The “narrative” architects and fairytale spinners are desperately looking for evidence to fit their “consumer is still healthy / economy still fine” propaganda. The hype over strong holiday sales was premature if not fraudulent, as data-manipulators appear to have taken the growth in online holiday sales and projected it across the entire retail sales spectrum. I guess they overlooked the fact that online sales took market share from brick/mortar stores.

Despite the plethora of data showing that U.S. manufacturing was down last year, real retails sales are declining, restaurant traffic – including delivered food – has been contracting almost every month for two years and most households are over-bloated with debt, the Fed continues to insist that the economy is healthy with “sustainable moderate growth.” This is sheer and nonsense and the Fed knows it, which is why the Fed printed over $400 billion and tossed it at the financial system.

Chris Marcus – Arcadia Economics – and I discuss the truths underlying the U.S’ fake news economy:

**************

You can learn more about  Investment Research Dynamics newsletters by following these links (note: a minimum subscription period beyond the 1st month is not required):  Short Seller’s Journal subscription information   –   Mining Stock Journal subscription information