The Consumer is Breaking but Stocks Do Not Care…For Now

Let us begin with a number that the financial media has chosen, with characteristic cowardice, to bury beneath triumphant headlines about a resilient labor market: 55,000. That is the average monthly job growth in the United States over the past six months. Fifty-five thousand jobs per month for an economy of 330 million people. And of those 55,000 jobs, 54,000 were in healthcare.

Read that again.

The Mirage of Employment

Of every job created in America over the past half year, 98 of every 100 were in a single sector—one that is structurally and inextricably dependent on government spending. Strip away the federal lifeline flowing through Medicare, Medicaid, and the ACA, and the American labor market is essentially flatlined. This is not a strong jobs market. T

his is a government-subsidized jobs market wearing the costume of strength for the benefit of an incurious media and an oblivious Federal Reserve. The private, productive economy—the America that builds, manufactures, transports, and creates genuine wealth—is generating effectively zero net employment. Zero. And yet Jerome Powell, the most dangerous money printer to ever occupy the Eccles Building, sits serenely atop his throne, congratulating himself on maximum employment.

Powell’s Printing Press Runs 24/7

Now let us examine the conduct of the man most directly responsible for the economic catastrophe unfolding before our eyes. Jerome Powell printed $10 billion last week alone. That is a quantitative easing pace of $40 billion per month—and he has conjured $175 billion from thin air since December of last year. Not from savings. Not from production. From nothing. From a computer keystroke and the blind faith of a world that has not yet fully reckoned with the consequences of this madness.

Let the record reflect: this is not stimulus. This is not monetary policy. This is the systematic destruction of the purchasing power of every American who holds dollars, saves dollars, or earns a wage denominated in dollars. Powell’s money printer is the engine of a stealth tax on the middle class—one that never requires a vote, never requires debate, and is never called what it truly is: legalized theft.

The Inflation Catastrophe No One in Washington Will Name

The Consumer Price Index—the government’s own conveniently massaged measure of inflation—rose 3.8% year-over-year in April, with the core rate climbing 2.8%. Inflation has now exceeded the Federal Reserve’s 2% target for more than five consecutive years. Five years! At what point does the 2% target cease to be a goal and become a punchline? I would argue that moment arrived several years ago.

But the Consumer Price Index figure, manipulated and sanitized as it is, does not begin to capture the true devastation. Consider this: the overall CPI shows prices up 30% since the beginning of 2020. Thirty percent. Has your salary risen by a third since the Covid pandemic erupted? Have your wages kept pace with the relentless erosion of your purchasing power? For the overwhelming majority of working Americans, the answer is an emphatic no.

And in communities near data centers, the destruction is even more acute—electricity costs have surged as much as 267% over just five years, per a Bloomberg analysis. That is not inflation. That is annihilation.

And now, the Producer Price Index is sounding an even more terrifying alarm. PPI surged 1.4% month-over-month and 6% year-over-year. Do not accept the dismissive explanation that this was merely energy prices inflated by the war in Iran. The core PPI—stripping out food and energy entirely—rose 5.2%. That scorching producer inflation is working its way through every supply chain in this country, and it will land, as it always does, on American consumers who are already on their knees.

The Consumer Is Drowning

The American consumer is not merely stretched—they are drowning. Total household debt has reached $18.78 trillion. Let that figure register. Auto loan delinquencies have hit record highs. Credit card delinquencies have hit record highs. These are not lagging indicators of manageable stress. These are flashing red signals of a consumer sector in outright distress, one in which surging debt levels and rising interest rates have combined into an inescapable vise grip.

Americans are not falling behind on their obligations because they are irresponsible in isolation. They are falling behind because the Federal Reserve’s interest rate repression has made debt cheap for a decade and a half—luring households into a trap that is now snapping shut.

The Business Debt Time Bomb

The bad news does not end with consumers. Total business debt has more than doubled since 2007, rising to over $22 trillion—equivalent to 70% of GDP. That is the identical ratio that existed at the outset of the Global Financial Crisis. Our debt-disabled and inflation-ravaged economy has been kept artificially alive by the Fed’s rate repression regime, but that regime is failing.

Despite every tool in Powell’s arsenal aimed at suppressing interest rates, the bond market is refusing to cooperate. Rates are rising because the market, unlike our central bank, cannot ignore reality indefinitely. The Producer Price Index is not wrong. The bond market is not wrong. Only Washington and the Fed are still pretending.

What Comes Next

The picture I have painted is not pessimistic conjecture. It is documented, data-driven reality. A recession is not a tail risk—it is the destination toward which every one of these data points is pointing. An economy cannot sustain record household debt, record delinquencies, collapsing real wages, a labor market propped up entirely by government-dependent healthcare jobs, and an accelerating producer price spiral without eventually confronting the reckoning it has so desperately tried to avoid. The bill for five years of monetary malpractice is coming due.

At Pento Portfolio Strategies, our proprietary model measures precisely these intersections of inflation and growth. We are positioned accordingly—holding assets that perform in an inflationary, debt-distressed environment while maintaining the flexibility to capitalize on the dislocation that is coming. We are fully prepared to navigate around this coming economic storm; while most of Wall Street is aboard a rudderless ship with a blind captain.  

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(Featured image by Vitaly Gariev via Unsplash)

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Michael Pento is the President and Founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies, produces the weekly podcast called, “The Mid-week Reality Check”  and Author of the book “The Coming Bond Market Collapse.”

This commentary is published by Pento Portfolio Strategies LLC (“PPS”), a Registered Investment Adviser. The information contained herein is provided for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice, a solicitation, or an offer to buy or sell any security or investment product. Past performance is not indicative of future results. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal.