic means. Because I do not yet see any official recognition of the possibility that a blind return to growth might actually be adding fuel to an already hot fire, I continue to do my work of reaching out to individuals and communities in an effort to get them to prepare.
I want to counter the recent incantations by the media, fiscal, and monetary authorities that "things are on the mend" and that there are green shoots sprouting all over the place. There are indeed some encouraging signs, but there are an equal number of discouraging signs. This is a time for caution, not complacency.
Let’s break down the economy into its biggest pieces and see what we can find in each of them.
by cat233