This week in 1965, the world received an answer to the question that perplexed an entire generation: Does Keith Richards dream?
Keith Richards, guitarist for the mega-rock band The Rolling Stones, who made all other rock stars look like strait-laced accountants, who never met a foreign substance he didn’t snort, who, along with cockroaches, would be the only creature to survive a nuclear holocaust, dreamed just like the rest of us.
Except a dream from Keith Richards, as you might imagine, is much, much better. You see, Keith Richards, in an alcohol-induced slumber one night, drifted off and dreamed of a riff and a chorus to beat all the others. He just couldn’t remember it the next morning. Luckily for him, he pushed the record button on a cassette player next to the bed and had captured about fifty seconds of what he had played as he was dreaming and drifting off.
Today, you know the dream as a little song called “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” a song about sexual frustration and commercialism, a song from the vault of Keith Richards’ own personal Sandman, a song which would eventually be voted as the #2 song of all time.
This month’s economic indicators are a little like that—we can’t get no satisfaction. But we try. And we try. And we try.
Take for instance, wages: for a second month in a row, Rapid City has a higher average weekly wage than Sioux Falls; a first in the history of the two communities. Primary jobs are up and the same is true for airport passengers and for hotel occupancy. Housing starts and building valuation are also strong. Same with gross sales. Even housing prices in two of the three zip codes are down from a year ago.
But something’s not quite right and that something is inflation and interest rates. Last month (and the month before and the month before), we wrote about the need for the Fed to begin cutting interest rates, despite concerns of lingering inflation, if they were going to stick a soft landing. Well, they failed to cut rates yet again due to that very fear, and the economy is left to suffer the consequences.
We get it. The national inflation number is still over 2%, which is the Fed’s targeted rate. But here in the Midwest, we are already under the 3% mark, and as we all know, Midwest knows best. Inflation is coming down around these parts. We continue to see rising vacancy rates (although not like in the major cities where vacancy rates are well over 20%). And with the prime rate currently locked in cement at 8.5%, no one is satisfied in the least.
Odds are we’ll see no interest-rate relief until 2025 at this point. By then it will have been too late. There will have been no soft landing. It might just be Keith Richards and cockroaches running the economy.
Stay safe and God-speed.
Tom
