Alternative Visions -Some Key Economic Reports + Evidence Where Trump’s $5T Tax Cuts Are Going -05.04.18

Jack Rasmus comments on today’s Jobs Report, explaining why little wage growth is occurring, and on the Federal Reserve Bank’s plans for interest rate hikes in 2018-19. The Fed is raising rates not because of a 2% inflation target, but to finance $1 trillion annual budget deficits for the next decade and a total Federal debt of more than $33 trillion by 2027 due largely to Trump’s $5t tax cuts. Early evidence of where the tax windfall for business and investors is going is discussed: stock buybacks-dividend payouts now exceeding last year’s $1 total by as much as 50% for 2018. Apple’s record $100 billion buyback plan. Also, tax windfall funneling into Mergers & Acquisitions activity, now running at $1.7 trillion and double the pace of 2016-17. Third, US investors’ tax windfall being diverted to Japan and Europe stock markets, projected at $1.2 trillion now compared to $350 billion a year earlier. Another report discussed is Deutsche Bank’s warning that US government debt levels have doubled the probability of a US debt crisis. And a final report that foreign investors are slowing new purchases of their US Treasury $6.3 trillion debt significantly: Foreign held US debt has fallen from 55% in 2008 to 43% in 2017, and foreign buyers of current accelerating Fed auctions of Treasuries now constitute only 16% to the total.