Month: August 2023

Authored by Frank Fang via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former President Donald Trump questioned why he would want to take part in the Republican Party’s first primary debate, saying it could be “foolish” doing so given his sizable leads in polls over other presidential hopefuls.

Amazon is taking more strides in the world of grocery, launching the biggest overhaul of that part of its business since it bought Whole Foods. The details of its new overhaul, reported on by Bloomberg this week, include “revamping stores, testing new highly automated warehouses and, for the first time, offering fresh-food delivery to customers who aren’t Prime subscribers.”

The new initiatives will be put into place in coming weeks and months, the report says, with the intention of widening Amazon’s footprint in grocery. 

On August 2, the company is going to invite people who are not Prime members to use online grocery ordering. Boston, Dallas and San Francisco will be among 12 cities where the program pilots. Fees will be $7.95 to $13.95, about $4 more than what Prime members pay. 

Former Tesco executive Tony Hoggett, senior vice president for worldwide grocery stores, is leading the charge for Amazon, which hopes to make up ground on names like Kroger and Costco in grocery. Hoggett told Bloomberg: “We’re serious about grocery. Our plan is on building this really strong grocery relationship with customers over time.”

The company will also look to stock Whole Foods items in Amazon warehouses, so customers won’t have to navigate more than one online checkout to get their groceries. “We recognize that still needs to be improved,” Hoggett added. 

Brick and mortar Fresh stores will now sport Krispy Kreme stands near the door and will add 1,500 items to what had previously been limited inventory. Peter Abraham, a marketer in Los Angeles, told Bloomberg that Amazon’s Fresh stores “feels soulless”. 

“There were bells and whistles when they opened that look better in theory than reality. The new group says, ‘People like coffee and doughnuts, we need coffee and doughnuts.’ This is the new guard. These people aren’t technology people,” David Bishop, a partner with Brick Meets Click, a grocery and retail consultant, said. 

Hoggett is concentrating on perfecting Amazon’s retail presence in a few select markets, instead of aggressive expansion, stating: “All the look and feel and design is very different to our existing Fresh stores. Customers respond to a bit more of a bright and airy and light experience.”

As Bloomberg notes, margins have always been a struggle: “Amazon required a grocery order of about $115 to break even in 2010, on average. A decade later that break-even point was still $90 to $100.”

Amazon needs more physical stores to add to its Whole Foods stores in order to help the razor thin margins that come with the grocery business. It has about 530 Whole Foods stores and was going to add “hundreds more” before Andy Jassy stopped spending and the company shuttered more than 60 locations last year. 

The company is also adding “Dash Carts” which identify items placed into a cart and run a tally of prices for the customer. They will make it easier for customers to “just walk out” as a means of checking out, and they will be billed automatically. 

“The customers that enjoy Just Walk Out in the Fresh stores, they really love it. But we also recognize that it’s so new for many, many customers. The whole point for us is everybody’s welcome in our stores,” Hoggett concluded. 

Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

In a remarkable and rare instance of broadcasting, CNN told the truth about Joe Biden’s pathetic poll numbers and horrible chances of reelection.

CNN Analyst Harry Enten pointed out that more people at this point trust Congressional Republicans that they do Biden on the most significant issues, calling it a “very worrying sign” for his chances of a second term.

CNN POLL: “More people actually trust congressional Republicans than President Biden on the most important issues of the day.” pic.twitter.com/GbwgkL4r6P

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 3, 2023

Enten also noted that Biden’s approval on the economy hasn’t improved no matter how many times he claims his strategy is working:

“Biden’s overall approval rating, and his approval rating on the economy, really hasn’t gotten much better,” says CNN’s Harry Enten.

“Inflation, yes, it’s down compared to a year ago — but compared to two years ago, it’s still WAY UP.” pic.twitter.com/EnZ3qkV2vw

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 3, 2023

“If you look at Joe Biden’s approval on the economy right now, IT STINKS!” Enten declared.

Biden has just a 37 percent approval rating on the economy.

CNN: “If you look at Joe Biden’s approval on the economy right now, IT STINKS” pic.twitter.com/N8cmOZeo26

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 3, 2023

The analyst then noted that Donald Trump was so hated by leftists at this point in his presidency, that his approval was driven down, but it is still higher than Joe Biden’s:

CNN: “We always said Donald Trump had such a low approval rating, right? But if you look, what you see is that Donald Trump’s approval rating was actually slightly larger than Joe Biden’s was at this point.” pic.twitter.com/UscJVY3cXN

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) August 3, 2023

Enten recently noted that “Trump is not only in a historically strong position for a nonincumbent to win the Republican nomination, but he is in a better position to win the general election than at any point during the 2020 cycle and almost at any point during the 2016 cycle.”

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While the prevailing post-payrolls narrative has focused on the divergence between the soggy headline payrolls print (which at 187K not only missed expectations for a second consecutive month, but was the lowest number since Dec 2020), and the stronger than expected hourly earnings (which beat expectations only because hours worked dropped again to 34.3, a level last seen in the pre-covid days) and the drop in unemployment rate (which brings us even further from the Fed’s year-end dot plot target of 4.1%, a closer look at the details of today’s jobs report reveals just how ugly the reality behind the the Budget-Busting Bidenomics truly is.

Let’s start with revisions.

Regular readers are aware that earlier this year we spotted a peculiar trend when it comes to economic data releases by the Biden admin which  – without fail – had been revised lower…

US jobless claims mysteriously surge upon “data” revision

US jobs mysteriously revised sharply lower upon “data” revision

Europe mysteriously enters recession upon “data” revision

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 8, 2023

Take a wild guess in which direction the May 339K NFP print was revised

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 7, 2023

Payrolls for every month in 2023 have been revised lower. pic.twitter.com/VwfUvBJnCe

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) July 7, 2023

… and this month was no different. In fact, as shown in the chart below, the jobs print from every single month has been revised lower! Why? So that the White House can take credit for a strong number (one which also sparks algorithmic buying in the market) only to quietly revise it lower one and two months later when nobody is looking.

But that’s just the start. Next we turn to the numbers behind the headline job prints which were actually not that terrible: the monthly nonfarm payrolls (from the Establishment Survey( may have been weak at 187K but the far more accurate Household Survey showed that the number of Employed workers actually increased by 268K to 161.3 million, the second month in a row the Household Survey bested the Establishment.

So far so good. There are just two problems with this number. First, the Birth-Death (B-D) model, which is integrated into the BLS’ Current Employment Statistics (CES) release, which contains the NFPs and which serves as one of the core “tweak” layers which the BLS uses to adjust the actual, raw underlying jobs number and goalseek a desired jobs number.  It will not come as a surprise to many that in July, the Birth Death adjustment hit the second highest of 2023 at 280K. In other words, most if not all job “gains” were as a result of the BLS assuming that newly “birthed” “businesses created at least 280K new jobs, a number which is not based at all on observable facts but is a regression to some historical trendline which only the BLS is privy to.

Unfortunately, it gets much worse, because while the Establishment Survey only looks at jobs quantitatively, the Household Survey (which again was stronger this month) also looks at the quality of jobs gained or lost, and specifically it breaks down the jobs into full-time and part-time jobs (Source: Table A-9).

Well, one look at this month’s adjustment and it’s literally a shocker: you will not hear anyone from the Biden admin or associated economist cheerleaders mention this, but the BLS reported that in July the number of full-time jobs plunged by 585,000 to 134.274 million, the biggest monthly drop since record covid crash of 14.7 million jobs!

But if full-time jobs crashed how did the BLS get an increase of almost 300,000 employed workers? Simple: it was all in the surge of part-time workers. In July, the number of part-timers exploded by almost one million – 972K to be precise –  to 27.153 million.

Finally, going back to a quantitative read of the data, we look at the number of multiple jobholders – those workers who have to work more than one job at a time to make ends meet. In July, that number surged by 118K, and at 8.113 million was just shy of the pre-covid record hit in July 2019.

Putting it all together, if one believes the headlines, in July the US added 187K payrolls, and the number of employed workers rose by 268K. However, taking a closer look at the composition we find that in July, the number of well-paid, full-time workers collapsed by a near record 585K, offset by a 972K surge in part-time workers. As for the balance, it was the 118K people who discovered last month that to keep up with the economic miracle that is bidenomics, they need to work at least one more job.

In short: July was a catastrophic month for the jobs market, which is why we expect the usual theater: non-stop spin and lies from the Biden admin, and not a single relevant question from the liberal media whose job is not to educate or inform, but to carry water, spread lies and enable propaganda.

EV company Fisker lowered its production guidance for the second time this year on Friday morning, and reported a Q2 loss than beat the street’s expectations while missing production targets.

Despite this, the company is starting to finally consistently produce vehicles, though not at the clip it hoped. The company aimed to produce 1,400 to 1,700 vehicles in the quarter, but was only able to crank out 1,022 units, which CNBC notes the company blamed on supply chain challenges. The same challenges, the report says, led to the company cutting its production forecast for the year. 

The company had previously expected 32,000 to 36,000 Ocean vehicles to be built by its partner Magna in Australia, but Fisker now estimates they will make just 20,000 to 23,000 for the year. 

While the company’s loss of $0.25 per share beat the street’s expectations, it posted a paltry $825,000 in revenue for the quarter. A year ago the company posted a loss of $0.36 per share and revenue of $10,000 for the quarter. 

Also alarming is the fact that Fisker did not update shareholders on the number of reservations it had for its Ocean vehicle. This number was disclosed as 65,000 in May when the company reported Q1. Generally, companies only remove reporting metrics from filings and announcements for one reason: the numbers may not have the shine people expect them to. 

CNBC noted that the company is still trying to get new models off the ground:

“Fisker at an event in California on Thursday presented three upcoming battery-electric models: The Pear, a small car expected to start at about $30,000 when it arrives in mid-2025; a high-end luxury sports car called the Ronin with an expected price of $385,000; and a new pickup truck called the Alaska, based on an extended version of the Ocean’s platform and due in 2025 with a starting price just over $45,000.”

The company’s forthcoming lower priced EV, called the Pear, is slated for production in 2025. 

For now, Fisker is flush with cash. It has $521.8 million, down from $652.5 million last quarter, as a result of a recently completed $300 million financing round. But with EV competition now saturating the globe and names like Tesla and Rivian, joined by GM and Ford, all competing aggressively with one another (and slashing prices), it remains to be seen whether or not Fisker will ever truly ever get off the ground.

Authored by Mark Cudmore, Bloomberg macro strategist,

A surging S&P 500 index makes sense based on recent data, but such gains should not be mistaken for confidence that there’s no recession on the horizon.

The empirical evidence suggests the stock market is a poor leading indicator for the economy. This is contrary to the oft-repeated cliche that it is forward-looking; a mistaken assertion that also gets used to cite stock-market gains as confirmation that the economic outlook is positive in a flawed self-reinforcing spiral.

The S&P 500 US equity benchmark data on the terminal goes back more than 95 years (to when it was a 90-stock index produced by the Standard Statistics Company). There have been 15 recessions over that period. The stock market only peaked out beforehand on 10 of the 15 occasions, for a median lead time of two months (average of 3 months). It twice peaked in the same month, twice after the recession started, and, in the 1945 post-WWII recession, rallied all the way through it.

It was only in 1957 that the index was actually expanded to 500 members. Since then, the hit ratio is 7 out 10, with a median lead-time of 2.5 months, and average of 4.8 months. Let’s take out the pandemic recession as being unique (but aren’t they always unique?!) to improve our hit ratio to 7 out of 9, with a median lead-time of 3 months, and 5.3 month average.

So, even with selective data-mining/trimming, we find the stock market is a low-conviction (not statistically significant) lead indicator by three months (with large variability).

That’s relevant, given Bloomberg Economics is now validating my call for a US recession beginning in 4Q, which would imply the most likely time for the S&P 500 to peak out is between July and September (July 31 providing this cycle’s peak so far).

That clashes harshly with the soft-landing narrative that has become entrenched in markets, but even this exact economic complacency has dangerous precedent, as Bloomberg’s Chief US Economist Anna Wong highlights.

In October 2007, the FOMC was opining on the economy’s resilience amid an overall soft-landing narrative. It was that same month that the S&P 500 topped out, with the Great Recession starting just two months later. And the trite repetition that this would be the most-forecast recession in US history is the flip side of registering that every prior economic downturn has been underestimated.

On Monday, we had an update on one of the most reliable predictors of US recessions — the Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey (SLOOS) — and it was another strong indicator of a downturn likely beginning toward the end of the year.

On Wednesday, the Brookings Institution warned that aggressive consumption will soon come to a rapid halt as consumers run out of cash.

The dynamic will be compounded after the amnesty in student loan repayments ends this month.

That’s extremely relevant as it has been my conviction in the resilience of the consumer sector that has driven my economic optimism (beginning to turn!) and stocks bullishness.

We know from base effects that the US Misery Index will climb into year-end, after having declined significantly since last August.

That means that the macro environment for consumers will be deteriorating at the exact same time as personal finances capitulate: A painful coincidence not seen since the first couple of months of the pandemic.

Almost every major input – the consumer, SLOOS, ISM, the yield curve, policy-tightening that impacts with a lag – is pointing toward a US recession probably beginning in 4Q.

A rising stock market right now chimes perfectly with that, but we should start becoming alert to the equities end game.

An extra potential dynamic to be wary of is that recession starts are rarely acknowledged as consensus in real time. Officially, they are only declared in hindsight, with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) never declaring the start date within less than four months. That increases the tail risk that the Federal Reserve’s economic projections and dots at its December meeting fuel complacent optimism from investors (and hence higher yields) just as the economy is beginning to crumble beneath the surface.

Oh, and yes, just in case you were wondering, equity investors should absolutely care if a recession is looming. Excluding the aforementioned 1945 exception, the average S&P 500 decline associated with the other 14 recessions has been 35%.

Tucker Carlson dropped the second segment of his interview with Devon Archer on Friday, where the former Hunter Biden business partner revealed new details about the Biden influence peddling operation.

To be clear, most of the hour-long interview is Tucker allowing Archer to provide well-rehearsed answers to softball questions – as though it’s a PR campaign designed to present Archer as an innocent entrepreneur who did what anyone would do in his shoes, while throwing Hunter under the bus for influence peddling and providing cover for President Joe Biden – who Archer last week told Congressional investigators wasn’t directly involved in Hunter’s dealings.

But there were some interesting tidbits:

“Did you ever, were you aware, do you have knowledge that Hunter spoke to his dad about Burisma?” asked Carlson.

“Do I have knowledge? Archer replied, carefully.

“Yes. Do you have know that spoke to his dad about Burisma? Did you ever see them talk about it? Hear them talk about it?” Carlson asked.

“No, I don’t have knowledge of that, though I assume it.“

Archer also called his partnership with Hunter “a very big strategic mistake.”

“Looking back at the body of work, it was a very big strategic mistake for me to be involved with him and so it was my fault because quite frankly I was pitching Burisma Rosemont Realty and that ended up, the genesis, that was me but the trajectory of my life would’ve been far different and arguable far better if I have never met him,” he said.

Archer also confirmed that former Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin was a threat to Burisma. Shokin was notably fired after Joe Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in US loan guarantees – and then bragged about it in public. According to a leaked FD-1023 form, Burisma boss Mykola Zlochevsky bribed Joe and Hunter Biden with $5 million each.

Vadym Pozharskyi email to Hunter, May 2014

“We urgently need your advice on how you can use your influence … ” https://t.co/qd5U9x0twf pic.twitter.com/lCmKeg9kF4

— Sandy 〽️ (@RightGlockMom) August 4, 2023

And in another portion of the interview, Archer describes the ‘Icarus moment’ where he realizes they’d pushed the relationship with Joe too far.

“We were in Doha … running around with some of the royal family at another conference… and they release some picture on the website that Hunter had joined the board, and that was kind of my… that was like the Tipping Point where Icarus had arrived a little too close… and the rest you know…

….that was really that was The Icarus moment when I saw that.

Burisma released it, didn’t tell us, and it was like the most Googled news story like in the world for 18 hours and yeah I was like this is going to be a different well because to a civilian you’re thinking okay huge super lucrative Eastern Europe right natural gas incredible sort of semi-employed kind of lawyer lobbyist from DC, like, what is he doing on their board?”

…

..it was very clear that the Burisma guys were hoping to leverage Hunter’s relationship with the vice president his father … at one point they told Hunter to quote call his dad.

I think, referencing the email that you you put earlier, there was constant pressure to to send signals to Leverage all of his ins, you know, his dad included. But the Biden brand all of the, you know, the the the DC Insider and relationships to help Burisma survive – I think that’s, you know, at the end of the day what we’re talking about.”

Watch:

And watch the entire interview below:

Ep. 13 Part 2. Devon Archer pic.twitter.com/R1sxSuPrKq

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) August 4, 2023