PRESS RELEASE
Fed Hyperinflation Reaching the End of the Road; Economy Sinks Again
April 3, 2015 (EIRNS)—Following the Labor Department’s much-lower-than-expected U.S. jobs-growth report for March, financial media are now convinced the Federal Reserve won’t raise interest rates this year—extending the six-year trail of zero-interest policy indefinitely into the economic swamps ahead. Some are even speaking in a horrified hush of the possible advent of "QE V." Obama’s "recovery" is going into recession again, at least a double dip, although Europe and Japan more frankly admit at least three dips, though eschewing the depression reality.
The Atlanta Federal Reserve, which operates a new data tool claiming to estimate the GDP annual growth rate in real time, found in its April 2 update that the U.S. economy is in zero growth in the first quarter, and going negative at the end of the quarter.
The Labor Department’s March employment report showed a low growth of 126,000 jobs, with the January and February figures being revised downward besides. There was another drop in the labor force participation rate and a shrinkage of the labor force by about almost 100,000 in the month, as more than 275,000 left it. Some 93.2 million eligible Americans are now outside the labor force, an increase of another 2.1 million from one year ago; so the pace of dropout has not abated in the slightest. There was no job growth at all in any goods-producing sector, with a loss of 30,000 jobs in mining (in this case, in fracking). And average weekly wages fell again, this time in absolute terms.
Only worse than the jobs report, was Obama’s comment on it:
"Some economies around the world are slowing down. Europe is not having growth; Asia’s slowing down. We have the only strong economy. But we’re affected by other parts of the world."
This was a bald-faced, self-serving, and vindictive lie.
The Commerce Department also happened to report that new orders for manufactured goods in the United States economy have dropped for four straight months as of yesterday’s report on February.
The Fed, having seen the economy slide since it stopped pumping the stock markets by ending QE IV in November, is effectively paralyzed. Its zero-rate policies are filling bubbles with debt without touching the real economy—interestingly, total debt in the U.S. economy grew by $200 billion in the first quarter while GDP apparently did not grow at all. But its supposed plan to start raising rates is being pushed further and further into the future.
