Business

Despite record high stock prices, soaring consumer sentiment measures, and the constant Fed-spun narrative that incomes will rise amid 'full-employment', the latest survey of Americans by The New York Fed signals hope is collapsing for a spending renaissance...

Median household spending growth expectations tumbled from 3.29% in March to 2.58% in April, lowest level in data going back to June 2013..

Still, as long as NFLX, AAPL, AMZN, and GOOG are rallying, this is nothing to worry about, right?

“The trifling economy of paper, as a cheaper medium, or its convenience for transmission, weighs nothing in opposition to the advantages of the precious metals: that it is liable to be abused, has been, is, and forever will be abused, in every country in which it is permitted…” Thomas Jefferson

The US has seen accelerated debt build-up since the early 1980s, before culminating in the financial crisis of 2008-2009.

During last year's Jackson Hole meeting, in a rare moment of truth St. Louis Fed president James Bullard discussed "asset bubbles" with CNBC's Steve Liesman, and said that "the Fed model has nothing about asset price bubbles, most models don't have anything about that", and as a result no Fed model ever forecasts asset bubbles, which incidentally explains why the traditional side-effect of Fed policy over the past decade has been, drumroll, asset bubbles.

Undeterred by earlier failure to jawbone the price of oil higher, moments ago a new barrage of headlines hit courtesy of Reuters reiterating more of the same, and adding a new spin, namely that this time around the oil considered oil production cut extension will be nine not six months, thus lasting at least through March 2018.

The forced deleveraging of China's WMP-driven excess was not helped overnight by disappointing trade data as both import and export growth slumped.

April Imports grew at just 11.9% YoY (in USD terms), dramatically less than the 18.0% expectations and well down from March's 20.3% growth.

April Exports grew at 8.0% YoY (in USD terms), less than half the growth of March (16.4% YoY) and well below the 11.3% expectations.