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The Wheels Just Fell Off: US Trucking Has Not Been This Bad Since The Financial Crisis

Earlier this month, we profiled yet another casualty of slumping trade, falling commodity prices, and mediocre, double-adjusted economic “growth”: trucking

More specifically, we highlighted the dramatic November decline in Class 5-8 orders. The numbers for Class 8 - those trucks with a gross weight over 33K pounds and which, you’re reminded, make up the backbone of U.S. trade infrastructure and logistics - were a veritable disaster. 

The Fed Just Gave The Treasury A Record $19 Billion Holiday Bonus

Something surprising emerged in the latest Daily Treasury Statement report showing the sources and uses of operating cash of the US Treasury: the line item for Federal Reserve Earnings exploded to $19.3 billion on December 28, doubling the amount of cash the Fed had remitted to the Treasury for all of 2015.

 

This record, unprecedented one-day payment is shown in the chart below:

 

And just like that the Fed, also known as the printer of US currency, gave the Treasury a one time record bonus of $19 billion.

The Next Time Your Financial Advisor Tells You To Buy Stocks, Show Them This Chart

Earlier today, we noted that while the market was surging last week, the smart money was selling. This comes at the same time as ICI reported major redemptions from both stock ($3.9 billion) and bond ($4.5 billion) mutual funds, even as corporate buybacks were decelerating, leading to the question of just who was buying stocks during the Santa rally of the past two weeks.

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