Liz Claman, Gene Epstein, Jim Grant, Peter Schiff, David Tice, Tom Woods at the NYC Premier of Jimmy Morrison's "The Bubble" Order The Bubble here

November Personal Income and Spending Positive

On Friday, all of the major U.S. stock market indexes finished the day and the week positive, in record territory. The only index not in record territory (but it did make a new 52-week high) is the Russell 2000. The supposed catalyst for Friday's optimism was a better than expected report on Personal Income & Spending for November. They were looking for personal spending to rise by .3% following the prior month's flat number.  They actually revised that one up to +.1%, and the November number came out at +.5%, so incomes rising.  Spending came in and met expectations of +.4%, so apparently the savings rate ticked up a bit. But this was better than expected. I think that caused some optimism on Wall Street.

Kansas City Manufacturing Index Disappoints

But the markets likely would have gone up, anyway, even if that number disappointed. We did get weak data from manufacturing.  Kansas City manufacturing number came out for November.  It was supposed to be weak at a -3%, but it was even weaker at -8%. That is the lowest level for this index in 4 years. . In fact, we've had 6 consecutive monthly declines in the Kansas City Manufacturing Index, and that really is par for the course. We get stronger economic data when it comes to people spending money but we have weaker data when it comes to generating real production, real wealth, goods production manufacturing - all that data comes out weaker than expected.

U.S. Steel Lays off 1,500 Workers in Michigan

In fact, we got news on Friday that U.S. is going to be laying off more than 1500 workers in the state of Michigan. Of course, this flies in the face of the fantasy that is being promoted by Donald Trump that the steel industry is back - the steel industry is booming. He's been talking a lot since he's been elected about the steel industry, in particular, about how he saved it, and how it's great. But here we are, laying off workers, shutting down production facilities.  This is a sign that reality is in direct contradiction to President Trump's fantasy.

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