1. Spent.
US households have exhausted the pile of cash squirreled away during the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “The latest estimates of overall pandemic excess savings remaining in the US economy have turned negative, suggesting that American households fully spent their pandemic-era savings as of March 2024,” San Francisco Fed economists Hamza Abdelrahman and Luiz Oliveira said in a blog post published Friday. The duo have been updating their estimates regularly over time, and last year flagged that the US savings surplus was lasting longer than previously expected, helping to hold up spending. (Source: fortune.com, frbsf.org)
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research and authors’ calculations.
2. Bad News for President Biden. This from CNN:
Trump’s support in the poll among registered voters holds steady at 49% in a head-to-head matchup against Biden, the same as in CNN’s last national poll on the race in January, while Biden’s stands at 43%, not significantly different from January’s 45%.
Looking back, 55% of all Americans now say they see Trump’s presidency as a success, while 44% see it as a failure. In a January 2021 poll taken just before Trump left office and days after the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, 55% considered his time as president a failure.
Assessing Biden’s time in office so far, 61% say his presidency thus far has been a failure, while 39% say it’s been a success. That’s narrowly worse than the 57% who called the first year of his administration a failure in January 2022, with 41% calling it a success. (Source: cnn.com)
3. This from Gallup:
With Americans less optimistic about the state of the U.S. economy than they have been in recent months and concern about inflation persisting, their confidence in President Joe Biden to recommend or do the right thing for the economy is among the lowest Gallup has measured for any president since 2001. But Biden is not alone in facing a skeptical public, as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, the Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, and presumptive presidential nominee Republican Donald Trump garner confidence ratings below 50%.
Forty-six percent of U.S. adults say they have "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in Trump to do or recommend the right thing for the economy, while fewer say the same of Biden (38%), Powell (39%), and Democratic (38%) and Republican (36%) leaders in Congress. (Source: news.gallup.com)
4. Also from Gallup:
For the third year in a row, the percentage of Americans naming inflation or the high cost of living as the most important financial problem facing their family has reached a new high. The 41% naming the issue this year is up slightly from 35% a year ago and 32% in 2022. Before 2022, the highest percentage mentioning inflation was 18% in 2008. Inflation has been named by less than 10% in most other readings since the question was first asked in 2005.
Gallup has asked Americans at least annually since 2005 to name, without prompting, the top financial problem facing their family. Inflation has topped the list for the past three years. The cost of owning or renting a home ranks second this year at 14%, a new high for that issue.
Other significant problems Americans identify include having too much debt (8%), healthcare costs (7%), lack of money or low wages (7%), and energy costs or gas prices (6%). (Source: news.gallup.com)
5. Also from Gallup:
Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index is -29 in April, nine points lower than March’s -20 reading. This is the first time in five months that confidence has not seen a marginal improvement, and the first decline in economic confidence in the past seven months.
Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index summarizes Americans’ evaluations of current economic conditions (as excellent, good, only fair or poor) and their outlook for the economy (whether they believe it is getting better or worse).
The index has a theoretical range of +100 (if all Americans rate current conditions as excellent or good and say the economy is getting better) to -100 (if all Americans rate the economy as poor and say it is getting worse). In Gallup’s trend of these measures since 1992, the highest ECI score was +56 in January 2000, and the lowest was -72 in October 2008. (Source: news.gallup.com)
6. This from The Washington Post:
Black Americans’ desire to vote in this year’s election is down sharply compared with four years ago, according to a Washington Post-Ipsos poll conducted last month — a potentially troublesome sign for President Biden, whose ascent was powered by Black voters in 2020 and who has intensified efforts to court them before November’s election.
The poll of more than 1,300 Black adults finds that 62 percent of Black Americans say they’re “absolutely certain to vote,” down from 74 percent in June 2020. The 12-percentage-point drop outpaces the four-point drop among Americans overall, from 72 percent to 68 percent.
The drop in turnout interest is sharpest among younger Black people, who have always been less enthusiastic about Biden and have now shifted to majority disapproval of his job performance. Overall, nearly 1 in 5 Black voters who turned out for Biden in 2020 say they are less than certain about whether they will vote at all this year. (Source: washingtonpost.com)
7. But……Biden’s prospects look better in a new ABC News Poll:
Locked in a tight race for the presidency, Donald Trump prevails in trust to handle most issues in a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, yet President Joe Biden scores competitively on key personal attributes -- leaving wide open the question of who'll prevail come Election Day, now six months away.
Excluding people who say they wouldn't vote, Trump has 46% support, Biden 44%, in this national survey of more than 2,200 adults. (Nearly all the rest say they'd pick someone else.) Among registered voters, it's Biden 46%, Trump 45%. Among likely voters, it's Biden 49%, Trump 45%, again not a significant difference. (Source: abcnews.go.com)
8. Gloomy Canadians:
Canadians are feeling gloomy about their personal finances — and Generation Z is the gloomiest of all.
The Nanos Pocketbook Index, a measure of how people perceive their personal finances and job security, fell to 50 last week, matching its April 2020 low. It’s one component of the broader Bloomberg Nanos Canadian Confidence Index, which also gauges the public’s expectations about the economy.
Young people are driving the pocketbook index lower. For respondents aged 18 to 29 — who are mostly members of Gen Z, along with the youngest millennials — the index fell to 40, the lowest recorded in its 16-year history.
The youth index has been in free-fall since the last week of March, down 17 points in just five weeks. The recent sharp deterioration is worse than in April 2020, the depths of the pandemic recession, when Canada’s gross domestic product fell by 10.7%. (Source: bloomberg.com)
9. A seismic reversal of fortunes in Scotland:
Labour is set to overtake the SNP at Westminster and Holyrood to become the dominant force in Scottish politics once more after the leadership crisis that forced Humza Yousaf to resign as first minister, a poll for The Sunday Times has found.
The party, led by Anas Sarwar, has achieved its greatest lead over the SNP in almost a decade with the number of nationalist seats at Westminster expected to tumble by about two thirds.
In a seismic reversal of fortunes, the SNP’s streak of four consecutive Scottish parliament election victories would also come to an end with Labour returning to power for the first time since 2007.
The poll by Norstat (formerly Panelbase) — among the first to be conducted since Yousaf stood down — shows the SNP vote share in a Westminster election would collapse to its lowest level since the 2014 independence referendum. The party would hold 15 of its 43 seats with Scottish Labour winning 28, a dramatic increase from its current two. (Source: thetimes.co.uk)
10. Health care costs on the ballot in Switzerland.
Two initiatives designed to limit what Swiss citizens have to pay for health care are on track to pass in a national vote next month, according to a preliminary poll.
The twin motions are seen getting at least 52% support, Swiss national broadcaster SRG SSR — which commissioned the surveys — said on Friday. The initiatives will be on a June 9 ballot, with another two measures also up for a vote.
Both health-care proposals appear to have hit a nerve in a country where citizens pay more than those of any other nation in continental Europe for their medical services. The government has said that Swiss health insurers’ expenses increased some 31% over the past decade, resulting in regular premium hikes for consumers.
The two measures are on the ballot because their supporters gathered the required signatures under the country’s system of direct democracy. Proposed by the Social Democrats and the Center Alliance, they broach the same topic, though they diverge vastly on how to tackle the problem.
The Social Democrats’ “initiative to limit health insurance premiums” sets a fixed ceiling for such payments at 10% of a person’s income — with the government covering the difference.
The centrists’ “initiative to limit health-care costs” approaches the issue more broadly by linking insurers’ cost increases to the pace of wage growth.
The former plan appears to be garnering stronger support and more decisively formed opinions, suggesting a higher chance of passing, according to the poll. (Source: bloomberg.com)
11. Shocking Stats of the Day:
The US has added $100,000 in Federal debt EVERY SECOND over the last year.
Since March 1st, the US has been adding a staggering $10 billion in debt PER DAY.
That's $417 million per hour, $6.9 million per minute and $115,740 per second.
As interest rate cuts are priced out, we could see $1.7 TRILLION in annual interest expense in just one year from now.
Even if the Fed cut rates 6 times this year, interest expense will still hit $1.2 trillion next year.
12. Chart of the Day:
Bonus Item: The Dog-Killing Governor.
81% of Americans disapprove of Governor Kristi Noem (R-SD)'s decision to shoot her 14-month-old puppy Cricket after the dog allegedly misbehaved on a pheasant hunt. (Source: politico.com, italics mine)