@bennyjohnson Spencer coming in hotπEvery Friday? Karenβs gonna be on a plane to Ghana faster than you can say βwhereβs the fire?β Time to own that record, Mayor. No more hiding
American economic confidence is rapidly declining:
The Gallup Economic Confidence Index fell -7 points in May, to -45, the lowest reading since October 2022.
Over the last 3 months, this metric has fallen -25 points.
By comparison, the 2022 trough stood at -57, and the all-time low of -72 was set in October 2008.
This comes as 76% of US adults now believe economic conditions are getting worse, the highest reading since July 2022.
At the same time, just 20% say conditions are improving, the lowest since April 2023.
Not even the 2020 pandemic saw such pessimism, when the proportion of Americans saying the economy was deteriorating peaked at 71%.
Americans have rarely felt this economically vulnerable.
Utah approved a data center so massive it's going to be more than twice the size of Manhattan
Itβs called The Stratus Project, itβs a AI data center campus in Box Elder County
- The full project could cover over 40,000 acres, an area bigger than Manhattan
- Total size will be around 62 square miles
- The power demand is 3 gigawatts of electricity, roughly the output of multiple nuclear reactors
- Environmental groups warn it could raise Utah's planet-heating pollution by nearly 50%
- Estimates suggest the project's power systems could consume up to 16.6 billion gallons of water per year. (25,000 Olympic swimming pools)
First letβs talk about power, it will actually use up to 9 GW of power. This is roughly double Utahβs current peak electricity demand. Only the first phase will use 3 GW
Next letβs talk about water, Developers are now saying that they will use closed-loo dry (air-based) cooling systems to minimize consumption. But itβll still use a lot of water
This is bad news for water conservation. Utah is in drought conditions, the Great Salt Lake is shrinking. Itβs visible and you can see it right now
So why do we need this really, according to what I can find itβs going to be tied with defense contracts
The data center will be tied to US defense priorities. It overlaps with Department of Defense areas and is advanced through Utahβs Military Installation Development Authority. Officials cite needs for energy resilience, secure computing power, and data storage for defense operations
So this is a private data center but itβs not really a private data centerβ¦. Because itβll be working with the government. One layer removedβ¦
US consumer stocks are extremely weak:
The equal-weighted US consumer discretionary index relative to the S&P 500 is down to 0.07, the lowest in at least 20 years.
Since 2021, this ratio has fallen -42%, dropping below both the 2020 and 2008 lows.
Over this period, the S&P 500 has surged +60%, outperforming the equal-weighted US consumer discretionary index by 10x, which has increased just +6%.
Meanwhile, US Consumer Sentiment fell another -5.0 points in May after falling -3.5 points in April, to 44.8, an all-time low.
By comparison, the S&P 500 is up +17% since March 30th and closed on Friday just 0.5% below its all-time high.
The stock market is thriving, but the average American consumer is not.
@ValerieAnne1970 Institutions are using children as sacrificial victims in experiments. Are the parents of those children truly unaware of this situation?