Post 321

• Campbell’s Soup sales are back in positive territory. 
  • Restaurants getting so expensive people are eating more at home. 
    • But not eating as many snacks. 
• Hudson’s Bay is being liquidated. 
  • But its brands will live on. 
• The percentage of first-time home buyers in the US has plummeted. 
  • It’s a result of deliberate policy. 
• The alcohol industry is still struggling. 
  • Brown Forman, maker of Jack Daniel’s, recently announced their results and they were met with plenty of booze. 
    • Its share price is going down faster than shots of Jack Daniels at a Honky-Tonk line dance. 
• Home sales in the Toronto area are down more than a third from pre-COVID.
  • Yet active listings are way up: over 40%.
• Lululemon comparable store sales in the Americas have not grown for five straight quarters.
• Procter & Gamble sales growth has been declining.
  • And now its number of employees is following suit.
• P&G competitor Kimberly Clark also saw sales weaken and are now in negative territory.
• In Financial Ructions:
  • We look at how real interest rates were distorted into negative territory for years by Ben Bernanke.
    • With other central banks following suit this was the start of the housing affordability crisis in many countries.
  • Manufacturing has been contracting in the US for some time.
    • But prices are rising.
  • Canadian banks may be getting nervous.
  • Activist Treasury Issuance survives the change in government.
• We start Chapter 1 of our book review of The Way the Economy Works: How Economies Fail – and Succeed by Jude Wanniski
  • Government must be of the people and must be trusted.
    • Decadence only occurs when government goes its own way and in a direction different from that demanded by society.