DOES ANYONE COUNT THE COST ANYMORE? wind costs between 7 and 14 times more than fossils. And solar costs between 10 and 44 (!) times more.

The excess cost of these projects are not designed to provide people with energy.  The cost simply turns these politically correct projects into pet projects for the climate change crowd to say, "See.  See how efficient (NOT) this renewable is?"  And they're not even renewable, a complete misnomer. 

Once you include the costs of actually integrating "renewables" into the power grid, wind costs between 7 and 14 times more than fossils. And solar costs between 10 and 44 (!) times more.

Renewables are a joke. pic.twitter.com/jVoZRsH063

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) January 15, 2024

On an all-in basis including storage & transmission, the average cost per megawatt-hour for natural gas is $38; nuclear $114; wind $291-504; for solar $413-1,548.

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) January 14, 2024

The November 2023 jobs number was revised lower, from 199,000 to 173,000. The October jobs report was also revised lower from 150,000 to 105,000.

The finest statisticians government money can buy ✌️ https://t.co/fD2JFCiHy4

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) January 5, 2024

JUST IN: 10 of the last 11 months have seen downward revisions in their jobs number, according to Zerohedge. The November 2023 jobs number was revised lower, from 199,000 to 173,000. This means that the November jobs report actually missed expectations of 180,000. The October jobs report was also revised lower from 150,000 to 105,000. This means that the October jobs report was an even bigger miss than expected. For September, the jobs number was revised lower by 74,000 jobs.

What is happening here? 

New York City is currently spending $394 per day on every single migrant. That comes to $144,000 per year per migrant, which is of course far more than Americans make with actual jobs.

This is staggering. Also, not explicitly mentioned is that boomer healthcare should not really add to GDP because it is the cost of keeping a rapidly depreciating asset minimally functioning (like an old Chevette)...   https://t.co/sRDC46Oois

— Dave Collum (@DavidBCollum) January 2, 2024

Why are GDP and job number jobs numbers defying slow-down predictions?

Easy.

Because most new jobs are disguised government spending.  They don't create anything, of course, but they sure do spend and they are about to get a lot worse.  A few days ago The Wall Street Journal ran an excellent article on what they call the "Welfare Industrial Complex."  They kick off asking, "What's driving America's job growth?" concluding it's government social assistance and associated healthcare.  In fact, more than half, 56% of the 2.8 million net new jobs created last year, were precisely that--government social assistance and healthcare.  In Blue states, like New York and Illinois, those welfare jobs make up literally more than all the job gains.  So 113% in Michigan; the same in Illinois, and 121% in New York.  In other words, their real productive economy is actually shrinking.  Without those jobs from just the last year alone, nationwide we would be close to 5% unemployment; if you add back the millions of workers who dropped out during COVID, we'd be closer to 8% unemployment. 

Now, welfare spending is GDP.  To be sure, it will get Paul Krugman popping the bubbly but it is not economic growth; it's not making us richer.  In fact, it's economic deconstruction, converting formerly productive people into the permanent wards of society.  Indeed, if you go into poor areas in many of these states, you'll see literally nothing but welfare services, so nonprofits, Medicaid-paid health clinics, with a tiny sprinkling of gas stations, and takeout with bulletproof glass.  So the productive economy is actually shrinking, but the GDP numbers hide it.  All pretty dire but brace yourself because there's a lot more to come as literally millions of new welfare cases pour in wholesale from what was formerly known as the border. 

The Wall Street Journal reports that New York City is currently spending $394 per day on every single migrant.  That's the price of a nice Disney vacation.  That comes to $144,000 per year per migrant, which is of course far more than Americans make with actual jobs, possibly more since I can only imagine the games government activists play to hide the money they spend.  Add these imported millions to the hundreds of thousands of "drug-addled and mentally ill homeless living on the street," that is a quote from the WSJ, and you've got the makings for some very impressive consumer spending.  

Those nosebleed trillions are just the start since decades of experience have shown that the more government spends on welfare, the more people go on welfare.  In Joe Biden's first stimulus bill, for example, they poured out nearly $43 billion in housing subsidies to end homelessness as we know it.  

So what happened?  

Well, the homeless population shot up by 85,000.  While homeless don't cost as much as migrants, they're just $86,000 a year again per person, which is also a very respectable salary anywhere in America; again, that's taking the activists who run government welfare at their word.   As the WSJ notes, progressive government doesn't do anything on the cheap.  Indeed they don't.  Los Angeles is currently spending $837,000 per unit to build housing for the homeless.  So at $144k a year per migrant and $86k per ruined life times millions, you get the makings of some fantastic consumer spending numbers even as the economy and the treasury are gutted.  

"Red Wedding of Freight Volume Causing a "disintegration of globalization"?

freight volumes are one of the more reliable shadow indicators of a coming recession.  --Peter St. Orge, Ph.D.

Maersk is widely viewed as a global trade barometer. --Peter St. Orge, Ph.D.

Soaring bankruptcies, crashing volumes, and mass lay-offs in shipping and freight -- one of the most reliable indicators of recession.

Prices across the eight major shipping routes have plunged by half this year, going from $3,000 per container to just $1,400. One analyst… pic.twitter.com/2J6wq4dTP2

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) November 12, 2023

A shipping analyst, Freight Waves, came out with a sobering report showing soaring bankruptcies among trucking and logistics firms as freight volumes crash.  In an age where many of us are skeptical about government statistics, freight volumes are one of the more reliable shadow indicators of a coming recession.  And keep in mind, we are just 6 weeks from Christmas, meaning this is usually the peak season for shipping.  Freight Waves CEO listed out the Red Wedding level of carnage:

30,000 employees out of work when trucking firm Yellow went down, followed by the bankruptcy of $4 billion dollar, VC-backed freight brokerage Convoy.  

Air Cargo operator, Western Global went down with $500 million in debt.

Freight broker, Surge, $200 million in revenue slumped.

North Carolina trucking company, Freight Works, took out 200 truckers. 

Texas-based, SEL, took out another 125.

California-based and family-owned, Certified Freight, took down 157.

40-year-old Montana trucking company, Meadowlark, left hundreds more jobless.

And Florida-based, Flagship, took out 455.

The list goes on from Vermont to Miami to California to Pennsylvania. 

Now, that is just the bankruptcies.  The layoffs are on top.

Maersk just laid off 10,000 workers and cut capital expenditure by $3.5 billion.  In other words, they'll be running down existing capital.  They did this because revenue fell by 50% among plunging freight costs and ships running half empty. Maersk is widely viewed as a global trade barometer, and the layoffs were so big they drove the Eurasia Review to fret about the quote "disintegration of globalization."  The prices across the 8 major global shipping routes have plunged by more than half this year, going from 3000 per 40 ft container to just 1400.  

Maersk's shipping rates are down 58%.

China's Costco is down 60%, and Japan's Ocean Network Express is down 62%.  

A report by Drewry forecasts the entire industry will lose $15 billion next year.  

Now this is feeding directly into trucking, which is the last mile.  In fact, going by employment, trucking is doing 3x worse than the 2000 recession which was itself much worse than the 2008 recession still not a recession though until Paul Krugman says it is. 

"So what's next?" brought to you by Unchained.

For shipping, the near term is pretty bleak with falling prices running into continuing inflation.  Some of this was inevitable after the epic pandemic-era run-up.  Remember, it was just 2 short years ago that newspapers were jammed with stories of blocked supply chains, Americans driving to Mexico for baby formula or cruising eBay for used washing machines, lest they wash their clothes in a creek.  At one point, the Baltic Dry Index, which measures the cost to ship raw materials, hit almost 12,000, that's about 8x normal, that pulled thousands of new workers into trucking and shipping.  So Walmart at one point was offering $110,000 starting pay for truck drivers, and it launched dozens of major containers that are only now coming online.  That overhang is taking years, so freight analyst Alphaliner estimates shipping capacity will increase 8.2% this year, about 6x faster than demand even as the industry loses billions.  In short, shipping says a fairly brutal recession is incoming, while lockdowns once again have whipsawed an industry that millions depend on.  

As a recession intensifies, expect more pain.

The Soviet Union you could do absolutely nothing. It was a permissioned economy. In theory you would be shot if you sold bootleg bread out of the back of your car

in the US when Joe Biden came into power, YouTube disabled their thumbs down, because every time Biden to open his mouth there were so many down votes [that it] was embarrassing to the regime. 

Excerpt from my talk at this year’s Bitcoin Amsterdam 🥳 https://t.co/prCvsVP2K8

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) October 22, 2023

And yet there was some point where governments collapsed.  They largely collapsed because of the money.  At that point, when you get hyperinflation, the government has to make a choice: will it pay the Praetorian Guard or will it pay the bureaucrat busybodies?  Lo and behold, the busy buddies get cut pretty darn fast.  That's what happened in the Soviet Union: the state begins to look after itself.  Day to day it can be pretty discouraging but the people are with us.  If you look . . . I know certainly in the US when Joe Biden came into power, YouTube disabled their thumbs down, because every time Biden opened his mouth there were so many downvotes.  It was embarrassing to the regime.  You see this persistently across the board where the regime has its pet media, they have its pet narratives nobody's believing that garbage anymore.  So I think that we do eventually get to a point where the entire thing looks impressive but you look behind it and there's nothing there.  It's a Potemkin village.  

"there are going to be a lot of out-of-work construction workers"

We got some brutal housing numbers this week with new home construction tumbling 11% on the month.  The market had expected it to be flat.  Apartments plunged 26% on the month and we're barely over half what they were 3 months ago, so that's about a 40% drop in 3 months.  At this point, more units are being completed than started, and we've lost about a 1/3 of house building the entire industry since April of last year, meaning there are going to be a lot of out-of-work construction workers.  The one bright spot was permits, which are an indicator of future home building but even there builder sentiment is awful, suggesting that number will be coming down.  It may just be a matter of grabbing permits in case they plan to use them, perhaps a speculative gamble on interest rates coming back from the stratosphere.  But the background here is mortgages at 7.5% are knocking buyers out. It roughly doubled your mortgage bill compared to three years ago from $1200 a month on the median house to $2600 today.  That is a 35-year low in housing affordability.  Of course, higher rates mean higher qualifying incomes.  So it currently takes over $104,000 in annual salary to qualify for a mortgage right now that is essentially impossible for young families, while the typical family is now spending 28.5% of their income on their mortgage payment, which matches the all-time high.  Meanwhile, those same sky-high rates are locking millions of people into homes they can't sell because they'd be trading a 3% mortgage for a 7.5% mortgage that they cannot afford.  So owners are sitting on inventory with nobody new coming to buy. 

So what's next?

Next is that rising inflation is scaring the FED off rate cuts for the foreseeable future.  In fact, we might get another hike or two before they are done potentially bringing mortgages up over 8%.  Either way it is looking like years before mortgage rates come back down to normal levels.  The freeze will not last forever.  Some of those frozen buyers have to sell, maybe they got a new job, or the kids moved out, and they can't afford the big house. Meanwhile, some of those first-time buyers will eventually have to bite the bullet, cut the rest of their spending, and pony up so the kids can actually have a bedroom.  But if 7.5% mortgages are the new normal an entire generation of young families will be shut out of home ownership altogether.  Which also cuts them off from the cheap money, the cheap loans that the FED uses to drive inflation in the first place.  So they'll be paying for the feds money printing at the grocery store, but they won't get the free pump on their house.  So all of the pain and none of the gain.

New home construction is crashing. Now down a third in the last year.

Meaning no relief in sight for young families: It now takes $104,000 to qualify for a mortgage.

Meanwhile, there’s about to be a lot of jobless construction workers even as we're importing millions.

Starts… pic.twitter.com/bv3MRis8vw

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) September 21, 2023

UAW's fight isn't against the big 3 automakers; it's against China's bagman in the White House, Joe Biden

Joe Biden [pours] billions of tax payer money into subsidizing EVs, electric vehicles, that, in practice, can only be provided at scale by Chinese components or even just importing Chinese cars; meanwhile, comically strict emissions restrictions are essentially forcing the majors to swap to money-losing EVS that again only China has got the capacity to build at scale.  --Peter St. Onge

UAW launches surgical strikes against all 3 big automakers. Demanding wages and benefits totalling $136 per hour.

Strikes are soaring across America, already hitting 4.1 million lost days — the highest in a quarter century.

Between the worst inflation in 50 years and "Green"… pic.twitter.com/VkmC151sej

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) September 19, 2023

The 430,000-member United Auto Workers Union launched unprecedented surgical strikes against all three major automakers GM, Ford, and Chrysler.  In a first volley, 13,000 strikers walked off the job and blocked deliveries, idling lines on models including the popular Ford Bronco.  The strike is intended to put maximum pressure to force wage demands and benefits on Wall Street Journal estimates at $136 per hour.  For perspective at a 2,000-hour work year, that works out to $272,000 per year to assemble cars.  The Big Three had actually offered a 20% raise with the cost of living in pension boosts, but the union saw an opportunity so it went for the throat.  In theory, of course, that $136 will be paid by American car buyers because costs get passed on, but in reality, it will probably drive a lot of those princely jobs offshore instead where workers don't make $136 an hour; or, of course, it could drive the company's out of business or into the arms of foreign buyers leaving cars to the Chinese.  For the UAW, the background here is that after years of workers falling behind inflation in this Bidenomics miracle, workers are angry, and monopolistic unions, like the UAW, see their chance.  In the case of auto workers, they got an extra kick by Joe Biden pouring billions of taxpayer money into subsidizing EVs, electric vehicles, that, in practice, can only be provided at scale by Chinese components or even just importing Chinese cars; meanwhile, comically strict emissions restrictions are essentially forcing the majors to swap to money-losing EVS that again only China has got the capacity to build at scale.  The UAW rightly feels sold down the river by Biden on behalf of his Greens, or as Senator Josh Hawley put it, "Auto Workers deserve to have their jobs protected from Joe Biden's stupid climate mandates that are destroying the US Auto industry and making China rich."

So what's next?

The UAW strike could end fast, if the big three cave, or it could drag on for months.  But we can expect a lot more of this and what the media is already calling "a summer of strikes."  Last month saw 4.1 million lost days to strikes.  That is the worst in a quarter century and rising fast.  And keep in mind, there's still another 14 million union workers to go, not even including government unions which number another 7 million and growing like a cancer.  All of these renegotiations will fuel inflation that is already rising again before the UAW snags its $136 an hour.  As that inflation keeps grinding, we could even see a return to the nationwide strikes of the 1970s when entire swaths of American industry were driven offshore or out of business hollowing out entire cities and spawning the famous Rust Belt that 50 years later is only getting worse.  And here it comes again . . . .

California paying illegals $300 a week unemployment. Just think what this would do for veterans and homeless. Why are illegals immigrants treated better than American citizens?

Why? Because magicking up millions of homeless refugees is an easy way to destabilize society.

Not every year gives you free pandemics to destabilize it for you. https://t.co/Tb9DOMjIfu

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) September 14, 2023

42% of Japanese women in their 50's don't have any kids

42% of Japanese women in their 50's don't have any kids 🤯https://t.co/7gR8OcGlJb

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) August 9, 2023

Disability claims soaring. A big part of that impressive unemployment rate: if you're living on disability, you're no longer counted.

Disability claims soaring. A big part of that impressive unemployment rate: if you're living on disability, you're no longer counted. pic.twitter.com/0mByG7xk6a

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) July 11, 2023

Largest insurer in America pulls out of California, where arson is legal.

Largest insurer in America pulls out of California, where arson is legal.  https://t.co/mZnJCupoNo

— Peter St Onge, Ph.D. (@profstonge) May 28, 2023