Analysis – Retail sales/consumption – fiction versus reality
Released September 24 2023
Hype/Fiction
September 20, 2023
Federal Reserve issues FOMC statement:
“Recent indicators suggest that economic activity has been expanding at a solid pace.”
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/monetary20230920a.htm
Reality
Economy is a speeding train going downhill:
1) Freight physical shipments down 10+%
https://www.cassinfo.com/freight-audit-payment/cass-transportation-indexes/august-2023
| August 2023 | Year-over-year change | 2-year stacked change | Month-to-month change | Month-to-month change (SA*) | |
| Cass Freight Index – Shipments | 1.143 | -10.6% | -7.4% | 1.9% | 0.8% |
| Cass Freight Index – Expenditures | 3.459 | -25.0% | -9.7% | 1.1% | 1.8% |
| Cass Inferred Freight Rates | 3.026 | -16.2% | NA | -0.8% | 1.0% |
| Truckload Linehaul Index | 141.3 | -11.5% | -5.0% | -0.5% | — |
2) Retail sales physical volume is also down 10+%
(inflation rate based on 1980 definition of about 13% minus retail sales increase of 2.5%)
https://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/retail-sales-annual
Percent change YoY
| Calendar | GMT | Reference | Actual | Previous | Consensus | TEForecast | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023-08-15 | 12:30 PM | Retail Sales YoY | Jul | 3.2% | 1.6% | 1.5% | 1.0% |
| 2023-09-14 | 12:30 PM | Retail Sales YoY | Aug | 2.5% | 2.6% | 2.9% | |
| 2023-10-17 | 12:30 PM | Retail Sales YoY | Sep | 1.5% | |||
3) Calendar year 2023 container traffic, Port of Los Angeles is down 20+%
https://www.portoflosangeles.org/business/statistics/container-statistics
4) Mass social/political disorganization is increasing being driven by a falling economy.
These are the same conditions that led to the
Nativist/Know-Nothing political movement of the 1850s,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing
the Father Coughlin movement of the 1930s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin
and the current political polarization since 2016.
Currently 40+% of the US population is being fed by the various levels of governments.
Retail shrinkage including theft is a $100 billion dollar problem.
https://nrf.com/research/national-retail-security-survey-2022
Target Corporation is budgeting $1 billion this year for shrinkage/theft.
Visually the economic situation is not as obvious as it was in the 1930s.
The soup-kitchens of the 1930s have been replaced by the EBT cards (plastic cards that function like credit/debit cards) that are swiped at supermarket checkouts.
The homeless communities on the streets today are similar to those of the 1930s, and in the US can be traced back to the wandering poor of the 1600s.
There is a good history with the then current status of Massachusetts in this 1833 report
…