Last month China’s military predictably slammed Washington’s recent approval to send $2.2 billion in arms to Taiwan, and now there’s an administration push supported by Republicans in the Senate to “move quickly” on a proposed $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan at a moment when the next round of US-China trade negotiations hangs in the balance, as The Washington Post reports:
The Trump administration is moving ahead with for an $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan despite strong objections from China, a U.S. official and others familiar with the deal said Thursday.
Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz on Friday urged Congress to move quickly with the sale given China “seeks to extend its authoritarian reach” over the region.
Image source: Stars and Stripes
This despite Beijing condemning any and all further weapons sales to Taiwan, which it maintains historic claims over, and taking the further significant step of threatening sanction on any US companies involved in such weapons deals.
The New York Times on Friday also confirmed the proposed F-16 plan, based on State Department statements:
The State Department told Congress Thursday night, right after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had signed a memo approving the sale, officials said. Congress is not expected to object to the move. For weeks, lawmakers from both parties had accused the administration of delaying the sale to avoid jeopardizing trade negotiations or to use it as a bargaining chip.
Texas senator Cruz said it is critical “now more than ever” for Taiwan’s defense capabilities to be significantly increased amid threats from China.
China this summer indicated it stands “ready to go to war” if people “try to split Taiwan from the country”— this after the US approved sales of tanks and Stinger missiles to Taiwan in July. Beijing authorities also said the US and breakaway Taiwan were “playing with fire” due to their growing military ties, which the US by treaty is obligated to honor.
The proposed major addition to Taiwan’s current ageing fleet of F-16s comes after prior Chinese media reports last March said Taipei requested from the US a fleet of 66 Lockheed Martin F-16V fighter jets.
This also corresponds to Taiwan on Thursday unveiling its largest defense spending increase in over a decade, to T$411.3 billion ($13.11 billion.), according to Reuters.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YRvpMm Tyler Durden
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s June 27 interview with the Financial Times newspaper in London stating that liberal internationalism is now toxic and dying unleashed a totally predictable wave of outrage across the West. But Putin knew what he was doing and saying and of course he was absolutely right.
The Russian president has been unique among 21st global leaders not just for taking a long view of events – most politicians in power for more than a few months imagine they are doing that. But Putin has always known very clearly where he is in the great continuum of Russian history.
Putin has continually sought peaceful cooperation, partnership and good relations with the West – and almost always been rebuffed except when the West desperately needed Russia’s help. But above all, he has sought to preserve and revive traditional Russian values and create a stable, prosperous and growing society.
After 20 years in power, Putin along with his deputy and longtime right hand man Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has made an astonishing amount of progress to roll back the horrific moral, demographic, environmental and psychological damage inflicted by three quarters of a century of communism. Yet the task remains monumental.
Above all, Putin, like so many other Russia’s remembers and embraces Dostoyevsky’s insight that the communist nightmare grew out of Western liberalism, unleashed and unrestrained. And he sees clearly that since the collapse of communism and the end of the Cold War in 1989-91, international liberalism with its unyielding demands of total free trade and total, open borders, pop and population movements has unleashed a new dark age of chaos on suffering humanity.
The pathologies of international human trafficking, trading of millions of young children in sex rings around the world and the chaos caused by currency manipulations and crashing economies have ne ow reached levels unimagined even at the end of the 20th century.
The “future,” Putin realizes, lies with strong, coherent nation states like Russia, China and others reclaiming power and control into their own hands and seeking to cooperate constructively with each other.
The Western delusions of unlimited Free Trade and Open Borders have come to only unleash chaos, poverty, needless wars and the destruction of advanced societies ‘ safety and stability by unlimited and unregulated migration flows. Only drug traffickers, human slavers and terrorists can truly flourish in such a world – and indeed they have.
There was a profound deep irony, Putin, with his deep sense of humor clearly relished, in saying such things to the Financial Times. Along with the Wall Street Journal in New York City, it is one of the two great media pillars of the liberal big business unregulated creed – embodied throughout the 19th century by the arch-hypocrite William Ewart Gladstone.
Gladstone, founder and leader of the famous British Liberal Party and revered as “the People’s William” was the heir to an enormous fortune [worth billions in 21st century terms] made by his father John Gladstone, one of the biggest slave traders in the Port city of Liverpool. And Gladstone himself in the 1860s sought to encourage the victory and survival of the slave holding Confederacy in the US Civil War.
Also, the United Kingdom, the home of modern secular enlightenment liberalism from whence it spread across the United States is now quite literally disintegrating in its conflict with the also deeply-troubled European Union. Putin therefore could not have chosen a more fitting and ironic media platform on which to pronounce secular liberalism’s doom: And he knew it.
Putiun also clearly sees that Dostoyevsky was right in his deepest, darkest reach of prophetic vision. For liberalism prospered and spread for hundreds opf years claiming to spread tolerence, respect diversity and cherish truth. Yet today across the West its adherents reign supreme over colossal media conglomerates and Deep State enormous bureaucracies that routinely bury and squash all truths, skepticism, alternate views and arguments inconvenient and threatening to them.
The historical evidence, overwhelming in reality that nations flourish and grow rapidly in prosperity when their industries and agriculture are preserved from unfair and manipulated foreign competition is simply not taught across the West: It has been smothered into extinction.
The history of President Bill Clinton’s fateful 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is evident to all: Far from bringing prosperity to the United States and Mexico, it has unleashed a new dark age of crime, drugs, criminal exploitation, teen gang terrors and civil war on both those suffering nations.
Yet when rare individuals rise up like Putin or US President Donald Trump and state these obvious realities, they are immediately subjected to waves of hysterical hatred.
The Big Lie nightmares predicted so clearly by Yevgeny Zamyatin and George Orwell flourish more boldly than ever – but in London, Washington and New York, not in Moscow or Beijing.
Yet the Big Lie is dying on its feet: It has delivered suffering, misery, uncertainty and even terror to the subject populations on whom its devotees have imposed their creeds, regardless of the clearly expressed democratic will. Throughout the Western world and, for that matter in Japan and India, populist, national leaders have emerged who are seeking to defy the suicidal principles of open borders, unlimited trade and immigration flows that the supra-national institutions of the past 75 years are trying to impose upon them.
These leaders are not trying to through the world into some new dark age of chaos and war: They are on the contrary doing their utmost to prevent it.
Putin is not alone in the world: He speaks for this great and emerging new constructive consensus. But the forces of darkness and chaos, posing, as the New Testament warned us, as messengers of light remain determined to re-impose their lies.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30dn02y Tyler Durden
China continues to play a large part in preventing Trump’s desire to take Iran’s crude exports down to zero, despite a noticeable drop on its Iran oil imports over the summer after the end of the US waiver program; however, more evidence has emerged that the sanctions evasion continues. A Chinese owned tanker believed carrying about 2 million barrels of oil has been caught ‘ghosting’ according to ship tracking data:
While in the Indian Ocean heading toward the Strait of Malacca, the very large crude carrier (VLCC) Pacific Bravo went dark on June 5, shutting off the transponder that signals its position and direction to other ships, ship-tracking data showed.
Reuters says an American official has put ports in Asia on notice, warning them not to allow the Pacific Bravo to dock in violation of US sanctions.
Illustrative image via Economic Times
Besides ‘ghosting’ — a common tactic used in Iran sanctions busting — the tanker also appears to have tried concealing its identity with a name change, on July 18 suddenly presenting on global trackers as the VLCC Latin Ventura and appearing off Port Dickson, Malaysia.
Tracking data shows this was nearly 1000 miles from where the Pacific Bravo had last been signalling. Reuters describes the gambit was easily uncovered, with US authorities accusing the ship of evading sanctions:
But both the Latin Venture and the Pacific Bravo transmitted the same unique identification number, IMO9206035, issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), according to data from information provider Refinitiv and VesselsValue, a company that tracks ships and vessel transactions…
Since IMO numbers remain with a ship for life, this indicated the Latin Venture and the Pacific Bravo were the same vessel and suggested the owner was trying to evade Iranian oil sanctions.
The investigation found the super tanker is owned by Kunlun Holdings, a company based in Shanghai, also with offices in Singapore, which didn’t comment for the report.
Source: VesselsValue via Reuters
However, the valuable Iranian crude cargo, with an estimated worth of about $120 million at current prices, does appear to have been offloaded at an unknown location in Asia.
When under the name Pacific Bravo, the ship’s transmission data showed it’s tanks were full, but as Reuters reports, the moment it “reappeared 42 days later as the Latin Venture, it was empty, according to Refinitiv and VesselsValue data.”
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When the December 2018 Cass Shipments Index was negative for the first time in 24 months, we dismissed the decline as reflective of a tough comparison. In January and February 2019, we again made rationalizations. When March was also negative (-1.0%), we warned that we were preparing to “change tack” in our outlook; when April was down (-3.2%), we said, “we see material and growing downside risk to the economic outlook.”
With the -5.9% drop in July, following the -5.3% drop in June, and the -6.0% drop in May, we repeat our message from last two months: the shipments index has gone from “warning of a potential slowdown” to “signaling an economic contraction.”
We acknowledge that: all of these negative percentages are against extremely tough comparisons; and the Cass Shipments Index has gone negative before without being followed by a negative GDP. However, weakness in demand is now being seen across many modes of transportation, both domestically and internationally.
Although the initial Q2 ’19 GDP was positive, it was not as positive upon dissection, and we see a growing risk that GDP will go negative by year’s end.
The weakness in spot market pricing for many transportation services, especially trucking, is consistent with the negative Cass Shipments Index and, along with airfreight and railroad volume data, strengthens our concerns about the economy and the risk of ongoing trade policy disputes. Weakness in commodity prices, and the decline in interest rates, have joined the chorus of signals calling for an economic contraction.
European Airfreight vs EuroZone PMI
European airfreight volumes have been negative since March 2018, but only by small single-digit margins (-1% to -3%), until November 2018. Unfortunately, since then, volumes have started to further deteriorate. Our European Airfreight Index was down a concerning -7.2% in April, only down -2.6% in May, before dropping -7.5% in June. Our preliminary July index is only down -3.4%, and consistent with the deteriorating Eurozone PMI. While the -6.9% July overall drop in London airfreight volume suggests that economic headwinds from Brexit remain, particularly since the largest rates of decline (down -11% to -25%) are being experienced in the lanes between (to and from) London and other EU airports. Although the European data is by itself distressing, it’s the Asian data that has become the most alarming.
Asia Pacific Airfreight
Asian airfreight volumes were essentially flat from June to October 2018, but have since deteriorated at an accelerating pace (November -3.5%, December -6.1%, January –5.4%, February -13.2%, March -3.6%, -10.2% in April, -8.5% in May, -8.6% in June, and preliminary July -7.9%).
Shanghai Airfreight
The volumes of the three largest airports (Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Incheon)
Shanghai Airfreight Inbound vs Outbound Tonnage
The inbound volumes for Shanghai have plummeted. This concerns us since it is the inbound shipment of high value/low density parts and pieces that are assembled into the high-value tech devices that are shipped to the rest of the world.
Hence, in markets such as Shanghai, the inbound volumes predict the outbound volumes and the strength of the high-tech manufacturing economy.
With the current level of civil unrest, leading to Hong Kong airport flight delays and cancellations, we can’t imagine that August data will be anything but worse.
Cass Shipments Index vs GDP
At first glance, the GDP for the 1st and 2nd quarter seems very inconsistent with overall freight volumes. Using the Cass Shipments Index as a predictive proxy, we did not expect the BEA to report 3.2% as its initial estimate or 3.1% as its revision in Q1 or 2.1% in Q2. As we have already explained, dissecting the contributing factors explains much of the disparity, and should point out that freight flows are a leading indicator. It often takes two to three quarters for the trends in freight to become reported economic statistics.
Although we also subdivide the economy via multiple other data feeds that represent smaller segments of freight flows, the Cass Freight Shipments and Expenditures Indexes are two of the strongest proxies for what is happening in the overall U.S. freight markets, and as a result they are strong predictive indicators for the U.S. economy.
Negative GDP in 2019
Based on all three months of data for Q2, the Cass Shipments Index is signaling that GDP may be negative, or at least come close to being negative, in Q3. If it does not, since reported GDP often lags the economic activity represented by freight flows, continued weakness in the Cass Shipments Index at the current magnitude should result in a negative Q4 GDP.
Industrial Production Supports Cass View
The Cass report is consistent with the today’s Industrial Production report and the Global Manufacturing recession already underway.
It was dormant for more than 20 years, exhibiting very little fluctuations in light. Then one day, it woke up, baffling astronomers around the world.
A supermassive black hole in the center of the Milky Way called Sagittarius A* has just started flashing 75 times brighter than it has ever been seen before, following a two-decade ‘quiet’ period, RT reports.
UCLA Astronomer Tuan Do and his team observed the transformation of the black hole using the WM Keck Observatory in Hawaii over four nights.
The team observed a bizarre flash on May 13, and captured it in a two-hour time-lapse that condensed the phenomenon down to just a few seconds.
Check it out below:
Here’s a timelapse of images over 2.5 hr from May from @keckobservatory of the supermassive black hole Sgr A*. The black hole is always variable, but this was the brightest we’ve seen in the infrared so far. It was probably even brighter before we started observing that night! pic.twitter.com/MwXioZ7twV
As Do explained, the footage above begins with Sagittarius at its brightest, or at least the brightest point that the team saw and recorded.
Astronomers from all over the world are now scrambling to collect data and figure out exactly what caused the phenomenon.
So far, there are several theories.
“Maybe more gas is falling into the black hole and that leads to higher amounts of accretion, which leads to it being brighter,” Do told a science publication.
There’s also the possibility that the black hole consumed a nearby gas cloud that had been documented nearby in 2014.
But at least five powerful research telescopes will continue to observe the black hole for as long as it’s visible.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33GO0cE Tyler Durden
A superbug, first discovered in a hospital, is evolving to thrive on the sugar-rich diets common in the United States. Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) is a bacterium that can cause a nasty spell of diarrhea and colitis for those unlucky enough to be infected by the superbug.
According to IFLScience, researchers analyzing the genomes of various strains in Nature Genetics have discovered it is a millennia-long process of evolution that will see it separate into two different species. One of those species is particularly adept at evading hospital disinfectants and thrives on a sugar-rich Western diet.
“This largest ever collection and analysis of C. difficile whole genomes, from 33 countries worldwide, gives us a whole new understanding of bacterial evolution,” author Brendan Wren, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Medicine, said in a statement.
“It reveals the importance of genomic surveillance of bacteria. Ultimately, this could help understand how other dangerous pathogens evolve by adapting to changes in human lifestyles and healthcare regimes which could then inform healthcare policies.”
In a healthy person, “good” gut bacteria will fend off the bad superbug while antibiotics extinguish the “good” gut bacteria, leaving the patient vulnerable to infection. Because of this, the bug is frequently found in hospital settings. C. difficile clade A)accounts for roughly 70 percent of the samples collected from hospital patients.
Noticing that it showed differences in genes associated with the metabolization of simple sugars, they monitored its effects in mice. Those given a sugar-rich diet appeared to provide a better host for the bacteria – it seemed to flourish in guts exposed to a high-sugar Western diet.
The team was able to calculate when this species of the C. difficile bacterium first appeared using dating analysis, pinpointing its origin to a time approximately 76,000 years ago. Yet, it was towards the end of the 16th century that things really began to take off, with the number of different strains of C. difficile clade Astarting to increase. –IFLScience
According to the study’s authors, this is the largest genomic study of C. difficile and shows that it is evolving in response to human behavior. “This particular bacteria was primed to take advantage of modern healthcare practices and human diets before hospitals even existed,” explained joint first author Nitin Kumar from the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
“Our study provides genome and laboratory-based evidence that human lifestyles can drive bacteria to form new species so they can spread more effectively,” saidsenior author Trevor Lawley from the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
This means focusing on one’s diet an improving the quality of food eaten could help stave off dangerous and potentially deadly superbugs like C. difficile.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2P2QD5s Tyler Durden
Apparently the month long saga of the Grace-1 is not at all over, and may now seriously escalate even after it was set free from custody. Just as the Iranian supertanker was released from custody off Gibraltar and is preparing to make its way into the Mediterranean, a seizure warrant filed by the US Department of Justice was unsealed in a US district court late Friday.
Documents allege “a scheme to unlawfully access the U.S. financial system to support illicit shipments to Syria from Iran by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,” the DoJ said in a statement.
The seizure warrant and forfeiture complaint alleges the now Iranian-flagged tanker along with its over two million barrels of oil aboard it and $995,000 “are subject to forfeiture,” citing terrorism forfeiture statutes, and bank fraud and money laundering.
The Grace-1, now renamed by Iran the Adrian Darya. Image source: Reuters
“The scheme involves multiple parties affiliated with the IRGC and furthered by the deceptive voyages of the Grace 1,” US Attorney for the District of Columbia Jessie Liu said in a press release. “A network of front companies allegedly laundered millions of dollars in support of such shipments.”
The warrant is addressed to “the United States Marshal’s Service and/or any other duly authorized law enforcement officer.”
According to Reuters, the Grace 1 – now renamed the Adrian Darya after Iran began flying its flag over the previously Panamanian-flagged tanker – may not have made it far though it was filmed moving on Friday. “The tanker shifted its position on Friday, but its anchor was still down off Gibraltar and it was unclear if it was ready to set sail soon,” the report said.
Given that no doubt the US warrant means leaders in Tehran will be livid, and now with the possibility that American military assets could potentially make a move to actually board the vessel or perhaps even block its as yet unknown route, this puts the fate of the UK-flagged Stena Impero — still under IRGC control — in jeopardy.
A message to all mariners – if you crew an IRGC or other FTO-affiliated ship, you jeopardize future entry to the U.S. #NotWorthIthttps://t.co/v4bqu5SGSu
It’s expected that Iran will release the detained Stena Impero in a tit-for-tat gesture, as Tehran had initially expressed a desire for, possibly at some point this weekend. The US warrant will definitely delay this and quash any level of good faith signalling between Iran and the UK.
What’s more is it looks like the US is ready to pursue sanctions busting consequences to the max, down to ship owners and crew: “A message to all mariners – if you crew an IRGC or other FTO-affiliated ship, you jeopardize future entry to the U.S.,” Secretary Mike Pompeo said in a tweet Friday.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31JxV4a Tyler Durden
While searching for evidence the American economy is deteriorating, more or less, observing consumer trends, it appears that some are starting to pull back on travel.
A new report from the Bermuda Tourism Authority (BTA), first reported by The Royal Gazette, shows US air visitor arrivals slipped 5% YoY in 1H19, with the sharpest declines from millennials and arrivals from New York airports.
If you’ve ever been to Bermuda and or any country in the Caribbean, most economies are entirely based on tourism from the US, Canada, and Europe. So monitoring the tourism industry in these countries serves as alternative data on the health of consumers from developed economies.
BTA said while air travel from the US fell at an alarming rate, spending among tourist rose 7% more per person in 1H19.
Kevin Dallas, the chief executive of BTA, said: “In the hospitality business, visitor spending is a metric most closely tied to profitability.”
“We’re very pleased to see economic growth in the first half of the year. However, we remain concerned airlift challenges will continue to negatively affect air arrivals in 2019.”
“We raised this red flag at the start of the year, and since then, our team has closed the deal on big-brand event partnerships, including the US Open and the PGA Tour’s inaugural Bermuda Championship. These are purposeful steps that can help us offset the constraints on airlift.”
BTA figures show the number of air visitor arrivals declined from 66,604 to 64,175 in 2Q19, with the most significant loss in the millennial age bracket [25 to 24].
In the first six months of the year, total air visitor arrivals declined from 92,920 to 88,263, a 5% drop YoY.
The decline rippled through the tourism industry on the British island territory in the North Atlantic Ocean, sending the hotel occupancy rate down 4.4% in 1H19.
Air visitors who vacationed in Bermuda between April and June, spent a total of 2.4% more, $98.5 million compared with $96.2 million in the same period last year, an increase of $2.3 million.
For the 1H19, air visitors spent a total of $132 million.
Dallas explained: “After twelve consecutive quarters of leisure air arrival growth dating back to January 2016, the sharp increases Bermuda experienced over the past three years are leveling off.”
The deterioration in air visitors was also blamed on a drop in the number of seats available by airliners from New York to Bermuda in 1H19.
A BTA spokeswoman said: “At the BTA’s Outlook Forum back in February, officials warned that while 2018 leisure air arrival numbers had reached a 16-year high and third consecutive year of growth, business and visiting friends and relatives travel had declined sharply — down more than 30% since 2007.
However, baby boomers traveling by cruise ship was up 15% YoY in 1H19, up from 201,179 to 231,495 — 30,316 people. The increase was able to push total visits in 1H19 to 319,758, which was 25,659 people more than the same period last year.
While millennial travelers from New York airports scaled back their travels to Bermuda, baby boomers, on the other hand, are living the high life on cruise ships that eventually dock in the small island country.
We will continue to monitor tourism trends in Bermuda and countries in the Caribbean to see, if that in fact, American consumers are pulling back on their travels, which would only occur on the onset of a recession.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2z7uhoF Tyler Durden
All of a sudden, it seems like the mainstream media just can’t stop talking about “the coming recession”.
If you go to Google News and type in the word “recession”, you will literally get dozens of articles from the last couple of days with “recession” in the headline. And of course it is true that there are signs of global economic trouble all around us, and I have been documenting them on my website all throughout 2019. So we don’t want to criticize the mainstream media when they actually decide to tell the truth, because a recession is definitely coming, but could it be possible that there is also a hidden political agenda at work?
The economy is generally regarded to be one of the bright spots for President Trump, and political operatives on the left clearly understand that a major economic downturn now would spell almost certain doom for Trump’s chances of winning the 2020 election. And when mainstream reporters talk about the possibility of a recession as we approach the next election, many of them almost seem gleeful as they describe how it could hurt Trump politically. Ultimately, when things start to really get bad it is inevitable that the mainstream media will place the blame directly at the feet of Trump. It is easy to imagine a narrative along the lines of “Trump’s handling of the economy has plunged the nation into a recession” being relentlessly pounded into the heads of American voters over the next year. And if the end result is Trump being voted out of office, more than 90 percent of those that work for the big news companies will be just fine with that.
This week, we have seen an absolute explosion in the number of stories about the possibility of an imminent recession. The following are just a few of the stories I came across while doing research earlier today…
Of course many of these stories were sparked by a major event that we just witnessed on Wall Street. The following comes from Fox Business…
The yield curve is blaring a recession warning.
The spread between the U.S. 2-year and 10-year yields on Wednesday turned negative for the first time since 2007. Such a development has occurred ahead of each and every U.S. recession of the last 50 years, sometimes leading by as much as 24 months.
Yes, it is possible that the yield curve could be wrong this time, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
And the economic news that is coming in from all over the world just continues to confirm that conditions are deteriorating. On Thursday, we learned that U.S. manufacturing has slumped back into contraction territory, and earlier this week we got some really troubling news from Germany and China…
Germany – Europe’s largest economy – reported that its gross domestic product, a measure of an economy’s health, went negative in the second quarter.
In China, the country’s industrial output in July hit a 17-year low, Detrick said. Retail sales and investment in real estate and other fixed assets weakened, an indication the world’s second-biggest economy is feeling pressure.
So it isn’t as if the mainstream media is being dishonest with us in this case. Global economic activity is most definitely slowing down, and many believe that things will get much worse during the second half of this year.
And a global economic slowdown would be terrible news for the Trump campaign, because their entire narrative depends on President Trump making the economy great again. A substantial percentage of American voters are convinced that since he is a billionaire, Trump must really understand the economy very well. And according to a CNN poll from earlier this year, the performance of the economy is one of the main reasons for his current level of support…
Right now, the main reason voters approve of Trump’s job performance is the economy. A CNN poll from late Mayfound that 26% of those who approve of Trump’s job performance said it was mainly because of the economy. That was more than double the next most commonly given answer. Additionally, 8% said jobs/unemployment was the main reason for why they approved of Trump. Among those who disapproved, few said anything related to the economy was the main reason why they disapproved of Trump. For example, only 1% said the Trump tax cuts.
But if the U.S. economy plunges into a painful recession, the game completely changes.
For those on the left that would like to see Trump voted out in 2020, the timing of the next recession will be key. If the next recession doesn’t begin until the second half of 2020, there may not be enough economic pain before November to swing the election in the favor of the Democratic candidate. So what the left really needs is for a recession to begin during the second half of 2019 or the first half of 2020 so that Americans are really suffering by the time election day rolls around.
I know that is a very sick way to think, but these are the sorts of conversations that these people actually have. For example, on his own television show Bill Maher publicly stated that a recession would be “worth it” if Trump is voted out in 2020. As we approach the next election, many on the left will be so desperate to see Trump gone that they will be willing to pay just about any price to see that happen.
And to be honest, the U.S. economy is definitely way overdue for a major downturn, and so it is only prudent to get prepared for rough times ahead. At this point, even USA Today is providing us with “recession survival tips”…
Do you really need that bundle package from your cable provider, or to pay a gardener to mow your lawn every week? Now might be a good time to figure out what’s an essential expense, and what you can let go.
“Review the family budget to see what could be reduced or cut if there was a sudden drop in monthly income,” says Richard Fleming, a certified financial planner based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “Be prepared to make those reductions (or) cuts as soon as it becomes necessary.”
That is actually really good advice.
Now is a time to cut costs, get out of debt and build up your emergency fund.
The coming year promises to be quite chaotic, and those that hate President Trump are likely to pull out all the stops in an all-out attempt to get him voted out in 2020.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HoSsDJ Tyler Durden
While the Class 8 heavy duty truck industry has been mired in recession and dragged down by a bloated backlog since 2018, the used truck market hasn’t seen the same collapse yet.
But the key word there, according to several experts, is yet. Brian Cota, vice president of national accounts at Daimler and Steve Tam, a vice president at ACT Research gave presentations that showed the used truck market under pressure and predicted that things could get worse.
Tam “presented a slide showing ACT Research’s most recent data on used Class 8 sales in June, showing an average price that month 2 percent higher than in May and 6 percent more than June 2018,” according to FreightWaves.
He also noted that “year-to-date, prices are up 10 percent. That is occurring against a backdrop of average miles on a used Class 8 truck flat to down 2 percent from used truck sales in earlier periods.”
Tam also shared a chart of the average sale price of a Class 8 used truck. Last year, these prices year-over-year were rising more than 15%. And although there was a solid increase in 2018 used truck demand he said that price increases would be flat to down 5% in 2020.
One silver lining has been the quality of the used vehicles coming to market. Cota said:
“The vehicles being traded out today are all good trucks. They are very reliable and fuel-efficient. They are highly desirable trucks.”
Earlier this month we noted that Class 8 orders for July had crashed 81% to their lowest monthly total since 2010. The industry booked 10,200 units in July, an astonishing 81% year over year fall, according to ACT Research.
This is also down 21% from June and marks the lowest monthly order tally since February 2010. Net trailer orders also continued to plunge, according to data released several weeks ago.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KBFJiI Tyler Durden
