While "at first glance, the U.S. economy, appears to be doing 'basically fine,' as Fed Chair Jerome Powell put it in his press conference earlier this week," MSNBC's Helaine Olen wrote on Thursday, "under the surface, signs of trouble are increasing."
Well, yeah. As the ZeroHedge guys put it on Wednesday, "The economy is so great, it needs a crisis-level rate cut 2 months before the election." (The Fed usually makes quarter-point adjustments except when the waste matter has collided with the rotating air-flow acceleration device.)
So last week when I suggested you "Kiss Your Giant Rate Cut Goodbye," I guess I was staring into a less deep abyss than Powell was this week.
Anyway, I was about to ask Olen what took her so long to notice, but because MSNBC chose to run an article that dares to question the "Greatest Economy in History, We Promise," why don't we cut them both some slack? Particularly because Olen caught a few negative trends that hadn't yet come across my desk.
"While overall retail sales are inching higher," Olen noted, "restaurant sales are flatlining, and the post-pandemic travel bonanza is slowing, with hotels reporting less demand from vacationers."
Dining out and travel are related in that both are optional expenses and two of the first places where families cut back when times are tough. Entertainment is another:
Aside from Taylor Swift, musicians are struggling to draw crowds. Even Jennifer Lopez canceled a planned tour this summer in the face of flagging sales. Other acts, especially on the nostalgia circuit, joined forces, giving audiences two-for-one deals, seemingly to make it more likely they could fill up the seats. (Elvis Costello and Daryl Hall toured together this spring and summer. So did Rick Springfield and Richard Marx.)
My brain is having an impossible time wrapping itself around the idea of an Elvis Costello/Daryl Hall double bill. I guess my wife could go to see Hall and I could go to see Costello and we could share a single ticket.
The bigger picture stuff I've written about recently over at Instapundit, but it bears repeating here.
"Shares of consumer-lending companies slid this past week after executives raised warnings about lower-income borrowers who are struggling to make payments," the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. "Dour remarks from banking executives at the Barclays banking conference rattled investors, who were already on edge about the health of the U.S. economy."
Credit card debt is at record highs. Delinquencies are on the rise, too — for housing, autos, and credit cards. We blew through our lockdown savings, then we racked up the MasterCard, and now we're skipping the fun things that make life worthwhile and falling behind on the bills.
Allowed to do its own thing, the economy should have enjoyed a robust recovery after the lockdowns. But Biden-Harris boondoggles crowded out profitable investments, illegal immigrants crowded out American workers, and regulation, inflation, and high interest rates strangled growth.
Welcome to the Biden-Harris economy. It took three years for the party to end, but I can guarantee you that no matter who wins in November, the hangover is going to be epic.
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