Wolf Richter: When The Data Can’t Be Trusted, How The Heck Can We Know How The Economy Is Doing?

Adam Taggart | Thoughtful Money, Released on 8/25/24

The war of conflicting narratives continues. Bulls point to Q2’s robust GDP growth, still relatively low unemployment, an upside surprise in July retail sales, and record high prices for both stocks and existing homes. Bears on the other hand warn about slowing Q3 estimated GDP growth, the triggering of the Sahm rule recession indicator, this week’s massive downward revision in payrolls, rising consumer debt delinquencies and recent surveys reporting that half of American adults have less than $500 in savings. When sentiment is full of such crosscurrents, it’s prudent to seek the counsel of those who take. cold and calculated look at the data, to see what “is” vs what our biases may want us to see. Which is why we’re fortunate to speak with macro analyst Wolf Richter of WolfStreet.com, who will share with us what the charts he regularly compiles are telling him about the true state of today’s economy & markets.

Wolf Richter is the founder of Wolf Street Corp and the publisher of WolfStreet.com. Wolf has over twenty years of C-level operations experience, including turnarounds and a VC-funded startup. He has a BA, MA, and MBA (UT at Austin). In his prior life, he worked in Texas and Oklahoma, including a decade as General Manager and COO of a large Ford dealership and its subsidiaries.

Adam Taggart is the Founder of Thoughtful Money. He is also Co-Founder and former President of Peak Prosperity. Adam is an experienced Silicon Valley internet executive and Stanford MBA. Prior to partnering with Chris Martenson (Adam was General Manager of our earlier site, ChrisMartenson.com), he was a Vice President at Yahoo!, a company he served for nine years. Before that, he did the ‘startup thing’ (mySimon.com, sold to CNET in 2001). As a fresh-faced graduate from Brown University in the early 1990s, Adam got a first-hand look at all that was broken with Wall Street as an investment banking analyst for Merrill Lynch. Most importantly, he’s a devoted husband and dad.

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Oldest
Newest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments