As Government Data Fails and Epstein Files Fly, Stocks Fall
They've done all they can to hide the economic data and bury the Epstein truth. Sisyphus could not have made a more Trumpian effort.
A day after writing again about the inevitable stock market crash that is showing up first in AI stocks, the stock market broadened its slide today with the Dow ending down about 800 points (having fallen about 820 moments before the close) and the Nasdaq down 2.3%. While AI continued to fall today, the big declines broadened into sectors such as communications services and IT. That particularly fits the inevitable broader fall I just said we would see.
All three major averages, as well as the small-cap Russell 2000 index suffered their worst day since Oct. 10. Investors continued to sell shares of technology companies, especially those in the artificial intelligence trade, amid worries about their valuations. Despite the Nasdaq starting off the week strong, the tech-heavy index was on track to close with a third straight day of losses Thursday, weighed down by heavyweights Nvidia, Broadcom and Alphabet. (CNBC)
The usual market dreamers called this a “natural consolidation,” as if the recent 30% fall in two of the big AI stocks is not, in itself, a bear market for those companies. Yet, they fell further today with Oracle sliding another 4.15%. That landed it down 35% from its all-time high on September 10.
One characteristic of the spreading bearish avalanche is that hedge funds have been the biggest sellers while retail investors have continued to prop the market up. I’ll point out, however, that this is how nearly all major turns to a bear market happen. The big money leaves first, using the enthusiasm of late-coming retailer investors who have felt they were missing out as a force to sell into. Eventually, the vacuum created by the big sellers overwhelms the retail investors, and the whole market slides, leaving the retail crowd as the one that absorbs most of the losses. So, retail, take care.
Professional investors have been using the market’s record-setting run as an opportunity to take profits, while retail investors have been doing much of the heavy lifting in the latest run of the three-year-old bull market.
Hedge funds and other institutional clients have been the biggest net sellers of single stocks and exchange-traded funds this year.
That is classic. The retail crowd is last to enter and always last to leave. They are the ones who finally turn the lights off … on themselves.
The data gets dumped … for good
Of course, right when real-world data could bring down the market quickly, the government pulled the move I warned of. The re-opening of government, signed into law late yesterday by President Trump, meant government data could finally be released. Yesterday, I wrote,
As early as tomorrow, the government may be back in business and can start reporting inflation again soon, so maybe the Bureau of Lying Statistics can finally cough the truth out. You’ll hear some loud market cracks whenever that truth starts to come through. However, don’t count on the government getting truthful too quickly, even after it opens. It’s not in its nature….
True to form, the White House was nearly immediate to announce today that the statistics that went conveniently unreported during the shutdown—right during the window where I was saying last summer we’d see inflation really pick up and right as jobs have begun to seriously deteriorate—will now most likely never see the light of day:
Key economic reports for October may not be released at all because of the government shutdown, a senior White House official said Wednesday.
Not hard to see that coming! Now the shutdown has become a convenient excuse for never issuing the data on the flimsy basis that no one was around to even collect it.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that part of the fallout could be lasting damage to the government’s data collection ability.
That, of course, means the Democrats are solely to blame.
“The Democrats may have permanently damaged the Federal Statistical system with October CPI and jobs reports likely never being released,” Leavitt said. “All of that economic data released will be permanently impaired, leaving our policymakers at the Fed, flying blind at a critical period.”
Yes, according to Team Trump, the shutdown may have “permanently impaired” the entire “federal statistical system,” not just the data for October, but the system that collects it. That almost reads like a pre-excuse for why all future negative data will be flawed. As new data in the months ahead comes in and looks as bad as I already expect it will, count on Trump the Truther to say, “The data is sadly fake data now because the Democrats broke the system with their government shutdown.” The excuse is already being laid so that it can readily be picked up.
Oh, and here goes … already … as I read on:
Leavitt added that the shutdown could lower fourth-quarter economic growth by up to 2 percentage points.
It won’t be that the economy has declined when we see it move statistically into recession as it did at the start of this year and as I said it would do again this year: it will be down solely due to the Democrat government shutdown, never mind that those layoffs we’ve been reading about in non-government information sources were not DOGE cuts but were entirely in the private sector.
So, the ground has now been laid by the conveniently and perfectly timed and perfectly drawn-out shutdown to become the scapegoat for the nation’s economic downturn, all of which will be blamed on the DemoRats. It’s always entirely someone else’s fault. At least, I made it clear that you could expect this move before they actually made it, so you know I am not conveniently saying it now.
In fact, I wrote all of the above about how they were laying the groundwork for such claims BEFORE I read their claim just now that falling GDP in the fourth quarter would be due to this shutdown. They are that predictable in how they’ll use the shutdown to escape blame for the failing economy. You can see it coming, and then they do it as quickly as you see where they are going to go with it, even before the GDP data gets released. The data is now not just flawed for October; it has broken the system for all the bad months of reports to come (or as long as they can play that line and get away with it). Mark my word.
And there will be plenty willing to believe them with the Democratic sock puppets to blame.
The reason I say it is a flimsy excuse is brought to light by one economist who explains why the excuse is lame. He says the government could easily go back and collect much of this data in one fell swoop with its next data collection:
Jobs report data should be easy to collect belatedly because it involves asking business for hard numbers, according to Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. In fact, he said the BLS could likely get multiple months’ worth of data during one collection period if needed.
But it won’t do that because the data is now starkly bad, so the less you see of it, the better. It has no incentive to try, and doesn’t care about the integrity. Team Trump will just claim they don’t have the resources to go back and collect the old data as they must now focus on the getting the new data, never admitting they could ask for all missed months with each contact they make.
Roach said previous shutdowns have mostly only resulted in delays of the release of data that the government had already collected. But he said this closure lasted long enough to also keep agencies closed during what would have been their collection periods for these reports.
How convenient.
The Epstain returned today
This one doesn’t look like it is going to wash out as the data shenanigans might. Something else I wrote about yesterday was how the possible opening of governement today would set the government free, at last, to expose all of the Epstein files to public scrutiny … not:
I mean, look at how hard congress and the executive branch have been trying to avoid coughing out the truth about all the Epstein rapes involving young women, in spite of how many women have come forward. You’d think taking out scumbags who do crimes against our young women in this country would be a no-brainer for anyone with any moral fiber who didn’t participate in those crimes. Yet, all congress and the executive branch can seem to do is find ways to endlessly bury it.
But, hey, with a move to reopen government possibly in the offing, maybe they will finally have their hands untied so they can take care of that unpleasant business. [The “not” part in case you didn’t catch it:] Sure, and maybe they will all be caught up to heaven with shining halos on their heads, playing golden harps, too.) For now, about all we have is a bipartisan duo trying to force a vote. I guess they have a few members of congress rallied behind them. It will be interesting (and frustrating) to see how Mike Johnson manages to finagle around it all this time in order to keep his pedo pals safe. (Maybe an early Thanksgiving break for the House followed by a Christmas break to last through the New Year. After all, keeping government shutdown while paying congress doesn’t seem to be any issue for him.)
We’ll see what happens. So far it is all the appearance of halos and hearts. Just exactly enough votes came into place to force things out of Mike Johnson’s clever hands and toward the bipartisan effort to release of all of the documents by a house vote. That came in spite of a Trump emergency meeting yesterday in the White House Situation Room to try to turn a few Republican votes away from releasing the files (particularly Lauren Boebert and MTG).
With the necessary minimum majority needed to force a vote achieved by a single new Democratic member installed in congress, Johnson has announced he will bring the vote forward (because he will have to). No sense waiting for their rebellion to actually be carried out and force the vote against his will now that the numbers are there because the Republican renegades the Trump administration took behind closed doors to persuade held their ground. Good on them!
In fact,
Senior Republicans believe the vote will provoke dozens of their own to vote against the president’s wishes,
… meaning the number will only get worse if the joint measure has to actually go to a vote to force the Speaker’s hand because then members of congress will be forced to go on record as to whether they want to suppress the pedo files or transparently release them. So, of course, Johnson pre-empted all of that and announced he is scheduling a vote to release them. No sense looking like your trying to hold back when you’ve already lost.
Mr Trump, who has accused Democrats of trying to “deflect” attention from their own failings, has been heavy-handedly lobbying against holding the Epstein vote.
His opposition places Republicans in a precarious spot — split between their loyalty to the president and their constituents’ demands for full transparency.
Let’s hope for once transparency wins as the Republican electorate rises up to force it. You can read all the stories about the effort to release the files and the counter-efforts to suppress them and the new revelation tidbits just released from Eptein’s emails in the stories highlighted below.
First some food for thought
(I think the world we choose to create around us projects the soul within us. It is not that we are what we create, but that we create out of what we are.)