The reason I'm pointing these facts out is mainly because they're being totally ignored by business media - it's unbelievable to me that the biggest financial stories of the year are simply being ignored. For example, the completely shocking official jobs numbers which show that ALL of the new jobs since October 2019 went to new migrants while the native born workers in this country LOST 1.4 million jobs!
"How is this not the biggest political talking point right now: since October 2019, native-born US workers have lost 1.4 million jobs; over the same period foreign-born workers have gained 3 million jobs."
Jaime Dimon confirmed this week many of the things I have been writing about for months; he even used the word: "Stagflation" without giving me any credit at all!
"JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Tuesday he wouldn’t rule out stagflation, even with greater confidence recently that inflation is coming off its highs.
“I would say the worst outcome is stagflation — recession, higher inflation,” Dimon said at a fall conference from the Council of Institutional Investors in Brooklyn, New York. “And by the way, I wouldn’t take it off the table.”
Too late Jaime! Stagflation is already on the table now and we're all gonna feel it soon. Well, maybe not Jaime and other uber-wealthy tycoons but most of us are already suffering from the giant chasm opening up between the earnings we bring home and the cost it takes to maintain our standard of living.
So how do we make sense of rate cuts when interest is already the governments biggest annual expense? The US now clearly has an acute need to sell more debt to fund it's exploding interest payments but they're LOWERING the rate offered to global bond buyers?
The contrast between the official narrative and reality regarding the economy is astonishing to me. For my regular readers and clients this shouldn't be surprising but it is quite remarkable how long this runaway train can run on fumes. I wrote a blog post last year in August called "Gaslighting through the credibility gap" where I described very similar conditions over a year ago yet, here we still are! Those of us paying attention have been in crash positions now for quite a while waiting for what seems inevitable: Crashing demand, paralyzing defaults, government disfunction and maybe civil war. These things start gradually but start to snowball quickly. The MSNBC crowd will be shocked, SHOCKED when they learn that their trusted sources misled them.
So, what is a business owner looking to grow his/her business, feed his/her family and pursue his/her own financial independence to do? This election season has caused so much uncertainty that many business owners are putting growth plans on hold until the landscape is more clear. I wish I could offer encouragement to those folks however I truly believe the election aftermath will be worse than event itself.
Bottom line is, regardless of what conditions are on any day, business owners have to open their doors and do business as best they can. Right now the changes are coming fast and furious and, as usual, I'm doing my best to keep requests funded. There's plenty of work to be done right now so here's a current recap of what working capital programs are available to businesses:
SBA term loan - 10 year terms, monthly payments. APR is Prime+2.5%
MCA - Up to $10MM unsecured cash tied to revenues - Factor rates 1.21-1.48
LOI - Revolving line up to $5MM, 1.8-3.2 points per month for capital used - weekly payments.
CRE - With the exception of office buildings, just about everything else is still getting funded for commercial real estate. Rates 7.4% - 8.75+%
I'm in all week so call if you need to speak with me.
Cheers!