The State of the Economy Thread - “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery”

[TradeTheBeal!]

Local Aldi is doing Cinco de Mayo sales of $2.19/lb boneless breasts and $10.99 Choice NY Strips.

 

Doesnt seem unreasonable at all, to me.

[Fergasun]

Costco used to be about $20 for their chicken.  But that was probably 2019.  I think they have gone from $2 per lb to $2.70 per lb over 5 years?  

[China]

Zombie 2nd mortgages are coming to life, threatening thousands of Americans' homes

 

One spring morning two years ago, Karen McDonough was having tea at her dining room table. She lives in a cozy little two-bedroom house in Quincy, Massachusetts. She looked out her window and saw something unusual.

 

"There were like 20 cars, and they all came at the same time and they parked in front of my house, across the street, up the street," McDonough said. "I just had this feeling like something really bad had happened ... like maybe somebody in the neighborhood died."

 

Something bad was definitely happening — to her.

 

McDonough put on her shoes, went out to the driveway and approached a group of men, casually dressed, milling around on the lawn. One had a clipboard and seemed to be in charge.

"He had a piece of paper, and I said, 'What's happening?' And he goes, 'We're selling your house.'"

 

It was a foreclosure auction on her home.

 

This seemed impossible. McDonough had owned the house for 17 years. She's a registered nurse who worked at the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital for decades and makes a good living. She raised two kids in the house and pays her mortgage every month.

 

But back after the housing crash in 2008, like millions of other Americans, McDonough had asked for a modification of the mortgage. Back then, she says, her mortgage company told her a second mortgage she had on the house was forgiven as part of the modification. And she said that seemed to be true — she stopped getting any statements for more than 10 years.

 

More recently, though, she'd been getting phone calls demanding money. She thought it must be some kind of scam. But now these men on her lawn were telling her, "This is a foreclosure. You are going to lose this house," McDonough said.

 

McDonough had fallen victim to what's called a zombie second mortgage. Homeowners think these loans are long dead. But then the loans come back to life because they get bought up, sometimes for pennies on the dollar, by debt collectors. These companies often tack on a mountain of retroactive interest and fees, even though that can be legally dubious in some cases, and then move to collect and foreclose on people's homes.

 

And an NPR investigation found that the practice is widespread.

 

NPR looked at foreclosure data across several states where records were available. In New York, NPR found at least 10,000 old second mortgages that foreclosure activity had been initiated on in just the past two years. Those loans originated back during the subprime-lending housing-bubble days of 2004 to 2008.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[TradeTheBeal!]

Remember kids, the economy is bad and no one can afford anything.

 

 

[The Evil Genius]

Americans by and large are ****ing morons. 

 

 

 

[TradeTheBeal!]

Someone jog my memory…what the hell happened to 2014??

 

 

[Jabbyrwock]

11 minutes ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

Someone jog my memory…what the hell happened to 2014??

 

 

 

We hired Gruden.  Gas prices went up from the subsequent increase in trips to the liquor store.

[skinsmarydu]

To my knowledge, we've never seen gas prices above $4 in Georgia.  Actually, we're always well below the national average. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[hail2skins]

2 hours ago, TradeTheBeal! said:

Someone jog my memory…what the hell happened to 2014??

 

 

I'm not sure where that person got his info......but this is a chart from last year:

 

[The Evil Genius]

 

16 minutes ago, hail2skins said:

I'm not sure where that person got his info......but this is a chart from last year:

 

 

Fwiw, the original post says "in today's $s" and this one does not. 

 

As for 2014...the reason was turmoil in Iraq.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/18/aaa-irag-fighting-us-gasoline-prices/10769389/

Edited May 27 by The Evil Genius

[hail2skins]

1 hour ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

 

Fwiw, the original post says "in today's $s" and this one does not. 

 

As for 2014...the reason was turmoil in Iraq.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/06/18/aaa-irag-fighting-us-gasoline-prices/10769389/

Overlooked that. Gas prices were at that level pretty much from the latter part of Bush's term (with the exception of late 2008 thru 2010, due to GFC) through 2014 before falling in the last two years of Obama's term.

[China]

YOLO is dying. That could be bad news for the economy

YOLO economy, meet the “yo, no” economy.

 

Not so long ago many of us were willing, if not eager, to shell out on fancy new TVs, upgraded bathrooms and kitchens, Peloton bikes and bottles of the good stuff. Things have changed. This summer, our bathrooms are outdated and our champagne bottles corked.

 

Americans emerged from pandemic lockdowns with better jobs, extra spending money and a burning desire to live life outside of the confines of their own abodes, regardless of the price. In what was dubbed the YOLO economy (short for “you only live once”), or revenge spending, consumers shelled out for the experiences and goods they had missed.

 

“Covid showed all of us that life doesn’t go on forever,” Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, told Before the Bell. “Preparing for a retirement that’s way off into the future and could be interrupted by something like a global pandemic changed our mindsets. People wanted to live in the moment.”

 

Now, five years after the onset of the pandemic, the free-spending party is coming to an end. And that may be bad news for the economy.

 

What’s going on: Consumer spending is falling back to earth, and even the highest-income Americans are turning to discount retailers like Walmart. Target is slashing prices to lure reluctant shoppers back into their stores, and sweet-treat shops like Starbucks have reported that sales aren’t growing like they used to be — a Frappuccino no longer feels like a necessary expense.

 

So what’s happening? Inflation is still elevated and consumers are running out of their Covid-era savings, the job market is beginning to tighten and workers are getting worried about losing their jobs.

 

There’s also another explanation: Americans have gotten their post-Covid ya-ya’s out and are ready to tone things down again.

 

Click on the link for the full article

[tshile]

Won’t that help with inflation and interest rates?

[Larry]

1 minute ago, tshile said:

Won’t that help with inflation and interest rates?

 

Kind of my thought.  

 

Corporate America's greed might finally be affecting consumer behavior.  Consumers demonstrating that they have power, to.