The Market Ticker

Seriously folks….

The Producer Price Index for Finished Goods rose 0.2 percent in July, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. This advance followed a 0.5-percent decline in
June and a 0.3-percent decrease in May. At the earlier stages of processing, prices received by manufacturers of intermediate goods moved down 0.4 percent in July and the crude goods index rose 2.7 percent. On an unadjusted basis, prices for finished goods advanced 4.2 percent for the 12 months ended July 2010, their ninth consecutive 12-month increase. (See table A.)

So that seems to be ok, right?

Well, is it?

Where did the 0.3% increase come from?

Almost half of the July advance can be attributed to a 1.5-percent rise in prices for light motor trucks.

Oh that’s nice.  So the car makers (read: Government Motors) are jacking the price of light trucks, and this is seen as “supportive” of the economy and markets.  (Higher prices are good, right?  Especially in a credit-constrained economic environment?)

The Producer Price Index for Intermediate Materials, Supplies, and Components moved down 0.4 percent in July, its second straight decrease. Prices for both intermediate materials other than foods and energy and for intermediate foods and feeds fell 0.4 percent in July.

So at an intermediate level there’s no pricing power?  Or is this just a relaxation of an unsustainable trend?

On a 12-month basis, prices for intermediate goods climbed 6.4 percent for the second consecutive month. (See table B.)

Answer: The latter.

Crude core:  The index for crude nonfood materials less energy decreased 1.4 percent in July. From April to July, crude core prices fell 7.6 percent following a 9.7-percent advance in the previous 3-month period. Leading the July monthly decline was a 6.7-percent drop in the index for iron and steel scrap. A decrease in the index for wastepaper also contributed to lower crude core prices.

Demand?  DEMAND?!  Where?

Yeah.

The only thing supportive in the crude goods area is in food and energy, incidentally the two things that the “inflation watchers” don’t count but which are two things every American must buy to remain above room temperature.

Pretty amusing on an analytical basis until you realize that into declining wages (and they are) what’s happening is that the American middle class is being disemboweled month-by-month, destroying aggregate demand.

What else would one expect from economic policies in our government that are bereft of actual analysis – or common sense? Propping up the leverage-abusers at the expense of the common man is simply going to continue to exacerbate this problem over time.

Welcome to the “New Normal”: Got hard hat?

by Karl Denninger

Here it comes (again):

Aug. 16 (Bloomberg) — The back-to-school shopping season is off to a slow start as retailers and consumers wait to see who will blink first.

Oh do come on.

“Consumers” eh?  That’s all we are?  Hear my famous rant some time on this?

I know Madison Avenue makes their money getting you to believe that buying a $100 pair of jeans with pre-made and patched holes in them is some sort of “fashion statement”, but let’s get down to brass tacks:  taking debt to do so is ridiculously stupid, and yet that has been the mantra of the last decade!

Retailers ordered more merchandise when the U.S. economy was rebounding earlier this year, he said. Now they will have to clear out their summer stock. The question is when to cut prices and by how much, he said.

It wasn’t rebounding.  That, my friends, was a lie.  A “convenient” falsehood promulgated by people who wanted you to believe there was a “recovery” in an economy that had become moribund with too much debt and a government that refused to “encourage” those who had losses to eat them (by refusing to intervene in what should have been their bankruptcy proceeding.)

Those retailers ought not lose sleep – they should lose their lease, right behind their bankruptcy filing.

American Eagle was offering free smartphones to shoppers who tried on a pair of its jeans, which sell for as low as $24.50. That promotion ended Aug. 3, and the Pittsburgh-based retailer is now offering a sale on all jeans plus free shipping.

Riiiiight.  “Free” eh?  You mean “we’ll give you the phone with a 2 year new contract at $100/month”, no?  And how much is American Eagle getting in kickbacks from the phone company that is co-sponsoring that deal?  Here’s my bet: the jeans are entirely paid for by the undisclosed “rebate” that AE is getting from the cellular company on that, just as independent agents are paid to sign up people for these nice expensive cell plans with their mandatory 2 year data lock-ins!

China, incidentally, hasn’t changed a damn thing when it comes to its mercantilism.  It now says it’s “favoring” Euros over dollars.  Their recent exchange-rate games have drawn howls of protest from The Senate, which increasingly is making noise about tariffs and labeling them a “currency manipulator.”  Of course we rewarded this a few years ago with “most-favored nation” trading status.  Isn’t that wonderful?

My only question to The Senate is “What took you so long, clowns?“  Oh I know, you couldn’t piss off WalMart, right?  Or how about crApple, making their “esteemed” iPhone and iFeminineProduct in slave-labor factories over in China (which are apparently bad enough that a number of the workers there have committed suicide by jumping off the buildings!)

It’s not really fair to pick on Wally World and crApple though – indeed, it’s tough to find a consumer products manufacturer that isn’t using these sorts of labor “outlets.”  Why is that?  Well, that might have something to do with our policy when it comes to trade, where corporations have every incentive to send what used to be decent factory jobs overseas (thereby forcing our workers to ask “would you like fries with that?” at 30% of their former wage), pocketing the “improvement” in their COGS (cost of goods sold.)  While they’re at it they can include exploding capacitors in their products too – makes for a guaranteed second sale a year or two in the future.

But you know global wage arbitrage is good, right, especially when you have a government that’s complicit in it, bulldozing the farmer’s fields and sponsoring a property bubble so nasty that the average home in many areas sells for one hundred times the average worker’s salary.  This, of course, leads those people to have literally no choice (beyond starvation) but to go work for “the company”, sleeping in jail-like barracks surrounded by fences topped with the obligatory razor wire.  Why does this sort of thing remind me of Auschwitz – sans ”showers.”

The funny thing about gross distortions in a nation’s economy like this is that they feel great for a while.  After all, stepping on the heads of those “slanty-eyed” people isn’t such a bad thing, right?  They don’t look like us, they live half a world away, and the acid-filled and heavy-metal-laced effluent from their plants goes into their water, not ours.  So it’s all good, especially when your “holy” jeans and shiny-new iScrewMrChinaman are hugging your hips.  Buying that crap (with money you don’t actually have) is easily-justified so long as you don’t have to actually look the people being exploited in the eye in the process.

And now we get the faux “rage” about “currency manipulation” – while ignoring things like lead-based paint on the toys sent over here, or the melamine-laced baby formula.  (They do allegedly have a population problem in China – maybe this is their way of dealing with it?)

Congratulations America – the land of the burger-flipper and the home of the scammer and coward, not to mention the enabler and promoter of near-slave-labor conditions worldwide.

Yes, that’s you dear “consumer”, when you step in these stores and buy these products.

Somehow, I think Francis Scott Key had a slightly different idea in his mind a couple hundred years ago.

Ps: If you haven’t figured out that this entire rant is intended to be biting sarcasm, go back to school and take remedial English.