TREND CHANGE IN THE WORKS? LOWER COST GOVERNMENT CHEESE?

WHERE'S MY CHEESE?
The monthly release of food stamps recipients didn't change it's trend one bit (still heading higher), but the proverbial rate of change certainly is slowing.  The January 2011 SNAP program data released last week indicates that we have over 44.18 Million folks receiving food stamps in our country, which includes some 20.7 million households.

GOOD NEWS?
If there is good news to be found in the report, we'll find it in two places.  First, the annualized cost for the program dipped below December's number so the annualized cost of the program is now pegged at $5.7 Billion dollars!  (Not much more than a few hundred Tomahawk missiles eh?)  More importantly though, the rate of growth of the number of people utilizing these benefits is actually slowing.  In January, the increase was a paltry +.24% or a monthly increase of 24 bps.  This is the slowest rate of increase since February of 2008!

Before we get all giddy, the print for January 2011 is still a 12.1% increase from last January, but heck, I'll gladly applaud any metric that shows that things ARE getting better and less people are drawing on benefits that provide only a subsistence living.  We need folks back to work as soon as possible and we need these SNAP figures to decrease.

FOOD INFLATION / DECLINING COST OF SNAP?
I'm not really sure how we pulled off an increase in participation in the program and a decrease in costs, but heck who am I to disbelieve any government data release?  Odd that the cost of the program would go down when we are seeing significant food cost inflation too?  As usual, government numbers confound me, I'm just here to report the errrr..... facts.

Be careful!

GOATMUG