Stocks rose last week as President Trump backtracked on his stance against further economic stimulus.
Markets also are rising on the expectation that Joseph Biden will be the new Presidential Reality Show® champion, thus injecting yet larger doses of monetary methadone to boost the sagging economy.
Weakening jobs numbers also are pressuring Congress to expand its economic rescue efforts.
Airlines have been a focus of stimulus talks. Despite air travel being down, American Airlines Group and United Airline Holdings’ share prices each rose 4.3 percent; Delta Air Lines gained 3.5 percent.
TRENDPOST: In the world of market madness, airline stocks rose despite the fact IATA reported that air passenger service globally slowed dramatically in mid-August.
“August’s disastrous traffic performance puts a cap on the industry’s worst-ever summer season. International demand recovery is virtually nonexistent, and domestic markets in Australia and Japan actually regressed in the face of new outbreaks and travel restrictions,” IATA director general Alexandre de Juniac said.
IATA reports international flights plunged 88.3 percent year over year and U.S. domestic flights fell nearly 70 percent.
They reported that in Europe, international travel slumped fell 79.9 percent year over year in August, and with new lockdowns and other COVID restrictions being imposed by governments on the continent, the air travel future is trending sharply downward.
IATA’s director general Alexandre de Juniac told Travel Weekly, “Absent additional government relief measures and a reopening of borders, hundreds of thousands of airline jobs will disappear.”
TREND FORECAST: Congress and the Trump administration will finalize a new stimulus program before the election. Politicians will keep pouring cheap money into the economy.
Gold fell nearly 2 percent today and the dollar rose on news there is no stimulus deal and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) prediction that the economic future is not as bleak as they previously thought.
We disagree with the IMF (“International Mafia Federation”) forecast of a rising economic tide. The “Greatest Depression” has begun and the socioeconomic and geopolitical implications are, and will be, disastrous… as we have noted in scores of Trends Journal articles and forecasts.
Again, whether now or later, there will be trillions of digital dollars backed by noting and printed on nothing injected into Wall Street and the economy. Thus, the more money dollars they dump into the system, the further its value declines and the higher gold prices will rise.
China Up, Oil Up
Oil prices reached a five-week high last week as hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico raised fears of supply shortages.
Today, on news that China’s exports and imports hit record highs, Brent Crude jumped 1.6 percent. As the world’s #1 oil importer, with business going and demand for oil increasing, China’s oil imports rose 5.5 percent from September… spiking 17.5 percent from a year earlier.
As we have forecast, the 20th century was the American century, the 21st century will be China’s. The business of China has been business. The business of America since the end of World War II has been war.
China’s exports rose 9.9 percent in September, and imports surged 13.2 percent… far above the 0.3 rise projected by economists polled by Reuters.
China Up, U.S. Down
While China’s exports sharply rose, the U.S. trade deficit climbed to $67 billion in August, the widest gap in 14 years.
Imports rose 3.2 percent during the month, while exports grew by just 2.2 percent, according to the U.S. census bureau.
The deficit with China was $26.4 billion, $15.7 billion with the European Union, and $12.5 billion with Mexico.
TRENDPOST: President Trump gained the presidency in 2016, in part, by vowing to cut the trade deficit. After taking office, he imposed a range of tariffs on imported goods from several trading partners.
The strategy has not worked, especially during a global economic shutdown. During the first eight months of this year, the overall trade deficit was 5.7 percent greater than in 2019.
