Trending Down

It seems that I am seeing a lot of charts trending down recently.

Strategic Petroleum Reserve

The amount of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve of the United States.

I thought the SPR was established in case of a major supply disruption due to war or natural disaster.

I am guess rising gasoline prices and inflation were viewed as a natural disaster for Biden.

In the meantime the price of oil has increased for five straight weeks and is close to $80/barrel. 

It was $67/barrel a month ago.

Another natural disaster?

Time to start raiding the SPR again?

Federal Government Receipts

Federal government tax receipts were down a massive 7.3% in June on a trailing twelve-month basis compared to the comparable prior period.

With inflation up substantially during that period compared to the prior period, you would expect that alone would have pushed government tax receipts higher.

Credit: https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1680600268054966272

Inflation seems to only be affecting federal government expenditures that have increased by 9% over the last year.

Poppy Growing in Afghanistan

I always wondered why the United States could not rein in the opium production in Afghanistan when our military was controlling the country and we were funding almost all of its government bureaucracy and infrastructure.

It seems that the Taliban have figured out a way to do it.

Credit: https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1679682782459744259

You Need to Learn to Code

Existing Homes for Sale in the United States

Credit: https://twitter.com/DisruptionHedge/status/1682369474580697088

Covid Vaccinations

Those willing to be vaccinated against Covid has dropped to almost zero.

In fact, the CDC stopped reporting vaccination data in mid-May.

The last update looked like this for all doses administered.

Source:https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccine-delivery-coverage

The trend line for the bivalent booster looked like this when the chart was discontinued.

You are not considered fully vaccinated by the CDC unless you have this dose.

Source: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccine-delivery-coverage

When the reporting ceased a mere 17% of Americans had submitted to the bivalent booster dose in the nine months it had been offered.

It seems that at some point people make up their own mind on what is, or is not, beneficial to them rather than being told by the government what is.

The Federal Reserve

The Fed is losing billions of dollars on payments to commercial banks on reverse repos and other payments as interest rates rise.

Of course, they can just print more.

I think it is time to stop.

In more ways than one.