The Gladstone
Economic Newsletter
Volume 18, No. 8
June 7, 2023
“Bracing for Impact.”
“Severe Consumer Weakness on a Large Scale..”
DISCLAIMER: The following is not intended as investment advice, but is rather intended to promote your own analysis of markets and the economic climate. The author is not a registered investment professional. Any action taken as a result of this analysis carries a high degree of risk. This newsletter contains the personal opinion of the author.
Dear Readers-
Do not be lulled by the seemingly strong US equity markets and the stream of endless economic propaganda we are deluged with. Something is going to break. Bigly. And soon.
Business conditions are horrible. I cannot even begin to list the potential crises the world economy faces. Everything we are told on our daily propaganda feeds is just that- propaganda. Here are some charts that will help make my points:
Jim Reed of Deutsche Bank created the following chart showing the continuing plunge in M2 money supply. This is not good!
The Chicago Purchasing Manager Index has declined for nine months in a row, and is now down to 40.4…..
The Dallas Fed Survey has shown a similar long decline:
Jim Reed of Deutsche Bank also did the following chart which shows the ongoing crisis in the US banking system. Just because we don’t have headlines on new bank failures doesn’t mean the underlying rot in the banking system is not spreading:
The RV Industry Association published the following chart showing recreational vehicle sales are back to 2011-2012 levels. In one year or so, the 2011-2012 sales level will look good in comparison to what I foresee for the American consumer in the coming year.
We have to face facts. The American consumer is way beyond the point of struggling now. We have a significant proportion of consumers who are only keeping the remnants of their lifestyles in place by using credit cards. This is a recipe for disaster. Yes, the Fortune 500 companies have kept their sales revenues relatively intact. These companies have only accomplished this be aggressively raising sales prices in a climate of declining unit sales volumes. This has reached its limits. The American consumer has very little disposable income left. The author sees this throughout the entire US economy.
The only good news that I have is that western reservoirs such as Oroville Lake and Lake Shasta in California, and the Great Salt Lake, have rapidly refilled. I am interested to see the levels that Lake Powell and Lake Mead on the Colorado River reach this year as a result of the colossal snowfall many western regions received this winter.
This will be a short(er) newsletter. The needless carnage in Ukraine continues. This war should never have happened, and the US/UK/NATO countries have no reverse gear whatsoever. The only course of action at this point is for Russia to conquer the entirety of Ukraine. Anything else only lets the Ukraine problem recur.
The latest war crime committed by the Ukraine regime is the destruction of the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River. Western media is desperately trying to convince us this was the work of the Russians, “just like their blowing up the Nordstream Pipeline” Russia had no reason to commit this act, whereas the Ukrainians had lost Bakhmut and had the failure of the first phase of their vaunted offensive to gloss over in the press. The only thing the Ukrainian regime really excels at is the propaganda war, and that war has become incredibly threadbare.
Ukraine has had a large number of military disasters. The US and Ukraine set up an ambush of two Russian jets and two Russian helicopters in southern Russia, presumably with US missiles. Russia has retaliated with an almost continuous rain of missiles on military targets in Ukraine. The Russians successfully identified the transit of the UK-supplied depleted uranium munitions into Ukraine, and the Russians took out these munitions with a missile attack on the storage depot at Khelnitsky in western Ukraine. This strike resulted in two spectacular mushroom clouds, a reading of 3.4 on the Richter scale, and reports of a slightly radioactive cloud that blew into Poland. A similar strike occurred at the same time at Ternopil in western Ukraine. These strikes have been followed by innumerable other strikes at Ukrainian supply depots, unit assembly areas and command centers.
Moon of Alabama had a comment on a recent strike on a command center in Odessa:
“During the night of 30th May, a strike in Odessa killed 36 nato officiers: 22 brits, 8 germans, 4 yankees (one cia) and 2 french.
Those surviving the strike were sent through Moldovia to different european hospitals.”
In the last few days, another star (for a dead operative) has been added to the memorial wall at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. This may corroborate the above account.
A missile strike on the command bunker under the GUR headquarters in Kiev resulted in many western casualties, the probable death of Ukraine’s intelligence chief (Budanov), and two other western airplanes having to evacuate wounded NATO personnel to Germany. There is a report that the Russians had held off striking the GUR headquarters due to Russian military prisoners being held in the building. The Russian intelligence capabilities have gotten so good that Russia was able to identify a time when no Russian prisoners were held in the upper building, in order to make this strike.
As of June 2nd, the total losses of Ukraine (as per Russian MOD figures) are “432 airplanes and 236 helicopters, 4,452 unmanned aerial vehicles, 424 air defence missile systems, 9,361 tanks and other armoured combat vehicles, 1,110 combat vehicles equipped with MLRS, 4,984 field artillery cannons and mortars, as well as 10,624 units of special military equipment have been destroyed during the special military operation.”
The losses from the first three days of the “great” Ukrainian military offensive are horrific. The following is from June 6th, as per a translated statement on Southfront.org:
“According to the defense minister, during the 3 days of fighting in all directions, the losses of the Kyivb regime reached 3,715 troops, 52 battle tanks, 207 armoured fighting vehicles, 134 motor vehicles, 5 aircraft, 2 helicopters, 48 pieces of field artillery and 53 unmanned aerial vehicles. At the same time, a total of 71 servicemen died and 210 were wounded in repelling the Kyiv offensive. The Russian losses in military equipment were 15 battle tanks, 9 infantry fighting vehicles, 2 motor vehicles and 9 guns.”
That is a huge amount of armor for the Ukrainians to lose. Even with shipments from NATO, Ukraine may have had only 400 tanks left as of June 1st.
I will close this newsletter with what I hope is a joke and not a real report:
“There is a story told of the US Military Attaché in Belgrade being taken on a tour of the Military Museum there by a Yugoslav/Serbian Officer - they stand in front of the shot down F-117 display….
US military officer „what was it like going against the mightiest military ever ?“
Serbian Officer „we never fought the Russians, so I wouldn’t know“ “
Now for a few graphics: