The Weekly Quill — In Plain Shadows
“40 years of falling rates were the engine of financialism - optimizing the real economy around leveraged finance and asset prices. Without the ever-falling rates, financialism is over. The next 40 years can't be like the last 40. Investors are yet to see it.”
Simon Mikhailovich, The Bullion Reserve
Before jumping in, I would like to express my deep gratitude for your replies to last week’s personal appeal. It would seem I do have military connections through my closest QI clients. The odds that my friend, who yesterday underwent more than 15 hours in the operating room for the second of what his doctors expect to be at least a dozen surgeries, will gain access to the rehabilitation he needs have risen appreciably thanks to?you.
And then there are the surprising personal pleas of others I’ve stumbled across in the last week. All the years I worked for Richard at the Fed, he conjured the image of the vastly-undersupplied “welder” to exemplify the skills shortage scourge that plagued the workforce. There were never enough welders to satisfy the demand, especially in the fast-growing 12th District of the Federal Reserve System.
You’ll understand what a jolt it was to see on my community chat board the request of a?“welder/ sheetmetal fabricator by trade for over 13 years… looking for any type of side work. I have fabricated anything from metal/wood tables, custom entry gates for your side gates of your home. Shelving, shoe/coat racks basically anything you find on Etsy that is metal/wood combo, I can build with the utmost guarantee that you will be satisfied. I also have experience in fence repair. Handrail repair or if need be, made new. I have my welders and tools of the trade ready to go. My family has been in this area since 1942.” He added that he had, “seen the OT (overtime) slow down and was let go from my seasonal PT (part-time) job at Home Depot after the first of the year. I don’t want a handout and am looking to earn. No project/repair is too minor. If anyone needs anything as described, please don’t hesitate to reach out and message. Thank You for reading Stay safe out there. God Bless..!”
At a speaking engagement in Arizona earlier this week, I heard several anecdotes of home builders laying off workers in Texas. In the country’s second most populous state, initial jobless claims in the state are up 8% year-over-year (YoY), worse than the nation as a whole. Ebbing demand for the welder was seen in the Dallas Fed’s February manufacturing survey: “The employment index dipped below zero to -1.0 after tracking above average for more than two years.” There are now more industrial firms laying off than there are hiring.?And then there were February’s special questions the Dallas Fed posed to employers across the factory, retail, and services sectors. The replies reveal a flummoxed business community plagued by high uncertainty:
Q: “When do you expect the stronger?increase?in demand?”
A: 65.3% replied 2023’s?second?half
Q: “When do you expect the stronger?decrease?in demand?”
A: 55.9% replied 2023’s?second?half.
The second personal entreaty on the chat board was much more abrupt with a typo that made it that much harder to digest under the circumstances: “Need a helping hand, I'm being evicted, and I don’t want to leave my car behind. Does anybody have a carrier? (Need before 9am please).” In a rush to post the request, “cat” was typed as “car.”
I live in what’s called “the bubble.” Every big city has one, the area where the upper-middle class resides in the comfort of a good school district and public safety that’s not a given outside the bubble. ‘Location, location, location,’ made the juxtaposition of the second appeal that much starker. One wonders if those occupying the “no landing” camp come across such anecdata to back their conviction.
Aside from two neighbors replying that they indeed did have cat carriers, the silver lining of the evictee is that all that was being requested was a means by which to transport a pet. The implication is that there was a place that would be taking them in. The continued rise in the ranks of adult children moving back in with their parents attests to countless others providing shelter from a household budget storm.
Danielle DiMartino Booth is founder and Chief Strategist at?Quill Intelligence
%^* or ?
1 年Too real & too close to home, but been there, so can attest to the truth. Times are getting really bad out there, I see it in my community everyday, the meth & fentanyl are really bad but now on top of it all we have all the signs of 2008 here all over again (tbh).