Friday 03-04-16

Why The Recession Has Already Started

Harry Dent:  So the S&P 500 is out of correction for now and the coast is clear. NOT! This is exactly what we’ve been predicting would happen – after reaching new lows, stocks would have to bounce before they inevitably resume their longer-term trend, which is down.
But stocks haven’t been the only victims of late. Just a couple weeks ago the January nonfarm payroll report came in at 151,000 jobs. So much for the expected 190,000! And of the ones reported, they were mostly low-wage jobs.
Pile that on top of the disappointing Christmas and retail sales in December. Not to mention falling stock earnings and sales growth, the worst December-to-January stock performance to date, and another banking crisis looming in Europe, especially Italy. There’s economic weakness everywhere you look!

All of this is leading me to believe that the next recession – which will lead into an even greater DEPRESSION – is not a few months away. I think it’s already begun.
Think back to the Great Recession in 2008. By the time we figured out it had started, it was months after the fact. It officially started in January 2008, three months after the stock market peaked in early October. And jobs didn’t peak and start to decline until four months later that May. Only then did the stock market see its sharp and deep crash between June and early November.

Well, of course it did! The jobs report is a lagging indicator! It doesn’t tell us anything about where we are now, which is probably why the Fed and markets-on-crack love it. Yet they think it’s the most important report that comes out. Go figure. (By the way, real estate is another lagging indicator, and Lance will have more on that for you tomorrow to tell you where we’ve been, and to give you an idea of where we’re going.)

David Stockman recently pointed out a better indicator for jobs that his colleague Lee Adler tracks.
Unlike the nonfarm payrolls report, where there’s a lot of room to fudge the numbers, this other indicator is in real time and goes right to the source: payroll! Specifically, payroll taxes that the IRS withholds from businesses.
It’s pretty obvious that if the IRS is withholding fewer payroll taxes, then there aren’t as many people on payroll. As it turns out, the trend in monthly data has been clearly downward since 2011. And the last two months are worse. Lee Adler’s daily data shows that jobs flattened in December and declined 5% in January.
Given that this is in real time, sounds like we’re already in a recession!
But let’s take a look at another indicator that shows we’re already there. This one most surprised me: the Restaurant Performance Index. What sector would you expect to benefit more from freed-up spending thanks to lower oil prices? But look where it is today:

By falling below the 100-level line, restaurants are officially in a period of contraction. The index fell to a negative reading of 99.7 in December from 101.3 in November. That’s a 1.6% drop in a month! We haven’t seen a drop this steep since late 2007!
It gets really ugly when you start digging into the index. Among the eight indicators that make it up, the December decline occurred in all of them.
For example, 73% of restaurants reported higher same-store sales in July. As of December, only 42% of them do. Ouch.
And whereas only 13% of restaurants were reporting lower same-store sales in April, now it’s 43% – more than the 42% on higher same-store sales I just mentioned. Sure, it’s higher by just a percent, but still, that’s a pivotal shift in momentum!
Digging deeper, 33% of restaurants reported higher customer traffic, but 51% reported a decline. And a quarter of them see worsening economic conditions in the next six months. Only 12% see better.
That likely points to a key tipping point in December. All of which suggests that a recession either started in that month or January.
Of course, most of the economists or analysts in bubble land aren’t seeing this. I can’t say none of them because a few are finally starting to wake up!
After stocks broke below the support level at 1,820 on the S&P 500, we were bound to get another bounce. But a much sharper and larger crash is growing very likely between sometime next month and July – and that won’t be the end of it.
We are not out of the woods yet. And we’re in for a lot of volatility ahead, so don’t expect things to settle down anytime soon.

http://etfdailynews.com/2016/03/01/why-the-recession-has-already-started/

Christianity is extremist, according to almost half US non-religious adults

Almost half of non-religious American adults consider Christianity to be extremist, according to a new study by the Barna Group.

Wikimedia Commons

Christianity is considered extreme by over half of the non-religious American adult population, according to research by Barna.

The new study examined society's current perceptions of faith and Christianity. Forty-five percent of atheists, agnostics, and religiously unaffiliated in America agree with the statement that "Christianity is extremist".
Only 14 per cent of this group strongly disagreed that Christianity is extremist, with 41 per cent only disagreeing 'somewhat'.
The study acknowledges the current political climate as an influencing factor in an increased concern about religious extremism. Three quarters of all Americans – and nine out of 10 American adults with no faith affiliation – agree that "being religiously extreme is a threat to society".
The study also examined what people considered extremist, which ranged from religiously justified violence, to just reading the Bible. More than 40 per cent of those asked considered protesting government policies that conflict with religious views extreme and at least a fifth considered speaking in tongues an extremist activity.

Barna Group

Evangelical Christians were found to be far less likely to perceive the elements assessed in the research to constitute extremism. They were just as likely to consider religious based violence extremist, but there were areas where the evangelical position and that of the "sceptic" (those who self-identify as atheist, agnostic and religiously unaffiliated) diverged hugely.

agnostic and religiously unaffiliated) diverged hugely.

Barna Group

Attempting to convert others to Chrsitianity is considered extreme by just 10 per cent by evangelicals, while 83 per cent of "sceptics" consider it to be so.
Just one per cent of evangelicals believe teaching their children that same-sex relationships are morally wrong is religiously extreme, compared to three-quarters of "sceptics".
"The research starkly demonstrates the ways in which evangelicals and many practising Catholics are out of the cultural mainstream," said David Kinnaman, president of Barna and director of this research.
"This fact explains why millions of devout Christians are experiencing such frustration and concern," he added. "They are feeling out of step with social norms and the cultural momentum. This is most significantly felt when it comes to social views, such as evangelicals' convictions on same-sex relationships."

http://www.christiantoday.com/article/christianity.is.extremist.according.to.almost.half.us.non.religious.adults/80706.htm

 See That Billboard? It May See You, Too

Pass a billboard while driving in the next few months, and there is a good chance the company that owns it will know you were there and what you did afterward.

Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, which has tens of thousands of billboards across the United States, will announce on Monday that it has partnered with several companies, including AT&T, to track people’s travel patterns and behaviors through their mobile phones.

By aggregating the trove of data from these companies, Clear Channel Outdoor hopes to provide advertisers with detailed information about the people who pass its billboards to help them plan more effective, targeted campaigns. With the data and analytics, Clear Channel Outdoor could determine the average age and gender of the people who are seeing a particular billboard in, say, Boston at a certain time and whether they subsequently visit a store.

“In aggregate, that data can then tell you information about what the average viewer of that billboard looks like,” said Andy Stevens, senior vice president for research and insights at Clear Channel Outdoor. “Obviously that’s very valuable to an advertiser.”

Clear Channel and its partners — AT&T Data Patterns, a unit of AT&T that collects location data from its subscribers; PlaceIQ, which uses location data collected from other apps to help determine consumer behavior; and Placed, which pays consumers for the right to track their movements and is able to link exposure to ads to in-store visits — all insist that they protect the privacy of consumers. All data is anonymous and aggregated, they say, meaning individual consumers cannot be identified.

Still, Mr. Stevens acknowledged that the company’s new offering “does sound a bit creepy.”

But, he added, the company was using the same data that mobile advertisers have been using for years, and showing certain ads to a specific group of consumers was not a new idea. “It’s easy to forget that we’re just tapping into an existing data ecosystem,” he said.

In many ways, billboards are still stuck in the old-media world, where companies tried to determine how many people saw billboards by counting the cars that drove by. But in recent years, billboard companies have made more of an effort to step into the digital age. Some billboards, for example, have been equipped with small cameras that collect information about the people walking by. Clear Channel Outdoor’s move is yet another attempt to modernize billboards and enable the kind of audience measurements that advertisers have come to expect.

Privacy advocates, however, have long raised questions about mobile device tracking, particularly as companies have melded this location information with consumers’ online behavior to form detailed audience profiles. Opponents contend that people often do not realize their location and behavior are being tracked, even if they have agreed at some point to allow companies to monitor them. And while nearly all of these companies claim that the data they collect is anonymous and aggregated — and that consumers can opt out of tracking at any time — privacy advocates are skeptical.

“People have no idea that they’re being tracked and targeted,” said Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “It is incredibly creepy, and it’s the most recent intrusion into our privacy.”

The Federal Trade Commission has brought a number of cases related to mobile device tracking and the collection of geolocation information. In 2013, the agency settled charges with the company behind a popular Android app that turned mobile devices into flashlights. The agency said the company’s privacy policy did not inform consumers that it was sharing their location information with third parties like advertisers. Last year, the agency settled charges against Nomi Technologies, a retail-tracking company that uses signals from shoppers’ mobile phones to track their movements through stores. The agency claimed that the company had misled consumers about their opt-out options.

For Clear Channel Outdoor, the goal is to give advertisers tools to buy and measure the effectiveness of outdoor ads that are similar to those they use for digital and mobile ads. It tested the suite of data and analytics, which it calls Radar, with the shoe company Toms and said it found a rise in brand awareness and purchases.

Clear Channel Outdoor will offer Radar in its top 11 markets, including Los Angeles and New York, starting on Monday, with plans to make it available across the country later this year.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/29/business/media/see-that-billboard-it-may-see-you-too.html?_r=0