Oregon activists Tom and Sheri Eckert are trying to put psilocybin, the active ingredient in psychedelics, on the 2020 ballot in Oregon. Their initiativewas filed in early July and reached the threshold of 1,000 signatures two weeks after its appearance, thereby requiring the attorney general to file a draft ballot title.
Local news outlet KDRV reports that Secretary of State Bev Clarno has requested public comment on the matter through August 21 to decide “whether the petition complies with the procedural constitutional requirements established in the Oregon Constitution for initiative petitions.”
Should the petition clear that hurdle, it must then receive over 110,000 signatures by July 2, 2020, in order to qualify for inclusion on the November 2020 statewide ballot, where it would need a simple majority to pass.
The ballot measure would not allow mushrooms to be sold in stores. Instead, it would allow adults, age 21 and older, to visit official service centers on the recommendation of a medical professional in order to take psilocybin under the supervision of a licensed facilitator. Those centers would be overseen by the Oregon Health Authority.
“The facilitator kind of orients you to the service, asks some questions, gets to know you and your desires and your intentions and issues a bit more,” Tom Eckert told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “Nobody’s going to be taking psilocybin home with them to administer to themselves, which means that there will be none in public, no one driving,” Eckert added.
Unlike Denver, Colorado, which decriminalized the use of hallucinogenic mushrooms in May but has not yet set up a system regulating such lawful use, the Oregon proposal aims to quickly set up a sanctioned system for imbibing the substance.
The Oregon proposal also stands out in another way. As Marijuana Moment has pointed out, the “Oregon measure is distinct in that it’s the only one currently aiming to create a way for people to legally obtain the substance through a medical model.”
“Psychedelics are uniquely powerful when it comes to creating lasting change in the human being,” Eckert told Oregon Public Broadcasting. “It’s a unique opportunity and it’s been denied for all these years.”
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The White House on Tuesday said that some planned tariffs on consumer electronics and household goods would be postponed until December 15—a political maneuver intended to blunt the potential impact of those tariffs on the upcoming holiday shopping season.
What the White House didn’t say in the official announcement—but what the action obviously indicates—is that Americans are clearly paying the costs associated with President Donald Trump’s trade war.
In fact, Trump even said as much while speaking to reporters on Tuesday.
“We’re doing this for the Christmas season,” Trump said, according to The New York Times. “Just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers.”
Just in case! It’s far from a definitive statement, but this seems like the first time since he launched the trade war last year that Trump has admitted someone other than China is paying for his tariffs. Pretty much everyone this side of Peter Navarro and Fox &Friends already knows that Americans are paying for the tariffs—tariffs are taxes, after all—but it’s ever so slightly refreshing to see that the Trump administration might be awakening to economic reality.
But don’t let your hopes get too high. Trump is still pushing forward with a plan to levy 10 percent tariffs on about $300 billion worth of annual imports from China before the end of the year, and there are already 25 percent tariffs on about $250 billion in annual imports.
The items that will be spared from the tariff list until December 15 include smartphones, video game consoles, speakers, computer monitors, and other consumer electronics, along with various items of clothing and footwear. Another list of items, including children’s car seats, shipping containers, and Bibles will be permanently exempted from the planned tariffs, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
“Today’s announcement to delay imposing tariffs on Chinese imports of electronic goods, such as cellphones and laptops, is welcome news for American businesses and consumers,” Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.
While Americans will be temporarily spared the estimated $1 billion tax increase on tech good imported from China, consumers and businesses will have to keep paying the president’s other tariffs.
In June, Americans paid $6 billion in tariffs—one of the highest single-month totals, in nominal terms, in American history. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration accounted for more than $3.4 billion of that overall total, according to a new analysis from Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a coalition of business groups.
“It appears the administration understands that taxes on everyday products such as toys, clothes and electronics would be politically unpopular and hurt those who can least afford it,” the group said in a statement released Tuesday. “Unfortunately, today’s announcement doesn’t address the vast majority of tariffs that are driving uncertainty, putting farmers out of business and causing small businesses to slow hiring. Instead of picking temporary winners and losers and holding the U.S. economy hostage, it is time to reach an agreement that finally puts an end to the trade war.”
If Trump wants to give Americans a real Christmas present, he would set aside his foolish belief that China’s behavior can be changed by imposing taxes on Americans. In the meantime, at least the president is starting to question the existence of Santa Claus.
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An opioid crisis is unfolding across the Bay Area, according to a new report from San Francisco’s public health department.
Last year, fentanyl overdose deaths jumped 150% in San Francisco, to 89, up from 37 deaths in 2017.
Fentanyl was first spotted on the streets of the city during the 2008 financial crash when five deaths were reported. In 2010, six deaths were connected to the highly addictive synthetic opioid, which killed 22 people in 2016.
“It’s not a huge surprise to see this, although it’s certainly disappointing and sad to have lost this many lives in the city,” Dr. Phillip Coffin, the director of substance use research for the San Francisco Department of Public Health, told San Francisco Chronicle.
“Unfortunately, there is no locality that can withstand the introduction of fentanyl without some increase in mortality.”
Per the city’s medical examiner, 39 people overdosed on fentanyl in 1Q19 alone. That number is expected to increase dramatically this year, could be several hundred by year’s end.
The Chronicle said fentanyl is 50-100 times more potent than morphine.
“It has taken over heroin as the number one choice for opioid,” Dr. Chris Colwell, chief of emergency medicine at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, told the paper.
Fentanyl is starting to become a significant issue across the city; this comes at a time when the homeless crisis is also gaining momentum.
The total number of homeless counted in the city in January 2019 was nearly 10,000, according to the Los Angeles Times.
A perfect storm has been brewing in the Bay Area for the last five years: An expanding homeless population blended with synthetic opioids is leading to an exponential increase in overdose deaths that could soon be considered a public health emergency.
Coffin said fentanyl has “become more and more prevalent as the opioid that people are using in San Francisco” and “is a riskier opioid compared to prescription opioids.”
Last month US District Judge Dan Polster allowed the public for the first time to examine opioid sales from the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) that details how the opioid epidemic exploded into almost every community across the US from 2006 through 2012.
As per The Washington Post, the ACROS data showed big pharmaceutical companies pumped 76 billion oxycodone and hydrocodone pills from 2006 through 2012 into nearly every zip code across the country.
As shown in the map below, the number of legal opioid pills distributed per person, per year, from 2006 to 2012, was some of the highest in Northern California, bordering the Bay Area.
With the opioid and homelessness crisis far from over in the city, expected to gain momentum through the mid-2020s, these two imbalances could trigger a public health crisis that would drain resources from emergency systems and funds from the local government.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YO15Cn Tyler Durden
The White House on Tuesday said that some planned tariffs on consumer electronics and household goods would be postponed until December 15—a political maneuver intended to blunt the potential impact of those tariffs on the upcoming holiday shopping season.
What the White House didn’t say in the official announcement—but what the action obviously indicates—is that Americans are clearly paying the costs associated with President Donald Trump’s trade war.
In fact, Trump even said as much while speaking to reporters on Tuesday.
“We’re doing this for the Christmas season,” Trump said, according to The New York Times. “Just in case some of the tariffs would have an impact on U.S. customers.”
Just in case! It’s far from a definitive statement, but this seems like the first time since he launched the trade war last year that Trump has admitted someone other than China is paying for his tariffs. Pretty much everyone this side of Peter Navarro and Fox &Friends already knows that Americans are paying for the tariffs—tariffs are taxes, after all—but it’s ever so slightly refreshing to see that the Trump administration might be awakening to economic reality.
But don’t let your hopes get too high. Trump is still pushing forward with a plan to levy 10 percent tariffs on about $300 billion worth of annual imports from China before the end of the year, and there are already 25 percent tariffs on about $250 billion in annual imports.
The items that will be spared from the tariff list until December 15 include smartphones, video game consoles, speakers, computer monitors, and other consumer electronics, along with various items of clothing and footwear. Another list of items, including children’s car seats, shipping containers, and Bibles will be permanently exempted from the planned tariffs, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.
“Today’s announcement to delay imposing tariffs on Chinese imports of electronic goods, such as cellphones and laptops, is welcome news for American businesses and consumers,” Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.
While Americans will be temporarily spared the estimated $1 billion tax increase on tech good imported from China, consumers and businesses will have to keep paying the president’s other tariffs.
In June, Americans paid $6 billion in tariffs—one of the highest single-month totals, in nominal terms, in American history. Tariffs imposed by the Trump administration accounted for more than $3.4 billion of that overall total, according to a new analysis from Tariffs Hurt the Heartland, a coalition of business groups.
“It appears the administration understands that taxes on everyday products such as toys, clothes and electronics would be politically unpopular and hurt those who can least afford it,” the group said in a statement released Tuesday. “Unfortunately, today’s announcement doesn’t address the vast majority of tariffs that are driving uncertainty, putting farmers out of business and causing small businesses to slow hiring. Instead of picking temporary winners and losers and holding the U.S. economy hostage, it is time to reach an agreement that finally puts an end to the trade war.”
If Trump wants to give Americans a real Christmas present, he would set aside his foolish belief that China’s behavior can be changed by imposing taxes on Americans. In the meantime, at least the president is starting to question the existence of Santa Claus.
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On Monday, because it was a day ending in “y,” presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) made a conspiratorial insinuation about a billionaire. Reiterating his standard stump-speech complaint that Amazon does not pay federal corporate income taxes (which is both true and incomplete—the company paid more than $1 billion in non-federal income taxes in 2018, and got to its federal zero by making the kinds of domestic investments that Congress deliberately incentivizes), the Democratic socialist then appended a just-asking-questions brain-teaser.
“I talk about that all of the time,” Sanders noted. “And then I wonder why the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why.”
Because this sophomoric shade was thrown at a prestigious media outfit rather than a politically reviled industrialist, America’s journalistic outrage-machine cranked up into high gear.
“Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor,” Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron said in a statement Monday night, “Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.” Outlets from NPR to the Poynter Institute to GeekWire noted that the senator’s crack sounded “like Trump.” The lead item in today’s CNN Reliable Sources newsletter was “Dems take aim at media.”
That clamour was in sharp contrast to the media crickets two months ago when Sanders tweeted out this equally conspiratorial garbage:
The Koch Brothers are preparing to try to buy the Democratic Party and buy the 2020 election. We cannot let them. The only way we will stop them is to build a grassroots progressive campaign that rejects their right-wing ideology.https://t.co/B0bNbLIxnR
A Nexis search of this equally fantastical claim brings up exactly one passing reference.
Bernie’s half-century political career, consistent with the progressive economic tradition he now personifies, has been one long warning against a star chamber-like cabal that seemingly controls everything except political representation in the Green Mountain State. “There is a handful of people sitting at the head of the main banks controlling the destiny of underprivileged nations, the country as well as Vermont’s economy,” he warned, nonsensically, in 1976. “The real issue,” he said in a presidential debate four decades later, “is that Congress is owned by big money.”
Harmless hyperbole, you say? Hardly. Consider that while the Veterans Administration health care system was breaking down all around him in 2014, Sanders, then chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, was affixing his ire on an alleged “concerted effort to undermine the V.A.,” led by “the Koch brothers and others.” As The New York Times would later recount, “Despite mounting evidence of trouble at the Department of Veterans Affairs, [Sanders]…initially regarded the complaints as overblown, and as a play by conservatives to weaken one of the country’s largest social welfare institutions.”
What about his oft-repeated claim that a Koch-backed group was attempting to “privatize” the V.A.? “Three Pinocchios,” declared The Washington Post‘s fact-checker.
Charles and David Koch, the latter of whom used to sit on the Reason Foundation’s Board of Trustees, are Bernie’s favored target for unhinged speculation. “Open borders?” he famously said in a 2015 Vox interview. “No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.”
Huh, so you’d think that dastardly duo might not be so fond of our restrictionist president? Nah! “Let us be clear,” Sanders said last year. “You have the Koch brothers… having enormous power over the Trump administration.” On his Senate website, he asserts that, “It is clear that the Koch brothers and other right wing billionaires are calling the shots and are pulling the strings of the Republican Party,” which he then demonstrates by…quoting at length from the 1980 Libertarian Party platform?
Anti-corporate animus is so central to Bernie’s worldview that even a statement made yesterday to distance himself from President Donald Trump’s anti-media populism contained the same dystopian media-domination fantasies that the progressive left has been peddling for decades.
“We’ve got to be careful,” Sanders replied to a questioner complaining about the media. “We have an authoritarian-type president right now who does not believe in our Constitution, who is trying to intimidate the media and so forth, and that’s not what we do…. But I think what we have to be concerned about in terms of media is that you have a small number of very, very large corporate interests who control a lot of what the people in this country see, hear and read. They have their agenda. That’s what they want.”
And concern over the “agenda” of those “very, very large corporate interests” has taken Sanders to some policy places that would seem to be at odds for his declared reverence to the Constitution. The senator’s first-ever proposed constitutional amendment was a reversal of Citizens United v. FEC, in which the Supreme Court overturned on First Amendment grounds a federal prohibition on corporate entities’ ability to broadcast political documentaries before an election.
In April last year, Sanders joined a group of senators asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate the “news activities” of the conservative local-TV conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group “to determine if it conforms to the public interest,” and if that determination was negative, terminate the company’s licenses. (The FCC wisely declined the invitation.)
Conspiratorial thinking, as Reason Books Editor Jesse Walker has continually reminded us, is neither the exclusive domain of the progressive left nor of the authoritarn right. But there are some repeated tendencies in both camps. It would be nice if journalism outfits noticed that more often when their cherished colleagues are not the target.
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On Monday, because it was a day ending in “y,” presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) made a conspiratorial insinuation about a billionaire. Reiterating his standard stump-speech complaint that Amazon does not pay federal corporate income taxes (which is both true and incomplete—the company paid more than $1 billion in non-federal income taxes in 2018, and got to its federal zero by making the kinds of domestic investments that Congress deliberately incentivizes), the Democratic socialist then appended a just-asking-questions brain-teaser.
“I talk about that all of the time,” Sanders noted. “And then I wonder why the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why.”
Because this sophomoric shade was thrown at a prestigious media outfit rather than a politically reviled industrialist, America’s journalistic outrage-machine cranked up into high gear.
“Contrary to the conspiracy theory the senator seems to favor,” Washington Post Executive Editor Marty Baron said in a statement Monday night, “Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.” Outlets from NPR to the Poynter Institute to GeekWire noted that the senator’s crack sounded “like Trump.” The lead item in today’s CNN Reliable Sources newsletter was “Dems take aim at media.”
That clamour was in sharp contrast to the media crickets two months ago when Sanders tweeted out this equally conspiratorial garbage:
The Koch Brothers are preparing to try to buy the Democratic Party and buy the 2020 election. We cannot let them. The only way we will stop them is to build a grassroots progressive campaign that rejects their right-wing ideology.https://t.co/B0bNbLIxnR
A Nexis search of this equally fantastical claim brings up exactly one passing reference.
Bernie’s half-century political career, consistent with the progressive economic tradition he now personifies, has been one long warning against a star chamber-like cabal that seemingly controls everything except political representation in the Green Mountain State. “There is a handful of people sitting at the head of the main banks controlling the destiny of underprivileged nations, the country as well as Vermont’s economy,” he warned, nonsensically, in 1976. “The real issue,” he said in a presidential debate four decades later, “is that Congress is owned by big money.”
Harmless hyperbole, you say? Hardly. Consider that while the Veterans Administration health care system was breaking down all around him in 2014, Sanders, then chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, was affixing his ire on an alleged “concerted effort to undermine the V.A.,” led by “the Koch brothers and others.” As The New York Times would later recount, “Despite mounting evidence of trouble at the Department of Veterans Affairs, [Sanders]…initially regarded the complaints as overblown, and as a play by conservatives to weaken one of the country’s largest social welfare institutions.”
What about his oft-repeated claim that a Koch-backed group was attempting to “privatize” the V.A.? “Three Pinocchios,” declared The Washington Post‘s fact-checker.
Charles and David Koch, the latter of whom used to sit on the Reason Foundation’s Board of Trustees, are Bernie’s favored target for unhinged speculation. “Open borders?” he famously said in a 2015 Vox interview. “No, that’s a Koch brothers proposal.”
Huh, so you’d think that dastardly duo might not be so fond of our restrictionist president? Nah! “Let us be clear,” Sanders said last year. “You have the Koch brothers… having enormous power over the Trump administration.” On his Senate website, he asserts that, “It is clear that the Koch brothers and other right wing billionaires are calling the shots and are pulling the strings of the Republican Party,” which he then demonstrates by…quoting at length from the 1980 Libertarian Party platform?
Anti-corporate animus is so central to Bernie’s worldview that even a statement made yesterday to distance himself from President Donald Trump’s anti-media populism contained the same dystopian media-domination fantasies that the progressive left has been peddling for decades.
“We’ve got to be careful,” Sanders replied to a questioner complaining about the media. “We have an authoritarian-type president right now who does not believe in our Constitution, who is trying to intimidate the media and so forth, and that’s not what we do…. But I think what we have to be concerned about in terms of media is that you have a small number of very, very large corporate interests who control a lot of what the people in this country see, hear and read. They have their agenda. That’s what they want.”
And concern over the “agenda” of those “very, very large corporate interests” has taken Sanders to some policy places that would seem to be at odds for his declared reverence to the Constitution. The senator’s first-ever proposed constitutional amendment was a reversal of Citizens United v. FEC, in which the Supreme Court overturned on First Amendment grounds a federal prohibition on corporate entities’ ability to broadcast political documentaries before an election.
In April last year, Sanders joined a group of senators asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to investigate the “news activities” of the conservative local-TV conglomerate Sinclair Broadcast Group “to determine if it conforms to the public interest,” and if that determination was negative, terminate the company’s licenses. (The FCC wisely declined the invitation.)
Conspiratorial thinking, as Reason Books Editor Jesse Walker has continually reminded us, is neither the exclusive domain of the progressive left nor of the authoritarn right. But there are some repeated tendencies in both camps. It would be nice if journalism outfits noticed that more often when their cherished colleagues are not the target.
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“Post-nationalists” are aiding Communist government over America…
Billionaire Tech investor Peter Thiel has warned that Google is aiding the Chinese military, and that the company needs to be investigated by the FBI and the CIA because it is manned by “globalists” who do not understand the threat to the US that China poses.
Thiel described Google’s political culture as “globalist, “post-national,” and “cosmopolitan,” adding that the company is “incredibly insular” and “incurious” about real “problems” outside of its own silicon valley bubble.
Thiel called for US intelligence agencies to get involved as Google is indirectly providing the Chinese government with cutting edge AI technology.
“The question about Chinese interest in [Google’s artificial intelligence development] is one that needs to be looked at much more carefully. That’s why I’ve argued that the FBI or the CIA should be looking at this.” Thiel noted in an interview with Fox News.
“I think it is unprecedented in the last 1000 years or ever that major U.S. company refused to work with the U.S. military and has worked with our geopolitical rivals. This is not a liberal-conservative thing. This is absolutely unprecedented.” the entrepreneur continued, referring to the fact that Google refused to bid on the Department of Defense’s $10 billion JEDI contract last year, on the grounds that working with the U.S. military could violate its “AI principles.”
“Google has a major AI research lab in China, where, even though it’s not working directly with the Chines military, in effect, all the technology gets handed on to the Chinese military.” Thiel warned, comparing the technology to the “Manhattan Project”.
“This is in black-and-white in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, as of 2017, it got amended to stress that there needs to be civil-military fusion in China, where all things need to be integrated. Anything that has civilian use must also be handed over to the People’s Liberation Army, the PLA.” he further explained.
Elsewhere during the interview, Thiel, a Trump supporter, noted that “There are many other people in Silicon Valley who support the president, but they are not going to say it.”
“And so that’s always the problem – unanimity doesn’t mean that everybody agrees. It normally just means that everybody is just too scared to speak up.” Thiel added.
Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, has previously warned that Google is aiding in the transfer of AI technology to the Chinese military in favor of America because “woke” Google employees are anti-American and prefer China to the U.S.
Calling Google’s action a “treasonous decision,” Thiel warned that “There’s probably a broad base of Google employees that are ideologically super left wing, sort of woke, and think that China’s better than the U.S. or that the U.S. is worse than China – it’s more anti-American than anything.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YWEcvT Tyler Durden
Oil prices spiked most in seven months today following the China tariff delay headlines on optimism of a deal (or easing in tensions).
“Some of the pessimism about oil demand and the trade war is being washed out of the market by these announcements,” said Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts.
API
Crude +3.7mm (-2.5mm exp)
Cushing -2.5mm – biggest draw since June 2018
Gasoline
Distillates -1.3mm
The surprise build in crude stocks last week broke a 7-week streak of draws, and analysts expected a return to draws in the latest week. However, API reported a surprise build of 3.7mm barrels. Notably, Cushing saw a 2.5mm draw – the largest since June 2018.
WTI hovered around $57 the figure, but started sliding notably ahead of the data and tumbled further on the 2nd surprise build in a row (Of course, WTI is still up on the day)…
“We still have an undecided oil market,” said Ole Sloth Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank A/S in Copenhagen.
“That may be surprising, given the renewed verbal intervention from oil producers increasingly frustrated to see that their medicine — production cuts — isn’t having the desired effect.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZamZPK Tyler Durden
This wasn’t supposed to happen. During the relative economic stability of the past few years, the middle class was supposed to experience a resurgence, but instead it has just continued to be hollowed out. The cost of living has risen much faster than wages have, and as a result hard working families all over America are being stretched financially like never before. Even though most of us are working, 59 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, and almost 50 million Americans are living in poverty. In a desperate attempt to continue their middle class lifestyles, many Americans have been piling up mountains of debt, and it has gotten to the point where we have a major crisis on our hands.
According to the New York Post, the total amount of debt that U.S. households have accumulated is about to cross the 14 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…
Meanwhile, record American household debt, near $14 trillion including mortgages and student loans, is some $1 trillion higher than during the Great Recession of 2008. Credit card debt of $1 trillion also exceeds the 2008 peak.
Americans are spending heavily, again — and often recklessly, say analysts.
This is the exact opposite of what U.S. consumers should be doing. We can see signs of a fresh economic slowdown all around us, and consumers should be feverishly trying to get out of debt as fast as they can.
But instead, debt levels just keep setting record after record. In fact, total student loan debt just hit a brand new record high of 1.605 trillion dollars, and auto loan debt just hit a brand new record high of 1.174 trillion dollars.
It would be one thing if we could handle all of this debt, but that isn’t the case. Bankruptcies have been steadily rising, and according to the latest figures the number of bankruptcy filings shot up another 5 percent in the month of July…
Bankruptcy petitions for consumers and businesses are on the rise. There was a 5% increase in total bankruptcy filings in July 2019 from the previous month, the American Bankruptcy Institute said this week. There were 64,283 bankruptcy filings, up from 62,241 for the same period last year.
Unfortunately, this is probably just the beginning.
Right now, most of the country is living on the edge financially, and so a major economic slowdown would inevitably cause another enormous tsunami of consumer bankruptcies like we saw in 2008.
“In high-cost cities like New York, personal incomes are not often enough to pay the household bills,” Zac Hall, vice president of anti-poverty programs at the Food Bank For New York City, told The Post. “We are seeing people using consumer debt as a way to make ends meet when they come here,” he added, citing the pressures his nonprofit faces to keep up the distribution of food and meals at no cost to some 1.5 million New Yorkers.
If 1.5 million people in New York are being fed by food banks now while things are still relatively stable, how bad will things be when the economy really starts to tank?
For decades, the “almighty U.S. consumer” was one of the fundamental pillars of our economy, but now that is no longer true.
U.S. consumers simply do not have a lot of discretionary income to spend these days, and this is killing major retailers all over the nation. We are on pace to absolutely shatter the all-time record for store closings in a single year, and within the past 7 days more big retailers have announced that they will be permanently shutting down stores.
Walgreens plans to close approximately 200 U.S. stores, the company announced Tuesday in an SEC filing.
According to the document posted Tuesday on the Securities and Exchange Commission website, the move to close stores follows “a review of the real estate footprint in the United States.”
That wouldn’t be happening if the U.S. economy really was “booming”.
A’Gaci, a young women’s fashion retailer based in Texas, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, for the second time, after having filed for the first time in January 2018. This time, it will liquidate. All its remaining 54 stores in seven states and Puerto Rico will be closed – the “bulk” of them by the end of this month.
Party City is increasing the number of stores expected to shutter this year.
The New Jersey-based party supplies company said it was looking to close 55 stores throughout the year, up 10 from the May estimate of 45 stores.
I honestly don’t know what malls and shopping centers all over the U.S. are going to do. I once warned of a future in which America’s landscape would be littered with abandoned stores, and that future has now arrived.
For the moment, those at the very top of the economic pyramid are still doing okay, but the middle class is eroding a little bit more with each passing day. For much more on this, I would encourage you to check out this Youtube video by Jeremiah Babe.
I have been writing about the evisceration of the U.S. middle class for a decade, and the condition of the middle class right now is as bad as I have ever seen it.
And as we plunge into this new economic downturn, things are only going to get worse. The middle class is absolutely drowning in debt, and even a mild recession would be enough to financially wipe out millions of American families.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KIpxep Tyler Durden
The ever-expanding deficit is a direct result of policy choices: the tax cuts passed by President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in 2017, followed by the spending increases called for in the bipartisan budget deals that followed. The math here is about as basic as it gets. When you reduce tax revenues on the one hand and then increase spending on the other, you increase the deficit, which measures the gap between revenues (taxes) and outlays (spending).
These policy choices have contributed to a federal budget outlook that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has repeatedly described as unsustainable—as in, we can’t keep doing this forever. We are currently on track for deficits that exceed $1 trillion starting in 2022, which is expected to equal more than 5 percent of the entire economy. Every dollar that moves through the economy will contain a deficit nickel. Since 1946, that’s only happened five times, mostly in the immediately aftermath of the Great Recession.
But we are not in a recession. In fact, by many measures, these are boom times for the economy, with unemployment rates holding historic lows. That is another reason to worry about the size and trajectory of the federal deficit. As the CBO noted in May, “during the past 50 years, in years when the unemployment rate has been below 6 percent—as it is now—deficits averaged just 1.5 percent of GDP.” Typically, when the economy looks as strong as it does now, and as strong as it has for the last several years, deficits have dropped. Instead, Congress is pushing deficits higher than ever.
At the same time, debt and deficits have almost entirely dropped off the radar as a national political issue for both parties. The leading Democratic candidates have shrugged their shoulders at rising debt, and some have even flirted with the idea that it’s not—and won’t ever really be—a problem at all. President Trump pushed for the most recent budget deal, which will add $1.7 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade, and Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) presided over a vote to pass it in the Senate. When Trump was warned by staffers that the current budget trajectory risked a budget crisis, he reportedly shrugged it off, saying, “Yeah, I won’t be here.” No one wants to talk about rising debt and deficits, or do much of anything to reverse course.
Doing so would also be a matter of simple math and policy choices. As CBO dryly noted in a late 2018 report on reducing debt and deficits, “to put the federal budget on a sustainable long-term path, lawmakers would need to make significant policy changes—allowing revenues to rise more than they would under current law, reducing spending for large benefit programs to amounts below those currently projected, or adopting some combination of those approaches.”
Just as increasing the deficit is a product of reducing revenues and increasing spending, reducing the deficit can only be accomplished by doing the reverse—taxing more and/or spending less. Given the broad political resistance to increasing middle class taxes, and the prominence of mandatory spending programs such as Social Security and Medicare in the federal spending schema, that almost certainly means an emphasis on the latter, perhaps with a dose of the former—which just happens to be the historical formula for reducing budget deficits. Until that happens, expect the deficit doom headlines to continue.
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