“Labour was the first price, the original purchase — money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all wealth of the world was originally purchased.”
– Adam Smith
September 3, 2024 – September is typically the worst month of the year for stocks.
There’s a perfectly rational reason. Wall Street’s money men are typically grumpy after returning “from the Hamptons,” or wherever, and take the Tuesday after Labor Day to start reassessing their portfolios.
That’s the norm.
Historically, September is the worst month of the year for stocks. Nervous traders may well take gains from 2024’s historic index highs. (Image source: marketwatch.com)
This year, it’s entirely plausible we could see a repeat of the August 3 Dow selloff of 1,000 points on at least one day this month.
With the indexes near historic highs — even the less-techy Dow itself finished August at a record — there are many twitchy fingers hovering above “sell” buttons across Lower Manhattan today.
Profits are profits after all, you have to take them to make them.
Already this morning, Nvidia led the Dow down 500 points in early session trading.
By September 17, when the Federal Reserve meets again, we anticipate the pressure for a Fed “put” — a rate cut to prop up the stock market — will be higher than it has been through the end of the summer.
For now, we have no worries.
We expect market seasonality to rear its head, and for memories of any selloff to be short-lived as interest rates decline. It’s when longer-term trends like unsustainably high debt loads come to a head that we’ll all have real worries, not a rough day in the markets.
American Flag hanging from the George Washington Bridge on the way into Manhattan from the New Jersey side, Labor Day 2024 (Source: Addison Wiggin)
Today, we’re writing from Paramus, New Jersey. It’s in Bergen County. Long before the HBO crime series The Sopranos was set here, post-war suburbs like the ones here in Northern New Jersey were the familiar territory made famous by the short story writer John Cheever.
Cheever’s gift was writing about the sordid “nomadism” of modern American suburbia.
On the outside, there are manicured lawns, leafy side-walked streets and neo-Greek porticos boldly festooned on what were once single-family split levels. On the inside, the mental anguish of living up to a social standard fashioned in somebody else’s country club.
Cheever’s classic, The Swimmer, tells the story of a once adventurous, now bored affluent resident, Neddy Merrill, who, after enjoying himself at a friend’s pool party, decides to swim home through a succession of the neighbors’ swimming pools. As he progresses through the pools he begins to realize that something’s “not quite right.”
Halfway home Neddy is too drunk and realizes he doesn’t know where he is anymore.
The Swimmer was first published in The New Yorker in 1964. But Merill could have easily been enjoying himself at a Paramus pool over Labor Day this weekend. His name would likely not be quite so waspy and his wife would have a role on Bravo’s Real Housewives of New Jersey, but his experience would be the same some 60s years later.
Of course, neighborhoods like Paramus exist outside cities all across America. Millions of Neddy Merrill types had too much to drink yesterday, and like the traders returning to their stock charts and board rooms, have to reassess their lives.
This is also the weekend we, rather willingly, forget that the idea of Labor Day was born following the Haymarket Square riot on May 5, 1886, in Chicago.
At a labor rally for an 8-hour work day, 8 anarchists allegedly plotted to incite widespread violence in the country by launching sticks of dynamite at police attempting to corral the protestors. Seven police and four civilians were killed.
Communist and socialist parties around the world memorialize the Haymarket riot in their annual May 1 holiday.
In the United States, Labor Day was established on the first Monday in September. Back then, the Federal Government would never condone a communist holiday. The U.S. version instead commemorates what is commonly believed to be the first Labor Day parade, held just 12 miles from where I’m sitting.
Four years before Haymarket, on September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City.
These days, for our part, we forget … we drink too much … and then swim home through our own proverbial swimming pools. Hope you enjoyed your holiday.
Either way, here we are. Let’s get back to our own labor….
We’ll begin with Michael Snyder who brings a bit of smelling salt to kick off the fall season: the media and its (mis)handling of news and data regarding the real economy. Enjoy ~~ Addison
Extreme Gaslighting: Here Are 7 Signs That the Mainstream Media Is Flat Out Lying To Us About the Economy
Michael Snyder, Michael Snyder’s Substack
How many times have you heard the mainstream media tell you that the economy is doing just great in recent months? Personally, I have seen the word “booming” used over and over again to describe the economy, and it makes me sick. The level of gaslighting that we are witnessing right now is off the charts.
Millions of Americans are sleeping in their vehicles, thousands of businesses are failing all over the nation, and most of the country now believes that the American Dream is no longer attainable. If this is what a “booming” economy feels like, I would hate to see what would happen during a “recession”.
I totally understand why the mainstream media is gaslighting us. They want us to believe that everything is fine so that we will vote a certain way in November. They have an agenda, and they are pushing it really hard.
But what they are telling us simply does not match up with reality.
The following are 7 signs that the mainstream media is flat out lying to us about the economy…
Media ‘gaslighting’ on the economy #1: Survey after survey has shown that the economy is the number one concern for American voters during this election season. If the economy was in good shape, we would not be getting results like this…
The economy was still the top issue for 26 percent of voters, per the poll. Threats to democracy and extremism came in second at 22 percent, and immigration was third at 13 percent.
Media Gaslighting #2: At this point, the economy is in such rough shape that even Dollar General customers seem to be running out of money…
Dollar General shares tumbled Thursday, before the holiday weekend, after the discount retailer slashed its sales and profit guidance for the full year, suggesting its lower-income customers are struggling in this economy.
Shares of the retailer, which caters to more rural areas, tumbled 25% after the earnings report.
Media Gaslighting #3: When the U.S. economy was actually booming, Big Lots was thriving. Sadly, today’s economic environment has been very hard on the retail chain and it is now teetering on the brink of bankruptcy…
Discount home goods retailer Big Lots is reportedly on the brink of bankruptcy after years of falling sales.
The beleaguered chain may seek Chapter 11 protection within weeks, according to Bloomberg, if it is not able to find investors.
The Ohio-based company runs around 1,400 stores across the US, after closing hundreds of locations earlier this year.
Media Gaslighting #4: Needless to say, Big Lots is far from alone, because the number of businesses that are filing for bankruptcy has reached dizzying heights…
According to statistics released by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, annual bankruptcy filings totaled 486,613 in the year ending June 2024, compared with 418,724 cases in the previous year.
Business filings rose 40.3 percent, from 15,724 to 22,060 in the year ending June 30, 2024. Non-business bankruptcy filings rose 15.3 percent to 464,553, compared with 403,000 in the previous year.
Media Gaslighting #5: According to Zero Hedge, several regional Fed business surveys just fell even deeper into contraction territory…
‘Four more years’ is not the message being heard from the regional Fed surveys this week as the Philly, Dallas, and Richmond business surveys all slumped deeper into contraction…
Media Gaslighting #6: As I discussed yesterday, approximately two-thirds of the entire U.S. population no longer believes that the American Dream “is still alive”…
Only about a third of U.S. adults believe the American dream is still alive, a Wall Street Journal/NORC poll published Wednesday found.
A survey of 2,501 people conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute twelve years ago found more than half of respondents believed the American dream “still holds true,” but now only a third feel that way, according to a recent WSJ/NORC poll of 1,502 adults. The study also found an increasingly large gap between people’s economic goals and what they think is actually attainable — a trend that was consistent across gender and party lines, but was especially common amongst younger generations.
Media Gaslighting #7: Last, but certainly not least, total household debt in the United States has soared to a level that we have never seen before…
A quarterly report published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on household credit and debt found that between the first quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2024, credit card debt surged 48.1% while household debt — which includes mortgages and auto loans — rose by 21.6%.
In dollar terms, credit card debt rose from $770 billion in early 2021 to $1.14 trillion in the most recent quarter, while household debt increased from $14.64 trillion to $17.8 trillion in the same period.
Yes, there is a small segment of society that is still doing really well.
Thanks to the unprecedented intervention that we have seen in the financial markets in recent years, they are still able to live the high life while most of the country suffers.
But while stock prices continue to set new all-time highs, much of the nation looks like a horror show.
For example, just consider what has happened to Pine Bluff, Arkansas…
A small Arkansas city suffering from severe population decline and economic turmoil has become so abandoned that properties are on offer for as little as $400.
Pine Bluff, a bleak metro that saw its population drop from 49,000 to 41,250 residents from 2010 to 2020, made headlines this month after being panned in a YouTube documentary from Abandoned Atlas.
In the movie, filmmaker Michael Schwartz said witnessing the city’s decay ‘shocked’ him, saying: ‘It seems like every time I turn a corner, there is another abandoned home or building left behind.’
The gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us has never been larger than it is right now.
The next time you walk past an abandoned store that has been boarded up, just remember how much the mainstream media has been lying to you.
The next time you walk past someone that is sleeping in a vehicle, just remember how much the mainstream media has been lying to you.
The next time you walk past someone that is hooked on drugs because they have lost all hope, just remember how much the mainstream media has been lying to you.
Our communities are falling apart right in front of our eyes, our economy is falling apart right in front of our eyes, and our entire society is falling apart right in front of our eyes.
So don’t let the mainstream media fool you. The economy really is moving in the wrong direction very rapidly, and it won’t be too long before even they are forced to admit the truth. ~~ Michael Snyder, Michael Snyder’s Substack
So it goes,
Addison Wiggin,
Grey Swan
P.S. Bonus smelling salt: This ten minute Tucker Carlson interview with Jeffery Sachs is worth the ten minutes. The last two minutes especially. Sachs sets the stage by suggesting the Israel lobby is engineering the US involvement in a war with Iran.
He also covers how quickly and easily a nuclear war could eviscerate the planet… and for what?
In the last two minutes, Sachs runs through all the ways the media is complicit, gaslighting Americans on our “conflicts” with Iran, Russia and China – all notable participants in the 16th annual BRICS meeting being held October 22nd, 2024, hosted by Vladmir Putin in Kazan, Russia.
