The Unstoppable Path to Ever-Increasing Currency Debasement The Federal Reserve has returned to monetary easing in an environment of elevated inflation. It raises an important question… If one of the steepest rate hike cycles in history couldn’t defeat inflation… And the Fed can’t raise rates much further without bankrupting the US government because of the soaring interest expense… Read More |
10.08.24- No Interventionist Government Or Central Bank Wants Lower Prices Many citizens want more government control of the economy to curb rising prices. It is the worst strategy imaginable. Interventionist governments never reduce consumer prices because they benefit from inflation, dissolving their political spending commitments in a constantly depreciated currency. Inflation is the perfect hidden tax. Read More |
10.07.24- Why the Fed’s Two-Percent Inflation Target Is Meaningless Federal Reserve technocrats like to use a variety of slogans and buzzwords designed to make the Federal Reserve look like it’s an apolitical, “scientific” institution guided only by a quest for sound management of the economy. Specifically, nearly every time Fed chairman Jerome Powell makes an appearance—whether it’s the usual FOMC press conference, or when testifying before Congress—Powell is careful to make mention of how the Fed is “data driven,” and how the Fed “seeks to achieve maximum employment and inflation at the rate of 2 percent over the longer run.” Read More |
10.05.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: What Would World War III Really Look Like? It’s Already Starting… One of the most common assumptions I come across in the survival-sphere is the idea that the next world war would automatically necessitate global nuclear conflict and a Mad Max-like outcome. In other words, a lot of people assume we aren’t in a world war until the nukes start flying and the survivors are left fighting in soda can armor over an irradiated desert. This is a dangerous misunderstanding for a lot of reasons. Read More |
10.04.24- Did Jerome Powell Just Trigger A Stock Market Crash? |
10.03.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Lookout Don't Look Up Is the art of conversation dying or dead amongst those born since 2000? Does that age cohort favour emojis and digital communication over face to face human interaction and verbal dialogue? I ask these questions both rhetorically and tongue-in-cheek, because we all know the answer. I feel like I am surrounded by zombies. I am surrounded by zombies. I’ve ranted about this kind of thing before, here, here, and here. Read More |
10.02.24- The Present Monetary System Is Heading for a Breakdown Many economists incorrectly assume a growing economy also requires a growing money stock, assuming that economic growth gives rise to a greater demand for money. It is held that failing to increase money to facilitate increased trade will lead to a decline in prices of goods and services, destabilizing the economy and leading to an economic downturn. Read More |
COVID Propaganda Roundup: The latest updates on the “new normal” – chronicling the lies, distortions, and abuses by the ruling class. Congressional bill would remove vaxx manufacturers’ liability shieldsI assume most Armageddon Prose readers are familiar with the reason you can’t sue Pfizer for melting your liver or maiming your baby in utero, which is that they bribed Congress sufficiently back in the day to give the immunity. Read More |
As we accelerate towards whatever disastrous outcome awaits our debt-ridden, delusional, decadent, despairing society, I seem to be drawn to the anti-establishment lyrics of Bob Dylan, written during the turbulent 1960s. Maybe it’s the assassinations and unpopular war in the 60s that have triggered my focus. You certainly don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing today. A gale force wind is blowing the nation towards civil and global war, simultaneously. And it is not a naturally occurring wind, but an artificial storm created by the ruling plutocracy in a last-ditch traitorous effort to retain their wealth, power and control over our lives. Read More |
09.28.24- Will the Fed Repeat 1970s The Federal Reserve’s recent decision to cut the federal funds rate by 50 basis points to a range of 4.75 percent to 5 percent, despite inflation still exceeding its 2 percent target, bears alarming similarities to the monetary policy missteps of the late 1970s. Back then, under pressure to stimulate economic activity, the Fed loosened monetary policy too soon. Read More |
09.26.24- It's a Recession! But I digress. Today, Jeffrey Tucker is pointing out the view that is almost inescapable, at least, as one of two clear alternatives, regarding the Fed’s large crisis-scale rate cut at a time when it says the economy is “strong.” Adjusting the trim tabs on its 747 for a smooth and level landing is one thing, but gunning the engines is another—something only done if the plane is coming down much too quickly: Read More |
09.25.24- The Future Of The Fed By dropping rates dramatically only a month and a half before an election, the Fed is playing with fire. The election, by all visuals, would seem to pit the establishment against an insurgent populist movement. Regardless of the countercyclical motives, it’s a move that has been widely seen as deeply political. And that invites resentment and retribution. Read More |
09.24.24- Based on Today's Report, Powell Should be Biting His Lip on Inflation That lip is going to be getting a little raw. The rise in inflation that I’ve said we could see by end of summer, continues to look increasingly likely to emerge soon and not like it is going to cut Chairman Powell’s rate cut a break. Read More |
09.23.24- A Global Snapshot: As a polarized U.S. marches toward a political, financial, and perhaps even military crossroads in the closing months 2024, many feel what George Lucas might otherwise describe as a “disturbance in the force.” From blow-off market tops, empty political platitudes and an openly broken bond market to debased currencies and large swaths of the planet at war or inching toward escalation, it seems we are juggling aspects of the stupid, the broken, the insane and perhaps even…the evil. Read More |
09.21.24- World Gone Wild: From the Fed to War to Violent US Politics against Trump Supporters The Fed is super-stimulating the economy during what Powell said are good times economically, and Trump haters have decided not to wait until they lose the election to go violent against MAGA. Read More |
09.20.24- Powell Scores His Soft Landing ... until it All Blows up Today certainly looks like Powell just landed the plane softly, except that it hasn't really quite landed yet, and the tarmac is riddled with land mines and maybe a few engine-stuffing goats.Time will tell. It was the most important non-event Fed meeting in recent memory. The Fed did exactly what nearly everyone believed it would do and lowered interest rates half a percentage point. Had it done any less, investors would have been shocked, and that probably would have moved markets for the worse, except they moved for worse anyway. Read More |
09.19.24- Modern Slavery Today, the Fed did what I predicted it would do and cut interest rates. The “pivot” has finally arrived, ending the rate hike cycle that began in March 2022. I’ll have much more to say about it in tomorrow’s issue, so please tune in tomorrow. But today, I want to talk about the dangerous globalist threats to our freedoms that we presently face. Read More |
09.18.24- Founding Father Edmund Randolph vs. The Federal Reserve After Congress passed a bill to establish the first national bank -- a forerunner of the modern Federal Reserve -- President George Washington asked Attorney General Edmund Randolph to prepare an opinion on the bill’s constitutionality. Randolph came down firmly against the measure, arguing that the Constitution didn’t delegate to Congress the power to charter corporations. Read More |
09.17.24- Three Ways the US Government Could ‘Kick the Debt Can Down the Road’
|
09.16.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The 2nd Assassination Attempt
|
09.14.24- A Plague On Both Whether your candidate wins or loses, there's a monetary policy silver lining. For all the huffing and puffing I do about politics, you’d think that both candidates would have substantially different ideas for monetary policy, should they be elected. After all, this is supposed to be a finance blog. But the truth is, they don’t. Read More |
09.13.24- Smoke And Mirrors: What Happens When Biden's Economic Manipulations Disappear?
|
09.12.24- Bad Data And Bad Models: How The Fed Has Shattered Confidence The Federal Reserve boasts of its data dependence. But what if it’s relying on bad data? Even worse, what if it’s plugging that bad data into a faulty model? In July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) made massive downward revisions to the job numbers. Poof – the agency simply erased 111,000 jobs from existence. Read More |
09.11.24- What To Expect On Interest Rates For The Remainder Of 2024 The Federal Open Market Committee has three scheduled meetings remaining in 2024 and markets expect interest rates to be cut at all of them. Statements from FOMC policymakers have generally become more dovish. Inflation has eased substantially and the labor market is weakening somewhat, albeit from a period of very low unemployment. Economic theory suggests both factors typically call for less restrictive monetary policy when compared to current levels. Read More |
09.10.24 - And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Deep State At the Economic Club of New York, President Trump announced: “I will create a Government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government — and making recommendations for drastic reforms.” Elon Musk is eager to get involved with the project. In one fell swoop, every other reason for re-electing Donald Trump took a back seat to the tantalizing possibility of turning his second term into an Office Space sequel. Read More |
09.09.24- The Fed’s Balance Sheet Feeds Bailout Culture Fed-watching has become a hobby for many, and an occupation for some. When will the Fed cut interest rates? (September) How much will it cut interest rates? (25 – 50 basis points) How will this affect credit card and mortgage rates? (They will start coming down) These are the kinds of questions most people ask. But what people wrongly ignore is the Fed’s huge balance sheet and its related consequences: subsidizing explosive government deficit spending and creating a bailout culture. Read More |
09.07.24- The Fed Is Our Friend - Labor data on Wednesday, specifically the JOLTS numbers, were much lower than expected. This led to a brief jump in expectations for a rate cut of 50 basis points to a 50-50 probability. Next we have the Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday. If the Payrolls are lower than expected, the probability of a 50bp rate cut will rise significantly. Typically, this is supportive of precious metals and miners. Read More |
09.06.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Here's Who You Should Be REALLY Concerned About |
09.05.24- The Fed Is Cutting Rates Soon. Should I Wait to Get a Loan?
|
09.04.24- Powell Announces “Pivot” Labor Day weekend is over, and the election is just over two months away. Is the U.S. economy in a recession as election season enters full swing? There’s a mountain of data suggesting the answer is yes, or if we’re not in a recession, we soon will be. We’ll explore this data below but let’s begin with the (supposedly) most powerful force in the U.S. economy — the Federal Reserve. Read More
|
09.03.24- Average rate on a 30-year mortgage eases to 6.35%, its lowest level in more than a year The average rate on a 30-year mortgage eased for the second week in a row and remains at its lowest level in more than a year, good news for prospective homebuyers facing home prices near all-time highs. The rate fell to 6.35% from 6.46% last week, mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday. A year ago, the rate averaged 7.18%. Read More
|
09.02.24- Central Banks Are DOOMED! Gold & Silver Are About To Go PARABOLIC! |
08.31.24- Fudging the Figures Of all the dangers that threaten the global financial system, the one most likely to topple it is the US Government’s debt trap. This article explains how and why it is becoming inevitable According to the US Government, its debt stands at $35.210 trillion having grown 57% in the last five years. As the chart below shows, there was a big step up in early 2020 due to Covid. But subsequent attempts to control the deficit and therefore indebtedness have been absent. Read More |
08.30.24- The Long, Slow Goodbye "The primacy of the dollar is the tired old wallpaper of the world monetary system.” — James Grant “There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.” ― Raymond Chandler, Long Goodbye Intro: Inside James Grant’s latest Interest Rate Observer there is a nice piece on Gold in it titled Long goodbye to the dollar standard fromwhich some important comments should be shared. As always his writing is part history, part observation, and part dry humor. Here is a summary and analysis of that article. Read More |
08.29.24- Tumbling Down Jobs are falling down, down, down, taking the economy with them, and the Fed barely knows it. I have to keep it short today as medical issues got in the way of writing time, but I’d like to point out a few things from the news headlines below. Economist David Rosenberg, who predicted the 2008 financial collapse, said that the 818,000 adjustment in new jobs that I wrote about here on The Daily Doom signify an economy that is in a worse meltdown than the Fed realizes. Read More |
08.28.24- Inflation is Forever You may beat the inflation rate back down, but all future inflation happens from the new higher benchmark of prices that never fall back down, and central banks never stop trying to push them up. "The time has come for cuts," Powell said at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium Read More |
08.27.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different:Lies, Lies, Lies and MORE Lies! “The further a society drifts from the truth the more it will hate those that speak it.” ~ George Orwell Several of us suffered the ignominy and revulsion of the political rallies these past few weeks. I was particularly dumbfounded by the free-flowing falsehoods from the Nationalist American Socialist Party (NASP). You may know them as the Democrat Party, but there is nothing democratic about this new political blight on our republic. They have transformed this political party into agents for Karl Marx and everything he envisioned in his communist manifesto and treatises on social re-engineering. Read More |
08.26.24- Uneasy Fed Admits We Are Approaching Recession Fed Chair Jerome Powell stepped up to the podium at Jackson Hole and announced the inflation fight was over – because the balance of economic risks has shifted. Here’s what they’re so worried about… Remember how the Biden administration, the Fed, and corporate media has kept saying the economy and job market were “strong”? Well, it turns out that isn’t the case. Read More |
08.24.24- Starting with a 25 basis point rate cut 'makes a lot of sense to me': Fed's Harker Philadelphia Fed president Patrick Harker said he expects the central bank to start with a 25 basis point cut as it begins to ease monetary policy and he would be open to a larger cut if the labor market deteriorates suddenly. "Starting at 25 makes a lot of sense to me," Harker told Yahoo Finance Friday during an interview at the Kansas City Fed's annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Read More |
Powell’s comments confirmed that a September rate cut is coming, as he said "the time has come for policy to adjust", with traders on the lookout for clarity regarding the magnitude of the cut. Commenting on the speech, WSJ's Nick "NIkileaks" Timiraos put it best: "The Powell pivot is complete" and notes the following: Read More |
08.22.24- Gold Pares Gains After New Record as Focus Turns to Jackson Hole Gold pared gains after hitting another record as traders look ahead to a speech by Federal Reserve Chair JeromePowell later this week. Bullion climbed to as high as $2,531.75 an ounce, taking this year’s gain to more than 22%, before giving up some of the advance. Powell’s address on Friday at the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming will be closely analyzed for clues about the central bank’s thinking on widely expected rate cuts — often seen as positive for non-interest bearing gold. Read More |
Manuka honey reduced breast cancer cell growth by 84% without harming healthy cells or causing major side effects, according to preliminary studies. The findings open the door to developing a natural, non-toxic supplementary, or potentially stand-alone, anticancer treatment. Read More |
08.20.24- We Don't Have a Wage Problem; We Have a Money Problem The push to raise the minimum wage is relentless. For a while, it was "Fight for $15," but with rampant price inflation, a $15 an hour minimum wage isn't sufficient. Now it's "Fight for $20." Heck, it might even be "Fight for $25" at this point. I understand people's frustration with wages. Their pay doesn't keep up with rising prices. Read More |
08.19.24- The Federal Reserve and Pandora’s Box The Federal Reserve system in the United States is the largest financial institution in the world with more than $7 trillion in assets. It “manages” the most important currency in the world. Its decisions can dramatically affect the course of the largest economy in the world. Wouldn’t it be nice if its officials knew what they were doing? Read More |
08.17.24- What has the Fed Done to Our Lives? [The following is derived from a speech in my novel, The Flight of the Barbarous Relic.] Wars must be funded, and for this, governments functioning as states call upon the banking system for assistance. Central Bank counterfeiting, which is another name for inflation, is the fuel that energizes the forces of war. Inflation, or counterfeiting, amounts to issuing receipts for something that doesn’t exist, which legally is the prerogative of the central bank. Calling such receipts money allows them to be created in massive amounts quickly. When the U.S. Congress votes to send billions of fiat money to Ukraine, Israel or anywhere else, no one questions the nature of what is being sent because legal tender laws make it all copasetic. Read More |
08.16.24- Sandy Hook Black Mirror |
08.14.24- A $150,000 House In 1988 Now Costs $707,500; Thank You, Fed! The Fed has grossly distorted the housing market and no fix is in sight. A couple of images will explain...
Chart data from Case-Shiller, mortgage calculation based on Fannie Mae 30-year mortgage rates, chart by Mish Read More |
08.13.24- Why the Fed Can't Win – In the much-anticipated statement following the most-recent FOMC meeting, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell hinted at the possibility of near-term rate cuts. If rates start falling, that would certainly get speculators excited. But let’s examine the situation a little more closely. Read More |
08.12.24- The Fed Is Powerless We are told the time has come for the Federal Reserve to wield its ax… and cut its target rate. We are further told that prevailing conditions may demand multiple axings. And that these adjustments to the overnight lending rate will work healthful impacts. Read More |
08.10.24- "Japan Mixed The Batter, The Fed Will Bake The Cake..." Americans are already struggling to feed their families and pay their bills, but having predicted every US recession since 1960, the steepening bond yield curve is speaking loud and clear that an “official” downturn is nearly inevitable. With bond prices on the rise as the Fed looks increasingly likely to cut rates in September, the yields are going down and the inverted curve is finally leveling out after an epic two-year inversion. Read More |
08.09.24- Don’t bank on a put from Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve Panic won’t prompt an emergency rate cut and a 50-point reduction in September isn’t nailed on either. Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email [email protected] to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here. |
08.08.24- Fed Fails Spectacularly Again and Again! If these guys were a rose bush with so many thorns and so few flowers, you'd burn it! The Fed can easily be made to work but nobody apparently wants it to, or we’d change it. This rose bush puts out flowers that only stink and wither, but it has thorns the size of your fingers that cling to your pockets and tear at your flesh. We have three articles that were prominent in my news searches today that lay out just how miserably (for all of us) the Fed is failing at its actual mission. Read More |
08.07.24- The Failures of Fiat Currency and the Federal Reserve: An Analysis Fiat currency and the Federal Reserve have long been subjects of debate and criticism for their perceived failures in achieving key economic objectives. This article dives into the main points of criticism surrounding these issues, focusing on the 7 key failures of the Federal Reserve including the following objectives: Read More |
08.06.24- Blood in the Streets! “Most people think today will be like yesterday,” Daily Reckoning co-founder Bill Bonner says…
We may be facing such an inflection point right now. Today, I’ll show you why, and what’s at stake. Read More |
Switzerland has launched a new vending machine-like “assisted suicide pod” that allows people to climb inside and be euthanized with the “push of a button.” The new portable death “pod” is on track to claim its first victim this year after winning approval from the Swiss government. Florian Willet, the CEO of the pro-euthanasia organization The Last Resort, announced the launch of the machine during a recent press conference. Read More |
08.03.24- Central Banks Purchase Gold to Offset Their Own Money Destruction Why is the price of gold rising if the global economy is not in recession and inflation is allegedly under control? This is a question often heard in investment circles, and I will try to answer it. We must begin by clarifying the question. It is true that inflation is slowly decreasing, but we cannot say that it is under control. Let us remember that the latest CPI data in the United States was 3% annualized and that in the Eurozone it is 2.6%, with eight countries publishing data above 3%, including Spain. Read More |
08.02.24- Well, Bite my Lip for Repeating this, but Pilot Powell Says We're Now Coming in for a Soft Landing
|
08.01.24- The Economic Situation of the West Once upon a time America had a capitalist economy. Bank deposits were used for loans that expanded productive ability. America produced its own goods and grew its own food. America’s currency was backed by gold and inflation was nonexistent. New technology brought into play by new investment improved the productivity of labor, and living standards rose. Profits were plowed back into improved methods and expanded production. Read More |
07.31.24- No Fed "Pivot" Tomorrow The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) of the Federal Reserve is meeting today and tomorrow for the purpose of discussing the economy and setting monetary policy going forward. What does it mean for markets and your money? Today we’ll explore those questions. Read More |
07.30.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: You’ll Never Work “The kids are hooked on wokeness now. They’d be better off with cigarettes.” — Ian Miles Cheong on “X” Did we just witness the suicide of Wokery? I think you saw what’s called, in the argot of progressive thinking, the “queering” of the Olympics. That was some spectacle. First, Death on a Pale Horse came galloping down the Seine River so that no one would miss the point of the symbolism to follow: the beheaded Marie Antoinette portrayed singing in the window of a flaming palais. Read More |
07.29.24- Inequality Is Caused By Inflation Many claim the problem with fractional reserve banking is that it loans money into existence. It does, but under normal circumstances the money created by commercial banks disappears when loans are repaid or defaulted on, which therefore doesn’t create a permanent inflation of the money supply. Read More |
07.27.24- Why Radical Spending Cuts Are Needed The International Monetary Fund, a creature birthed at the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, turned 80 years old this week. Its bureaucrats are worried. The title of the IMF’s recently published World Economic Outlookis titled, The Global Economy in a Sticky Spot. The source of the stickiness, per the WEO, is services inflation. Namely, nominal wage growth, especially in the U.S., is increasing above goods price inflation. Read More |
07.26.24- Bidenomics Kicks in, Economy is on a tear, Inflation plunges and Unemployment Falls! And I’m DEAD WRONG on all of it (if all that you read is true)... but so is the Fed! I’ve had, one might say, a great run for all of my predictions this year. Every step along the way, I was able to show where they came true. The economy slowed to a crawl in the first quarter, inflation returned to rising when few thought it would. Read More |
07.25.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Empire of Lies Why does government lie so repeatedly — and so atrociously? Why does it fear truth as the vampire fears garlic? The answer, we hazard, reduces to its desperate quest for prestige. Government equals authority. And an authority is an authority. Read More |
07.24.24- Going the Way of the Denarius History repeats. (Or it rhymes, depending on your choice of words.) Throughout history, there has been an extraordinary tendency for governments (and cultures) to follow similar paths. Even regarding eras thousands of years apart, we see people behaving in much the same way, over and over. This is particularly true in the case of “wrong moves.” Over and over, people and their governments make the same mistakes, seemingly never learning from past errors. Read More |
07.23.24- Republican Platform Ignores Real Causes of Inflation |
07.22.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Acoustic Evidence Proves Beyond All Doubt More Than One Shooter I and others have pointed out astonishing voids in the Secret Service’s protection of Trump. The voids are so egregious that they cannot be blamed on incompetence. Scott Ritter says that intent is the only explanation. Read More |
07.20.24- Politicians Pressure Powell to Give Up the Inflation Fight – Rate Cuts Ahead? The latest inflation report says we’re still 50% over the Fed’s target. Is that really close enough? Will inflation disappear by itself? Why is Jerome Powell so close to giving up the inflation fight? Morgan Stanley thinks the Federal Reserve could start cutting rates as early as September, based on the idea that “inflation is finally under control.” Read More |
07.19.24- Something to Crow About What good would an American presidential election be in the year 2024 without an assassination attempt? These days, everywhere you look, there are lunatics roaming around. You see them at the market or the gas station. Or wandering down Main Street. They’re crazy and deranged, and they believe what the media has told them. That Donald Trump is Hitler. What’s more, some of these crazies, in the spirit of democracy, are eager to put their fingerprints on the turn of history. Read More |
07.18.24- Donald Trump warns US Fed chair not to cut rates before the election Ex-president says he would let Jay Powell finish term at central bank if he was ‘doing the right thing’ Donald Trump has warned Jay Powell not to cut US interest rates before November’s presidential vote, but said if elected he would let the Federal Reserve chair serve out his term if he was “doing the right thing”. Read More |
07.17.24- Stocks Soar for Economy in Doldrums And Fed feints toward a September rate cut because the economy is slowing. Traders are now betting 100% odds that Powell & Co. will lower interest rates in September, and Powell’s dovish tones, as talked about in my last editorial, certainly sound like he is preparing to move that way, though I have argued he won’t. The oddity here is that he is—after saying the Fed needs to really be convinced that inflation is headed back down—averring to the possibility of a cut. Read More |
07.16.24- Dollar dips ahead of Powell, bitcoin climbs as investors NEW YORK, July 15 (Reuters) - The dollar retreated from earlier highs on Monday ahead of comments from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, while cryptocurrencies rose on bets an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump has boosted his re-election chances. In the aftermath of the shooting, investors narrowed the odds of a Trump victory. Online betting site PredictIt, opens new tab showed bets of an election win for Trump at 67 cents, up from Friday's 60 cents, with Joe Biden at 27 cents. Read More |
07.15.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Did We Just Witness the FBI’s Attempt on Trump’s Life? A number of independent security experts have noted egregious failures in the Secret Service’s protection of Trump’s venue. Perhaps most notable was the failure to include the nearby buildings in the security zone. Three possible explanations have been offered: incompetence, intent, and insufficient assigned resources. Incompetence is a possibility. In all federal agencies including the military, ability and merit have been set aside in order to make race- and gender- based appointments. Read More |
07.13.24- Welcome to Inflationary Depression There was an oblique message buried in a recent New York Times story on the growing crisis in commercial real estate in cities. Yes, this is exactly the kind of article that people pass over because it seems like it doesn’t have broad application. In fact, it does. It affects the core of issues like our city skylines, how we think about urbanism and progress, where we vacation and work and whether the big cities are drivers or drains on national productivity. Read More |
07.12.24- Fed to End Inflation Fight Before Job is Done Go way back, and further still. To Florence, Italy. In 1397. To the establishment of the Medici Bank by Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici. There you will find the early framework for interlinking banking, business, and politics to consolidate wealth and power. Read More |
07.11.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Clinton-Harris Ticket Polls are already asking voters whether they would support Hillary Clinton as president. Even international news outlets are posting this information. When did Hillary suddenly enter the race? Democratic firm Bendixen & Amandi conducted a poll to see how the public would respond to a Clinton presidency. Of the 86% of respondents who watched the disastrous Trump-Biden debate, only 29% believe Biden is mentally fit to serve a second term. Read More |
07.10.24- The Great Monetary Pivot Of 2024 In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed brought interest rates to roughly 0% and held them there for years. Then, in late 2015, they started a rate-hiking cycle that lasted until the repo market turmoil in late 2019. Read More |
07.09.24- Goldman Sachs Failed Major Test Other banks are falling in behind.Today brought some interesting news in the banking sector. To start off with, Goldman Sachs failed its stress test last week. In addition to GS, the Fed’s Dodd-Frank stress test revealed problems in other banks as well. The Fed noted that its staff do try to work with the banks to make adjustments to the test. So, I would add, if a bank can’t even pass the adjusted test, it must be in poor shape, should times become stressful. Read More |
07.08.24- Why the Federal Reserve is Running Out of Monetary Oxygen What passes for central banking today is really a perverse form of Wall Street-pleasing monetary manipulation. It employs the vocabulary of central banking, but in practice it fundamentally undermines main street prosperity, even as it showers the 1% (the top wealthiest people) with unspeakable financial windfalls. Stated differently, virtually everything the Fed does for the alleged benefit of the American economy is both unnecessary and a ruse. Read More |
07.06.24- Central Banks Added More Gold to Reserves in May Central banks continued to buy gold in May, but the pace slowed moderately with China at least temporarily out of the picture. Central banks added a net 10 tons of gold in May, according to the latest data compiled by the World Gold Council. Central banks bought 23 tons of gold, offset by 13 tons in gross sales. The National Bank of Poland was the biggest gold purchaser in May, adding 10 tons of gold to its reserves. Read More |
07.05.24- The Byzantine Blueprint: A Guide for America’s Monetary Revival The doom and gloom surrounding the Presidential race is both undeniable and justified. America seems tapped out. It’s out of money. It has lost the moral high ground. It resorts to coercion to keep its allies – or rather, vassal states – in line. It prints money to cover its lies. Read More |
07.04.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Debate That Exposed Political Collapse From Stem to Stern, This Debacle Exposed the Rot of a Political System in Rapid and Irreversible Decline A debate between a man who has little, if any, understanding of complex geopolitical issues and a brain dead warmonger who was never the sharpest knife in the drawer has exposed the irreversible decline of the US empire. Read More |
07.03.24- Central Banks Diversify from USD-Assets to Other Currencies and to Gold Long, slow erosion of the US dollar’s dominance. China’s renminbi keeps losing ground, many other currencies gain, as does gold. The US dollar is still by far the most dominant global reserve currency, among many reserve currencies held by central banks, but its share has been eroding for years, as central banks have been diversifying to other reserve currencies, and also to gold. But the process is slow and uneven. Read More |
07.02.24- US dollar dips as Fed's Powell's dovish comments offset upbeat jobs data NEW YORK/MILAN, July 2 (Reuters) - The dollar slipped on Tuesday in choppy trading after Federal Chair Jerome Powell struck a slightly dovish tone in his comments, suggesting that the U.S. central bank is more than likely to start its easing cycle later this year. Read More |
07.01.24- The Coming US Budget Disaster Will Impoverish Americans Deficit spending is not a growth tool. It is the recipe for stagnation. The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget and economic outlook estimates show the extent of the challenges of the United States fiscal nightmare. The CBO expects a budget deficit of $1.9 trillion in 2024, a year of alleged robust economic growth and record tax receipts. They expect revenues to reach $4.9 trillion, or 17.2 percent of GDP, in 2024, which will rise to 18.0 percent by 2027 and remain at that level until 2034. Read More |
06.29.24- What Happens When Rate Cuts Come Too Soon Back in September 2021, as the inflation “train” was picking up speed, Jim Rickards was concerned about that momentum and predicted it was only getting started. Keep in mind that Federal Reserve Chairman Powell kept downplaying inflation as “transitory” in 2021, but also ended up wildly wrong (almost negligent) Read More |
06.28.24- Federal Reserve Floats Weaker Version of Planned Bank-Capital Overhaul
The Federal Reserve has shown other US regulators a three-page document of possible changes to their bank-capital overhaul that would lighten the load on Wall Street lenders, according to people familiar with the matter. Read More |
06.27.24- You Can't Taper A Ponzi Scheme A Ponzi scheme is an unsustainable scam that relies on a continuous influx of new money to keep it going. The scheme collapses if the flow of new money slows down or tapers. Many believe the Federal Reserve is running what amounts to a giant Ponzi scheme. That’s because the US government’s obscene spending and skyrocketing debt have reached an inflection point where the whole system will collapse unless the Fed pumps an ever-increasing amount of new fake money into the system. Read More |
06.26.24- Who Needs The Fed? Send in the National Guard! Tech stocks are red! The tech sector plummeted nearly 2.5% on Monday following weeks of melt-up action. And the main culprits were some of the same stocks responsible for dragging the averages higher this year, specifically the semiconductors. The VanEck Vectors Semiconductor ETF (SMH) continues to fill those gaps, dropping more than 3.4% yesterday — its third straight decline. It’s now fallen nearly 8% from last week’s highs. Read More |
06.25.24- Who Needs The Fed? Perhaps nothing in financial news receives more attention than an announcement from the Federal Reserve. About eight times per year, the Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee meets to formally decide and announce its plans for monetary policy. Every announcement has the potential to cause a rally, or a rout, in financial markets. Read More |
06.22.24- The Federal Reserve’s Cure May Actually Be Worse Than the Disease Inflation has persisted so long now I’m forced to consider whether the Fed is really as concerned with it as Powell lets on. Maybe they realize the cure could kill the patient? Like I explained in my last article, the miraculous Bidenomic economy has been dominated by first historic and now merely persistent inflation. Since his swearing in, our purchasing power has officially declined about 19%. Read More |
06.22.24- The Federal Reserve’s Cure May Actually Be Worse Than the Disease Inflation has persisted so long now I’m forced to consider whether the Fed is really as concerned with it as Powell lets on. Maybe they realize the cure could kill the patient? Like I explained in my last article, the miraculous Bidenomic economy has been dominated by first historic and now merely persistent inflation. Since his swearing in, our purchasing power has officially declined about 19%. Read More |
06.15.24- The Fed’s Whipped Inflation! Touch off the rockets! Light the sparklers! Raise a joyous toast! That is because May’s inflation data came issuing this morning. And it disappointed expectations — or rather exceeded expectations. A Dow Jones survey of economists had divined a 3.4% inflation rate. Yet the United States Department of Labor reported a mere 3.3% inflation rate. Read More |
06.14.24- The Fed's next decision will likely mean Americans are going to wait a lot longer for any interest rate cuts Americans shouldn't expect interest rate cuts to head their way anytime soon. The Federal Open Market Committee is set to announce its next interest-rate decision on Wednesday, and following a hot jobs report, there's a strong chance rates will once again remain steady. According to the CME FedWatch Tool, which estimates the likelihood the Federal Reserve will change interest rates based on market predictions, there's a 99.4% chance rates will stay where they are as of Monday. Read More |
06.13.24- Gold prices steady around $2,300 with Fed rate decision, CPI on tap Gold prices moved little in Asian trade on Wednesday, hovering around a key support level as traders hunkered down before more definitive cues on U.S. rates from a Federal Reserve meeting and inflation data. The yellow metal was nursing a sharp decline in recent sessions as traders priced out expectations of U.S. rate cuts in the face of sticky inflation and a robust labor market. The dollar shot up to one-month highs, pressuring metal prices, while Treasury yields also rose. Read More |
06.12.24- Shrinking Fed rate cut expectations to keep US Treasury yields elevated BENGALURU, June 11 (Reuters) - U.S. Treasury yields will plateau over the coming three months and then only fall modestly by year-end amid receding expectations of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, according to a Reuters poll of bond strategists. After peaking at 5.02% in October, the benchmark U.S. 10-year Treasury note yield plummeted over 120 basis points (bps) as traders priced in as much as 150 bps of Fed rate cuts this year. Read More |
06.11.24- The Entire System Is Crumbling! Major Red Flags Are Popping Up For Banks, Small Businesses And Retailers If the economy is fine, why are so many signs of trouble erupting all around us? Those that keep insisting that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction conveniently ignore the very troubling facts and figures that I regularly share with my readers. When you take an honest look at the cold, hard numbers that the economy keeps producing, there is only one logical conclusion. Our entire system is crumbling, and it appears that conditions will soon get significantly worse. Just look at what is happening to our banks. Read More |
06.10.24- Why is Keynesian Economics Collapsing? John Maynard Keynes in his 1936 book, ‘The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,” argued aggregate demand was too volatile to be stable and would lead to inflation or recessions. His theory honed in on spending as a means of price control. Low aggregate demand, Keynes argues, would lead to high unemployment and stagflation. Government could intervene through fiscal policies to increase aggregate demand, as an example, increased government spending could tame inflation. Interest rates, according to Keynes, could also be modified to encourage spending and stimulate demand. So why are these theories failing miserably today? Read More |
06.08.24- It's The Fed That's A Risk Central bankers whistle ‘Dixie’ as mark-to-market losses dramatically shrink the banking system’s economic capital. Whistling a happy tune, the Federal Reserve vice chairman for supervision, Michael Barr, recently testified to Congress that “overall, the banking system remains sound and resilient.” A more candid view of the risks would be less sanguine.Read More |
06.07.24- How People Can People can’t stop the Federal Reserve from inflating the money supply, nor can we prevent them from adding more fuel to their fire. We can only fight the fire started by the arsonists at the Fed from spreading further into our lives. In this article, I want to review the ways that people fight the Fed’s fire—higher prices everywhere and the reasons why everyone should be actively fighting against inflation. Read More |
06.06.24- Up in Smoke As we slide into recession, will we burn up due to inflation first or war? A few small things settled in a direction that could give Powell a chill that causes him to shift from battling inflation to driving it back up nice and hot, just as stock investors and bond investors are back to hoping he will do. Changes in the labor market make it appear labor may FINALLY be reaching that point where new jobs are not coming fast enough and old jobs ending more quickly to where the changes couldstart to push unemployment up. Still, I’ve pointed out a few head fakes along the way, and this could easily be another one. More data coming in on Friday could clarify the employment picture. Read More |
06.05.24- Central bank gold buying picks up in April
|
06.04.24- Is the Fed Driving Us Into Recession? |
06.03.24- US firms grow more pessimistic on economic outlook, Fed survey shows May 29 (Reuters) - U.S. economic activity continued to expand from early April through mid-May but firms grew more downbeat about the future amid weakening consumer demand while inflation continued to increase at a modest pace, a U.S. Federal Reserve survey showed on Wednesday, as central bankers mull how long they will need to keep interest rates at current levels. The U.S. central bank's latest temperature check on the health of the economy also showed that the jobs market continues to more normalized levels. Read More |
06.01.24- Interest Rates: What Are They and What Do They Actually Do? Interest rates are an embedded part of the economy at both the global and the household level – but what impact does the Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR) actually have on the economy, and why? Interest rates are an embedded part of the economy at both the global and the household level – but what impact does the Effective Federal Funds Rate (EFFR) actually have on the economy, and why? In simple terms, the EFFR is the target rate set by the Federal Open Market Committee of the U.S. Federal Reserve (also known as the Fed), which meets eight times a year to determine it. Read More |
05.31.24- Think Inflation Is Done? A lethal combination of budget deficits and trade sanctions are going to be reflected in increasing price inflation for the US. And where the US goes, the rest of us follow.In this article I focus on two reasons why inflation will rise leading to higher, not lower, interest rates and bond yields. The first is the destruction of credit’s value through its non-productive expansion, mainly by governments running budget deficits. The second has had almost no attention but is at least as serious: the consequences of the repatriation of supply chains being accelerated by trade tariffs and sanctions. I shall briefly comment on the first before turning my attention to the second. Read More |
05.30.24- No, Corporate Greed Is Not The Cause Of Inflation.
|
05.29.24- Time Is Running Out For Gold Stocks Are the central bankers at the Federal Reserve just winging it? It sure seems that way if you step back and take a long view of their decision-making. Fed officials project this aura of authority. You might imagine them as hyper-intelligent experts in the field of economics and finance making carefully calculated monetary policy decisions based on a thorough understanding of all the dynamics in the economy. After all, they must have risen to these important positions at the Fed based on their economic acumen? Read More |
05.28.24- Is Hyper-Inflation that Destroys a Currency a "Solution"? Is the train leaving the station? When predicting the future, we're best served by following "what benefits the wealthy and powerful," as that is the likeliest outcome. |
05.27.24- MASSIVE: Election Spending, Government Debt, No Buyers... |
05.25.24- Continual Rise in the Cost of Living… And Why the Fed Has No Shame Jay Powell did it again assuring the 1% that he has their back. Markets recovered their poise over the last 24 hours, as investors were relieved after Fed Chair Powell stuck to his recent views on the economic outlook. In his remarks yesterday, he said that recent data didn’t “materially change the overall picture” and that on inflation “it is too soon to say whether the recent readings represent more than just a bump.” In addition, he reiterated that if “the economy evolves broadly as we expect, most FOMC participants see it as likely to be appropriate to begin lowering the policy rate at some point this year.” So that all helped to validate market pricing, which still expects 71 bps of rate cuts from the Fed by the December meeting. Read More |
05.24.24- The Mirage Of "Lower Inflation"
|
05.23.24- The Fed is already insolvent. Here’s how we think this plays out On Tuesday, September 15, 1992, the two most powerful financial officials in the British government held an urgent meeting that night to review their plan for when the markets opened the next morning. The tone of the meeting must have felt frantic… even desperate… because the value of the British pound had been falling for weeks. Read More |
05.22.24- Fed's Barr: Inflation data 'disappointing,' policy needs more time AMELIA ISLAND, Florida (Reuters) - U.S. inflation data through the first months of 2024 has been "disappointing," Fed vice chair for supervision Michael Barr said on Monday, leaving the central bank short of the evidence it needs to ease monetary policy. "Inflation readings in the first quarter of this year were disappointing. These results did not provide me with the increased confidence that I was hoping to find to support easing monetary policy," Barr said in remarks prepared for delivery at an Atlanta Federal Reserve conference on financial markets. Read More |
05.21.24- CPI's Little Head Fake
|
05.20.24- When Ideological Bubbles Trump Economic Thinking Sometimes smart people make remarkably naïve or deeply problematic comments because their view of the world has been molded by narrow ideology, reinforced by significant consensus in their social circles. Recently Esther Duflo, a Nobel prize winning economist, revealed herself to be such a person. In a Financial Times interview with Simon Mundy, she said the West owed a “moral debt” of about $500 billion annually to the global south due to its contribution to climate change and the resulting harm. Read More |
11.18.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Entire Financial System |
05.16.24- Will High Inflation Ease Up Soon? You Won't Like the Answer Inflation has been over the Fed’s target for OVER THREE YEARS now – so why is Powell telling us to be patient? Because inflation has some unlikely allies, and the Fed can’t fight them directly… If you were hoping that the official inflation rate would ease, especially on the necessary goods and services you need to buy, then you might have to be patient. Read More |
05.15.24- Trump’s Secret Plan to End Currency Wars
|
05.14.24- Will the Fed Lose Control? According to new reports from the Social Security and Medicare trustees, Social Security and a Medicare fund that pays for hospital expenses will both begin running deficits in 2035 and 2036. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, Congress was too preoccupied spending billions more on military aid for foreign countries and banning TikTok to pay attention to the looming bankruptcy of the two largest federal entitlement programs Read More |
05.13.24- And Now, for Somthing Entirely Different: Can a Country as Far Gone as America Recover? The Epoch Times has acquired official documents that reveal that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in 2021 had definite evidence that Covid-19 mRNA “vaccines” caused multiple deaths. Despite the conclusive evidence in CDC’s hands, the “health agency” continued to lie for the next two years that there were no adverse effects from the emergency use “vaccines” that were for tens of millions of Americans illegally and unconstitutionally mandated as a condition of employment. Read More |
05.11.24- How Do People’s Experiences The Issue:Inflation rates are among the most closely watched economic statistics, but, as with many statistics that attempt to capture what is happening throughout the economy, aggregate measures mask important particulars. Measuring inflation requires simplifying assumptions about the basket of goods that a typical consumer purchases in a given month as well as eliding demographic differences and distinctions within product categories. Looking closely at prices within disaggregated product groups and using high-frequency online price data helps to reveal the nuances underneath monthly inflation numbers and how the experience of rising prices differs across groups of people. Read More |
05.10.24- The Consequences of Interest Rate Suppression Decades of interest rate suppression have resulted in debt traps in both public and private sectors which will destroy faith in fiat currencies. This leads to higher, far higher interest rates and the escape into gold is only just starting. Throughout European history, there has been a dislike of interest rates. For the last two millennia this was reflected in Christian (and Muslim) bans on usury. But interest is charged by a lender for good reason. A lender is ceding possession of money or credit to another, losing the facility to turn them into goods for his or her own consumption. Read More |
05.09.24- Does Powell's Plan End One major investor and one major economist, both of whom predicted the Great Recession crash, give the Fed an “F” for its inflation fight and an “F” for where it is taking the economy. Fed is a failed inflation fighter Read More |
05.08.24- Forward Guidance: The Fed Sounds Like A Wizard Reading Chicken Bones Stanley Druckenmiller says the Fed should get rid of forward guidance and just do their job. I totally endorse a view by Stan Druckenmiller, the Fed Should Stop Forward Guidance. Read More |
05.07.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Catalyst for a Banking Renaissance Every day, there are over 2,000,000,000 consumer transactions around the world. Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and other large companies process many of these payments. Bitcoin, on the other hand, does not have anywhere near the capacity to handle this kind of volume. Read More |
The Federal Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place. If the Fed pushes rates higher, interest payments on our 34 trillion dollar national debt could spin wildly out of control and bank balance sheets will be in even worse condition than they are now. First Republic just bit the dust, and literally thousands of other small and mid-size banks and in serious jeopardy. So it would be suicidal to hike rates at this point. Read More |
Buried beneath headlines about congressional treason and wars and rumors of war is a disturbing new report from the World Entomology Body (WEB) showing that the world’s insect populations are plummeting. This is really bad news for the food supply, which relies on precious pollinators like bees to keep the life cycle going. Without these vital critters, there will be no more food available for anyone, including the sinister who think they are going to somehow escape the horrors they are unleashing. Read More |
05.04.24- Fed Cornered – There’s No Way Out! The latest information from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) shows that the Federal Reserve is caught between a rock and a hard place. Just before their latest meeting, CNBC reported that not much would change, and summarized the “feeling in the room” regarding Fed rates: Read More |
05.03.24- Expect Higher Interest Rates Through the End of 2024. Fed Blames ‘Lack of Progress’ on Inflation
|
05.02.24- Governments Could Stop Inflating If They Wanted. But They Won’t Price inflation is no coincidence. It is a policy. Governments, along with their so-called experts, attempt to persuade you that price inflation stems from anything other than the consistent, albeit slower, rise in aggregate prices year after year. Issuing more currency than the private sector demands, thus eroding its purchasing power and creating a constant annual transfer of wealth from real wages and deposit savings to the government. Read More |
05.01.24- Unification Of CBDCs? Global Banks Are Telling Us the End Of the Dollar System is Near World reserve status allows for amazing latitude in terms of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve understands that there is constant demand for dollars overseas as a means to more easily import and export goods. The dollar’s petro-status also makes it essential for trading oil globally. This means that the central bank of the US has been able to create fiat currency from thin air to a far higher degree than any other central bank on the planet while avoiding the immediate effects of hyperinflation. Read More |
03.18.24- Blame the Fed for ‘Shrinkflation’ President Biden may have recently made history as the first president to discuss snack chips in the State of the Union message. He used snack chips to illustrate the phenomenon of shrinkflation. Shrinkflation occurs when businesses reduce the amount of goods sold in order to avoid raising prices. President Biden pointed out that businesses hope that, since both the price and the size of the package remain the same, most consumers will not notice they are getting fewer chips, cookies, or whatever other product has been affected by shrinkflation. Read More |
Federal agencies gave banks automated censorship tools to flag as possible domestic terrorists any Americans who buy Bibles or support the enforcement of immigration law, says testimony today before a House committee. “Federal agencies are funding tools for the financial sector similar to those social media is using to target misinformation and hate speech,” says written testimony from Jeremy Tedesco, senior counsel at the nonprofit First Amendment law firm Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). “Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg.” Read More |
03.15.24- Why economists are warning of another US banking crisis March 2024 is making investors nervous. A major scheme to prop up the US banking system is ending, while a second may be winding down. Some economic commentators fear another banking crisis. So how worried should we be? The red letter day is March 11, when US central bank the Federal Reserve will end the bank term funding program (BTFP), a year after it began in response to the failures of regional banks Signature, Silvergate and Silicon Valley. Read More |
03.14.24- Layoffs could be coming as debt-laden firms navigate the pain A wave of layoffs could be coming as companies deal with the reality of higher interest rates, economists say. While the job market still looks strong on paper, hiring conditions are set for a slowdown later this year, according to David Rosenberg, economist and the founder of Rosenberg Research. That's because the economy — and what's been touted as a surprisingly strong job market — are actually weaker than they appear, he told Business Insider, predicting that unemployment could jump to 5% by the end of the year. Read More |
03.13.24- No Such Thing As A Neutral Fed If one follows news relating to the economy, they surely have come across certain mainstream rhetoric in support of the Federal Reserve System. Everyone is familiar with the typical claims that the Federal Reserve strives for maximized employment and low inflation, and that the Fed is the regulator of the banking industry. But king of them all is of the supposed political neutrality of the Federal Reserve. Read More |
03.12.24- Gold Is The Canary In The Economic Coal-Mine This weekend, Todd Sachs interviewed Peter on the state of the economy. They discuss the parallels between now and the 2007-2008 housing crisis, the role of economic sentiment in voters’ opinions, and why foreign central banks are losing faith in the dollar. Peter opens with the fact that the United States is probably in a recession already, even though the government statistics say otherwise: Read More |
03.11.24- South Dakota's Anti-Central Bank Digital Currency Bill If you’re following the development of pushback in the individual American states against the lunatic plans of Mr. Globalooney for central bank digital currencies, or for that matter, if you’ve been following the several American states initiating state bullion depositories and passing bullion-as-money laws, then you’ll want to pay very close attention to what just happened in my home state of South Dakota, and to what was just signed into law by its Governor, Mrs. Kristi Noem. Read More |
03.09.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The End of Ideology? In 1960, Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell published a book called The End of Ideology. It argued that it was time to put aside all our ridiculous arguments of the past — socialism, fascism, liberalism, anarchism, technocracy, etc. — and just recognize that elites like him have it all under control. They’d already established the building blocks of the administrative state so that real experts could be in charge and rule society with a steady hand. Read More |
03.08.24- Powell Says “Today just feels different,” one JPMorgan trader warned in a note to his clients this morning. “Fundamental longterm money is selling. I can’t help but sense that we’re at the apex of some unknown pivot point in the market. I can’t shake it.” Read More |
03.07.24- A Circus of Errors When Nvidia reported high fourth quarter earnings for 2023 in February 2024, it sparked a general rally in stock markets. Stock markets in the United States, Japan, and Europe jumped to all-time highs after a few days of slight declines. It seems strange for one company’s earnings call to have such a widespread effect, but many are saying that this is all a part of a technological revolution, in which real productivity will increase dramatically due to artificial intelligence powered by chips and hardware developed and produced by companies like Nvidia. Read More |
03.06.24- Key Indicator Signals ‘Recession Ahead’ – Fed Faces Pressure to Cut Rates The mainstream financial media is reporting that inflation is coming down. It’s not coming down to the Federal Reserve’s supposed 2% target – let alone low enough to cease being a persistent problem for millions of families. Nor is it even clear that the rate of price level increases is on a path lower in 2024. Read More |
03.05.24- One Bank Asks "Could A Central Bank Somewhere Be Buying Crypto Assets?" Crude oil prices spiked on Friday evening following news that OPEC+ and Russia will extend production cuts through to June of this year. Brent closed 2% higher at $83.55/bbl, which means that prices have now risen by more than $6/bbl since the start of the year. Gold also caught a bid on Friday night to close the week at $2,082/ounce. This followed weaker than expected ISM survey data out on the United States that saw 2-year yields fall 9bps to 4.53% and the S&P500 hit fresh all-time-highs. Meanwhile, the Bitcoin surge continues apace after prices for ‘digital gold’ finished the week slightly above $62,500 Read More |
03.05.24- Questions About Gold The CFTC And Fed Won’t Answer The gold “held” in custody by the Federal Reserve on behalf of the U.S. Treasury Taxpayer has not been formally and independently audited since President Eisenhower was in the White House. Anyone who has studied this issue, particularly GATA, does not take the official published numbers seriously. Many of us question if the gold is still there, having likely been leased to bullion banks in the official effort to keep the price suppressed. Read More |
03.02.24- Inflation Soars, Or, at least, the hopes of a soft landing are going down as prices rise.If inflation screams and no one hears it, does an airplane fall in the forest? That’s a good question for today. Inflation ripped upward, and the stock market shrugged it off as if it heard nothing, while a good part of the media reported satisfactory results … but not everyone because some saw it as horrible. So, let’s start with the really bad news that almost everyone ignored and then end at the really mundane and predictable news that almost everyone on Wall Street focused on. Read More |
03.01.24- Fed's Bowman says she will stay 'cautious' on monetary policy Federal Reserve Governor Michelle Bowman on Tuesday signaled she is in no rush to cut U.S. interest rates, particularly given upside risks to inflation that could stall progress or even cause price pressures to resurge. Read More |
02.29.24- Real Wages Turn Negative Again as Price Inflation Refuses To Go Away According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest price inflation data, CPI inflation in January accelerated, and price inflation hasn't proven nearly as transitory as the regime's economists have long predicted. According to the BLS, Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation rose 3.1 percent year over year during January, after seasonal adjustment. That’s the thirty-fifth month in a row of inflation well above the Fed’s arbitrary 2 percent inflation target. Read More |
02.28.24- Don’t Be Surprised If The Fed Raises Interest Rates The question of whether the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates at its next meeting in March, raises them or continues “the pause”, will be on everyone’s minds when Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) inflation data comes out this Thursday. I’ve been right in my prediction that we will get a soft landing with no recession, with the important proviso that the Fed pauses its rate-hiking cycle, which it has already done. Read More |
02.27.24- Hubris Runs Rampant at the Fed Prices will always increase, some small banks will fail, and the Fed was asleep at the switch when the run on Silicon Valley Bank occurred. Fed chair Jerome Powell admitted those three things in response to Scott Pelley’s questions on 60 Minutes. “But the overall price level doesn’t come down. It will fluctuate. And some . . . goods and services will go up, others will go down. But overall, in aggregate, the price level doesn’t tend to go down except in extreme circumstances”. Read More |
02.26.24- Oil ends lower, posts weekly decline as US rate cut hopes dim NEW YORK, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Oil prices fell nearly 3% lower on Friday and posted a weekly decline after a U.S. central bank policymaker indicated interest rate cuts could be delayed by at least two more months. Brent crude futures settled down $2.05, or 2.5%, at $81.62 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures (WTI) were down $2.12, or 2.7%, to $76.49 Read More |
02.24.24- The Federal Reserve Enables and Grows Big Government The Federal Reserve is the engine that powers one of the biggest, most powerful governments in history. In this episode of the Money Metals' Midweek Memo, host Mike Maharrey explains how and why the Fed enables an ever-growing federal government. Mike opens the podcast using an analogy drawn from the TV show "My 600-Pound Life," explaining how when somebody is engaged in destructive behavior, there is almost always an enabler. Read More |
02.23.24- Federal Reserve records massive losses, makes up fictitious value called ‘deferred assets’ to compensate Maybe the problem with all of the government can be summarized by what the Federal Reserve is doing. The Federal Reserve lost $114.3 billion in 2023 and doesn’t seem to care. Maybe that is why the federal government has run up $34 trillion in debt, while they pretend government programs are paid for. They don’t care. They can always print more money. Read More |
|
02.21.24- Massive Money Printing Will Accelerate as Debt Soars The U.S. federal government published a December deficit of $129 billion, up 52% from the previous year. The private sector recession is clear as expenses continue to rise while tax receipts decline. If we look at the period between October and December 2023, the deficit ballooned to a staggering $510 billion. You may remember that the Biden administration expected a significant deficit reduction from its tax increases and the expected benefits of its Inflation Reduction Act. Read More |
02.20.24- Interest on the Debt will exceed defense budget this year The ink was barely dry on the Treaty of Paris in the year 1763 when the financial panic set in. Government ministers across Europe began taking stock of their disastrous finances… and the picture was gruesome. The world had been at war with itself for nearly a decade. And though the conflict became officially known as the Seven Years War, it might as well have been called ‘World War Zero’ because it involved just about every major power on the planet. Read More |
02.19.24- Fed Bank Bailout Program The bank bailout program established by the Federal Reserve in the wake of last spring's banking crisis is scheduled to shut down on March 11. Then what? There are a lot more questions than answers. For instance, will the Fed blink? Read More |
02.17.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Dissecting Stupidity While the Fani Willis testimony inspired this post, it’s not the only case to be made for the fact that Americans might be too stupid today to fix anything. This is not a condemnation of the human being so much as it’s a condemnation of a federally-run public school system. One cannot rely on education to solve the problems; it takes common sense, logic and the application of both to overcome the irrational and illogical narratives that seem to create this sort of civil psychosis, the outcome of which is societal suicide. Read More |
02.16.24- Puzzled (Not me, but the drunken stock market seems to have pieced things together rather strangely.)The good news is (or it would be in normal times when markets were not hoping for Fed rate cuts as they most recently were) that jobless claims continued to decline today. Of course, strong jobs strip the Fed-pivot hopes down to nothing, as the labor market continues to leave the Fed with no excuse for going to lazier interest policies. As Zero Hedge comments today, noting some of the peculiarities: Read More |
02.15.24- Lingering Inflation Risks Keep Fed Officials in Wait-and-See Mode The Federal Reserve entered 2024 within spitting distance of its inflation goal. But that’s not quite close enough for policymakers. The risk that inflation could remain stuck above their 2% target is guiding Fed officials’ preference to keep interest rates where they are for now, even as investors have clamored for cuts. Read More |
02.14.24- Inflation Won’t Die The January inflation numbers came out this morning, and they weren’t good for Wall Street. The consumer price index (CPI) rose 3.1% in January. That’s a decrease from December’s 3.4%, but it exceeded consensus estimates of 2.9%. Core inflation, which excludes food and energy, rose 3.9% on an annualized basis, which is unchanged from December. But the consensus estimate was 3.7%. Core inflation also rose at its highest rate since April 2023. Read More |
02.13.24- Inflation: Consumer prices rise 3.1% in January, defying forecasts for US consumer prices rose more than expected in January, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released Tuesday morning. The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.3% over the previous month and 3.1% over the prior year in January, slightly higher than December's 0.2% month-over-month increase but a deceleration from December's 3.4% annual gain. Read More |
02.12.24- Jerome Powell Begs Washington to Save the American Economy We called the surging accumulation of government debt “unsustainable” back in August 2023 (and reported on the worsening debt trend many times before that). Since August, total debt has piled on more than $1 trillion in only a few months, establishing another record total of $34 trillion. Read More |
02.10.24- The Fed asks America to fill in the blanks It’s interesting to see how so many mainstream voices are starting to express concern about the gargantuan size of the US national debt. For most of the past decade, even as the debt spiraled out of control and passed $20 trillion, $25 trillion, $30 trillion, etc., hardly anyone in the media said a word about it. If anything, they would insist that the ‘debt doesn’t matter.’ Read More |
02.09.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Global Economic War – Where the Dollar Stands in the Chaos In a recent statement posted to social media, Tucker Carlson explained succinctly his many reasons for traveling to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. His decision, mired in an avalanche of outrage from leftist media talking heads and a multitude of western politicians, was inspired by Carlson’s concern that Americans have been misdirected by corporate media propaganda, leaving the public completely uneducated on the war in Ukraine. Read More |
02.08.24- Stocks and Bonds in Jeopardy as Powell's Punch Hits Home Markets finally take the blow. The Dow fell about 300 points intraday and closed down more than 250 points as the investors began to let the seriousness of Powell’s blow hit home (it appears, but who knows with this lunatic market?) Last week the market fell after Powell popped investors on the nose right after the Fed’s FOMC meeting, but then it stumbled to its feet again anyway in its usual delirium. Over the weekend, a one-two punch of Powell on “60 Minutes” and a little additional Fed speak from one of the reserve bank presidents seemed to hammer the message back home. It took those extra blows all because Powell had left the tiniest hint of hope for investors to rise on. Read More |
02.07.24- Here’s When the Fed Will Cut When will the Fed cut rates? Before giving you the answer, let’s back up. Before last week’s Federal Reserve meeting, I offered readers the following forecast of what would happen at that meeting: On Wednesday, the Fed will leave its target rate for fed funds unchanged. That decision will keep the federal funds target at 5.50% as set at the July 26, 2023 meeting. Over the course of fifteen FOMC meetings beginning March 16, 2022, I’ve been correct in all my forecasts including the “skipped” rate hikes at the June, September, November, and December 2023 meetings. Read More |
02.06.24- The Fed Cannot Cut Rates As Fast As Markets Want Market participants started the year with aggressive expectations of rapid and large rate cuts. However, after the latest inflation, growth, and job figures, the probability of a rate cut in March has fallen from 80 to 19%. Unfortunately for many, headline figures will support a hawkish Federal Reserve, and the latest comments from Jerome Powell suggest rate cuts may not come as fast as bond investors would like. Read More |
02.05.24- How Will The Fed React To The Supply-Driven Inflation Shock In Goods Double or Nothing? US non-farm payrolls put the final nail in the coffin of a March rate cut on Friday by printing at almost double the consensus estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Payrolls rose by 353,000 in January versus an expected gain of 185,000, and the December figure (already a beat) was revised higher by 117,000. Even the most bullish forecaster on the survey under-clubbed the number to the tune of 53,000 jobs (more than 1 standard deviation). Average hourly earnings also beat expectations to print at 0.6% m-o-m, which took the year-on-year figure back up to 4.5%. Read More |
02.03.24- The numbers may be fake, but they have plunged a dagger into the back of the Powell pivot fantasy A scorching-hot jobs report finally woke up a few bond vigilantes today to recognize they have priced bonds on the wrong side of history. With so many jobs supposedlyadded to the economy, the odds of a Fed pivot on interest rates in March got skewered. With no visible signs of any slack appearing in the labor market and Powell claiming the economy is strong and resilient, what possible reason could he have to lower rates when inflation is still up? Read More |
02.02.24- Powell Pummels Lunatic Market Mania He finally put stock investors in the stockade Powell drop-kicked the “Fed pivot in March” mantra to the floor today, driving the Dow down more than 300 points (-0.82%), the S&P down 79 points (-1.61%) and the topsy-tech NASDAQ down a major 345 points (-2.23%). Asked about the March mania, Powell said,
|
02.01.24- The US Is Living In late December, I published a final report on the themes of 2023 while looking ahead at their implications for the year to come. I repeated my claim that debt markets and debt levels made the future of Fed policies, currency moves, rate markets and gold’s endgame fairly clear to see. Of course, as facts change, opinions change as well. Read More |
01.31.24- Inflation has slowed. Now the Federal Reserve faces expectations WASHINGTON (AP) — Chair Jerome Powell will enter this week’s Federal Reserve meeting in a much more desirable position than he likely ever expected: Inflation is getting close to the Fed’s target rate, the economy is still growing at a healthy pace, consumers keep spending and the unemployment rate is near a half-century low. Read More |
01.30.24- Inside the Darién Gap; Agenda 2030 Mass Migration Plan Exposed |
01.29.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Let’s Pray That Texas The years-long showdown between Texas and the Federal Government over the Texas-Mexico border took a dramatic—and potentially dangerous—turn this week. The Supreme Court (with Amy Coney Barrett as the deciding vote) ruled that Texas could not prevent the Federal Government from taking down the barbed wire fence that Texas installed along part of the border. In turn, Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas National Guard to defend the barbed wire fence (and thus the border), saying that it was a matter of the state’s self-defense that supersedes the Supreme Court ruling. Read More |
01.27.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Left Had Better Watch Its Fani I was going to avoid commenting on the Fani Willis comedy routine playing in Atlanta. But after the last week’s events, I’m busting at the seams with snark. So here goes. The Atlanta district attorney, Fani Willis, decided to play superhero in her own performance art production to rescue the Dems from their disastrous decision to let gropey Joe lead the party. She figured she could clear the field for Joe by indicting Donald Trump, and 18 others, on federal racketeering charges. It seems that the Donald did the same thing that every losing Democrat since Al Gore has done: he questioned the vote-counting. That’s considered “protecting our democracy” when a Democrat does it, but according to Fani, it’s criminal conspiracy when a Republican does it. Read More |
01.26.24- The Fed Lost Billions and You're Going to Pay for It! The Federal Reserve recorded a record loss of $114.3 billion in 2023, and you (the American taxpayer) are on the hook. The last time the Fed ran a net operating loss was 1915. The loss was a direct result of the Fed’s interest rate hikes to fight price inflation. Read More |
01.25.24- The Chaos of Conflict Spreads and Burns the Hopes of Central Bankers The demise of China's economy and the rise of war in the Middle East is spreading globally as economic damage. Central bankers are now warning that it is making their inflation fight much harder. The Dow ended another doggy day down as the S&P eked a tiny speck upward while bond yields continued to rise as the market continued to price Fed rate cuts out further as prospects for inflation become more heated. Read More |
01.24.24- Inflation Gives Fed the Finger Is inflation over? Actually, no. And it may be getting worse. Let’s begin the analysis with the latest data. Last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index, CPI, on a year-over-year basis) was 3.4%. That’s practically the Federal Reserve’s worst nightmare. Read More |
01.23.24- Don’t Tax the Rich. End the Fed! Select politicians, government officials, economic elites, and experts arriving at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland were greeted with an open letter signed by more than 250 billionaires and millionaires. The signers request their respective governments raise their taxes. Read More |
01.22.24- Federal Reserve Payments to Banks Trigger Largest Ever Operating Loss The Federal Reserve quietly lost a fortune in 2023 as interest it pays out to banks swamped the interest it earns on its bond portfolio, data released by the central bank Friday showed. The Fed said it lost roughly $114.3 billion in 2023, its largest-ever annual loss. Read More |
01.20.24- This is a Blueprint for How the Dollar Goes Kaput That infernal clanging you might have heard outside your bedroom window this morning was the sound of the proverbial can being kicked down the road, yet again. With no agreement on spending anywhere on the horizon for the current fiscal year, the US Congress passed yesterday a ‘Continuing Resolution’ to keep the government temporarily funded for another six weeks. Read More |
RRPs heading to their normal level of zero. And it’s time to talk about the revived Standing Repo Facility. As the Fed’s Quantitative Tightening hums along on autopilot, its assets have fallen by nearly $1.3 trillion as of its weekly balance sheet released on Thursday, and its liabilities have fallen in equal amounts. The dropping liabilities are a result of QT. Here we’ll discuss two of the Fed’s big four liabilities: ON RRPs and Reserves. Read More |
01.18.24- How many times the Fed will cut interest rates is a hot topic in Davos Climate change, deadly wars, and the proliferation of potentially job-ruining artificial intelligence are several of the biggest topics being chatted about at this year's World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. But they aren't necessarily the hottest topics — that could be reserved for what the Federal Reserve may or may not do with interest rates in 2024. Why, you ask? Read More |
01.17.24- Will the Fed Sabotage Trump? It’s an election year. Interest rates are high relative to current inflation rates and are the highest they’ve been since 2006. Do those two conditions have anything to do with each other? The Federal Reserve would say no but history would say yes. Read More |
01.16.24- Congratulations, Fed! One of the most extraordinary economic marvels of the past decade is the astounding 50% leap in corporate profits, from $2.4 trillion (pre-tax) pre-pandemic lockdown to $3.6 trillion (pre-tax) in the years since the lockdown ended. Strangely, few seem to ask the source of this astounding 50% leap. Wall Street has certainly cheered this vast increase, but few analysts ponder the source, or ask if the source is a net plus for the economy and nation. Read More |
01.15.24- Futures Dip As Doubts Emerge About March Rate Cut, US equity futures were steady on Monday as investors were displeased by hawkish comments from ECB's Holzmann , who said there may not be any rate cuts this year which pushed European stocks to session lows, while also bracing for more earnings later this week. With cash stock markets closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and global liquidity especially thin, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures were down about 0.1% and unchanged, respectively, as 8:00 a.m. ET, after both underlying benchmarks gained last week as the earnings season kicked off. Read More |
01.13.24- And Now. for Something Entirely Different: Washington Escalates As I expected, Washington is moving the conflict toward Iran. Washington chose this moment to escalate in order to direct the news away from Israel’s trial in the International Court of Justice. Regardless, Washington’s neoconservatives intended escalation from the beginning of the Israeli-Hamas war. Read More |
01.12.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Political Man vs. We hazard the future hinges upon a monumental race. It is a contest between two mighty men — political man — and technological man. At stake is the destiny of everyman, presently in the siege of political man. Under political man the nation has taken aboard $34 trillion of debt. Read More |
01.11.24- What Happens |
Is South Africa predicting the future of the United States? And if so, can it be stopped? There are shocking similarities between South Africa and the United States of America, explained Simon Roche, the director of foreign affairs for Suidlanders, an Afrikaner preparedness organization, in an episode of Conversations That Matter . Read More |
01.09.24- Mission Accomplished: Yellen Says Fed's Battle is Over! Who wouldn't trust a sweet ol' gramma? Janet Yellen coos that the Fed has landed so softly we didn’t even feel the wheels touch the tarmac. It’s “mission accomplished,” according to Jesse Felder’s take on Yellen’s praise for the Powell landing. Apparently inflation has been tamed now with no significant damage to labor and no recession. Read More |
01.08.24- What the Fed Accomplished: Distorted the Economy, Enriched the Rich and Crushed the Middle Class The mainstream holds the Fed is busy planning a return to the glory days of zero interest rates, but ZIRP is on the downside of the S-Curve; it’s done, gone, history. Let’s summarize what the Federal Reserve accomplished since embarking on its massive interventions to control volatility, risk, bond yields, interest rates, the mortgage market, bank subsidies and liquidity, all of which can be summed up as the cost of credit-capital, that is, capital that is borrowed into existence based on some form of collateral or income stream. Read More |
01.06.24- Zero Hedge Admits it Was Wrong about Fed Pivot It is funny how Zero Hedge admitted it was wrong. They did it by admitting everyone else was wrong who got tied up in the latest mess of pivot mania without mentioning that they were caught up in it themselves. In fact, they were practically championing the mania, rather than criticizing it as they should have been. Read More |
01.05.24- Corrupt Money, Corrupt World |
01.04.24- 2024 Could Be Horrible For The Dollar Peter Schiff left a stark warning in his recent podcast: “2024 could be a horrible year for the dollar.” Here are 3 big reasons why Peter thinks inflation might rise even higher this year. 1. The Fed wants to boost Biden’s reelection Read More |
01.03.24- The Fed Will Lose Control In 2024 |
01.02.24- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: 2024 Will Be A Year Of Historic Natural Disasters We didn’t even make it through an entire day in 2024 before our planet sent us some enormous reminders that it is becoming increasingly unstable. Unfortunately, the earthquakes that we just witnessed in California and Japan are just the beginning. 2024 will be a year of historic natural disasters, and in many cases there won’t be any warning at all. In Japan, people were preparing for an ordinary New Year’s Day when all of a sudden the shaking began. Read More |
01.01.24- New York Fed: Inflows to reverse repo facility surge, hitting $1.018 trillion NEW YORK, Dec 29 (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York said on Friday it accepted $1.018 trillion at its overnight reverse repo facility, as inflows to the central bank liquidity facility surged on the final trading day of the year. Friday's inflows were expected to jump and were well above the $829.6 billion seen on Thursday. Friday's inflows were the first time above $1 trillion since Nov. 13. Read More |
12.30.23- 2024 Economic Prediction: The Repocalypse Redux is Coming! I just published an article showing how the Fed had responded with a quarter of a trillion dollars to save the economy from what it claimed was a mere blip. Since then, the recession- causing Repocalypse I’ve warned of has roared around the world, forcing the Fed to amplify its response again. The Fed’s planners just cannot outrun the little monster they created. It is growing as quickly as they increase their running speed. Read More |
12.29.23- When Will The Fed Pivot? I previously produced a chart like this one below. There I showed the US Federal Reserve Liabilities normalised to 1914 dollars. This has the effect of visually amplifying the massive currency creation around the World War I and World War II. It does not change anything but puts them all into the same dollar value terms and so we are comparing 'apples with apples'. Read More |
12.28.23- Could the Entire Banking System Come Tumbling Down? How does one describe our present banking system? It is like an upside-down pyramid, with the tippy top of it located at the bottom and the widespread base of it placed at the top. If even a slight wind comes along, it will knock down the entire enterprise. The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Heck, you don’t even need a breeze. This enterprise is as unstable as it conceivably can be. Read More |
12.27.23- The Secret Meeting on Jekyll Island that Changed America Forever This week, 110 years ago, a secret meeting on a secluded Georgia island brought together six of the world's most influential figures. Their objective? To lay the foundation for the United States' Central Bank, now known as the Federal Reserve. This momentous gathering not only reshaped America's monetary policy but has also remained a largely unknown piece of history for years... Read More |
12.26.23- How Bankers Are Exploiting The Fed's Bailout Program At Your Expense Over the last month, loans outstanding in the Federal Reserve bank bailout program increased by around $17.5BN. It was the second month we’ve seen borrowing from the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP) surge. And the pace of borrowing is increasing. Between December 13 and December 20, the balance in the BTFP grew by $7.6BN Read More |
If you don’t understand how broken the system has become, you will never understand what is necessary to fix it. Every election cycle the American people just keep sending the same faces back to Congress, and then they are shocked that those politicians just keep doing things that are against the interests of the American people. Read More |
12.23.23- Biden Rescue Operation Could Tank The Economy For the last two years, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has been maintaining a moderate stance on raising rates to combat a historic wave of red-hot inflation. (Although initially, the Fed didn’t start raising rates fast enough). But something has changed: 2024 is an election year. And there are hints that Powell could go “all in” on a Fed pivot that could mean leveraging rate cuts to buy President Biden another term by making his economy look better than it is. Read More |
12.22.23- 2023: Goodbye To All That “There are two kinds of forecasters: those who don’t know, and those who don’t know they don’t know.” Forecasts create the mirage that the future is knowable - Peter Bernstein Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said,“the central bank isn't really discussing cutting interest rates right now.” Are they, or aren’t they? Who knows? Read More |
12.21.23- Gold prices rangebound as markets gauge 2024 Fed rate cut bets Gold prices moved little in Asian trade on Thursday, sticking to a trading range established over the past week as markets speculated over just when the Federal Reserve will begin trimming interest rates. The yellow metal stuck to a range between $2,000 and $2,050 an ounce seen over the past week. While dovish signals from the Fed helped the metal break above the $2,000 an ounce level, it struggled to make further gains as risk appetite improved and as traders second guessed expectations for early rate cuts from the Fed. Read More |
12.20.23- Hot markets are circling the doom-loop toilet bowl And that doesn't exactly lead to a tunnel of light. Markets are in a doom loop and don’t know it because they don’t want to know it. Another voice chimes in today about Powell’s big blunder as Bill Bonner scoffs at investor mania and Fed miscommunication and market misinterpretation: Read More |
12.19.23- 2024 Markets: The End of a Crappy Year, and the Beginning of a Worse One As my last report for 2023, I wanted to hit the big issues blunt in the face—from debt and sovereign bond markets to themes on the USD, inflation, risk markets and physical gold. This will not be short, but hopefully simple. No one likes hard macro facts, especially at holiday parties, so I’ll sip my champagne in silence and share my views here instead. Read More |
12.18.23- Seaing Red The NASDAQ closed at a record high on Friday evening. This came as the US 10-year yield fell another basis point to settle at 3.91%, and Brent crude remained mostly unchanged after sharp gains on Thursday to end the week at 76.55/bbl. Markets have been in jubilation mode since the proverbial Fed pivot arrived last week. Last Monday I pointed out that for the market to be right on the future path of the Fed Funds rate, the dot plot forecasts of every FOMC member would have to be wrong.Well, that problem was momentarily solved by FOMC members moving their forecasts lower, which prompted the market to then price in more cuts, meaning that the Fed still needs to be wrong for the market to be right. Read More |
12.16.23- Gold is the solution to currency debasement I’ve been right in my prediction that the Fed would pause in June, and hike once or twice more before the end of the year. I’ve also voiced my opinion that we will get a soft landing with no, or an extremely shallow and very short recession, with the important proviso that the Fed pauses its rate-hiking cycle, which it has already done. For the Fed this means the inflation rate is coming down. Remarkably, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates high enough to reverse the inflation rate, without causing a severe downturn. And it’s done it in an extremely short amount of time. Read More |
12.15.23- The Fed Just Declared Victory “While participants do not view it as likely to be appropriate to raise interest rates further, neither do they want to take the possibility off the table.” Thus Mr. Powell issued his wink and his nod to Wall Street yesterday. His statement followed the December confabulation of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee - so-called. Read More |
12.14.23- Now It All Makes Sense One day after the Fed's bizarre, unexpected pivot, many are struggling to wrap their heads around what happened: what exactly changed in less than two weeks for Powell to go from telling the market it was "premature to conclude with confidence that we have achieved a sufficiently restrictive stance, or to speculate on when policy might ease" to suddenly warning that rate cuts are something “that begins to come into view, and is clearly a topic of discussion out in the world and also a discussion for us at our meeting today." Read More |
12.13.23- Biden, Media, Fed Gaslight People About Inflation President Biden recently repeated the claim that high prices are caused by greedy businesses. Biden is not alone in trying to gaslight the people into thinking price inflation is rooted in the actions of private individuals and not the fiat money system Americans have lived under since 1971. Read More |
12.12.23- And Now, for Somethiing Entirely Diferent: Last Chance To Get Out Of Dodge? Time is running out. Lately, I have been hearing from so many people that believe that 2024 will be the year when our society goes over the edge. Our financial system is teetering on the brink of disaster, crime is absolutely exploding all over the country, homelessness is rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, food banks are facing unprecedented demand for their services, and I believe that 2024 will be the most chaotic election year in the entire history of our nation. And of course all of this is happening in the context of a global environment in which war, pestilences, economic problems, famine and natural disasters are all on the rise. A “perfect storm” is raging all around us, and millions upon millions of Americans have become deeply concerned about what our future will look like. Read More |
12.11.23- Job Market Cancels Big Bond Bets The labor market refuses to cooperate with the fantasies of stock and bond investors. Just when bond investors thought they knew something and could relax about inflation because the Fed’s work was over, the job market decided its work wasn’t over and put people back to work. Today’s news tells of hundreds of thousands of laborers entering the labor force and of more new hires than economists anticipated, even though economists had already raised their anticipation because of the end of labor strikes that bedeviled Hollywood and the auto manufacturing industry. Read More |
12.09.23- Down the Money Drain Hole Evidence of a severe recession that has already begun continues to build, and the cause is clear. As you can see in the following graph, money supply fell again in October and its “growth” has, during the Fed’s current quantitative tightening (QT), gone negative, since the end of last year, for the first time in almost three decades. Read More |
12.08.23- 2024, "The Year of Chaos," Will Sweep over us Like a Tsunami And I'm just talking about the ECONOMIC chaos from the collapse the Fed has already laid in for us. Danielle DiMartino Booth, a former Fed staff member and CEO of her own financial advisory firm, says the lag time with Fed policy, which I wrote about yesterday, is going to become “extremely important” in the first quarter of 2024. Since quantitative tightening began in June of 2022, we are only starting to feel the effects of that QT now, she says, due to the 12-18 month lag between Fed policy and its effects. That means we will continue to feel the growing effects of all the QT that has happened since then for another 12-18 months. Read More |
12.07.23- Central Bank Hanky Panky
|
12.06.23- The Fed Pauses: After hiking rates by 5.25% since March 2022, the Fed is in a wait-and-see period, commonly deemed a pause. Since the Fed started hiking rates, inflation has declined meaningfully but remains moderately above the Fed’s 2% target. The economy continues to thrive, fueled by a strong labor market. Despite the good news, a dark cloud lingers on the horizon. The Fed’s primary fear is that the lag effect of prior rate hikes has yet to impact the economy fully. They desire a soft landing, implying little economic degradation. But a much stronger downturn can’t be ruled out in their minds or ours. Given the odd juxtaposition between strong economic growth and recession fears, a Fed pause is the most likely action. Read More |
The market is having second thoughts. Wisely so, as there are many ways to interpret what we see and hear. In a classic Two Ronnies sketch, “fork handles” is heard as “four candles”. In the same way, markets are hearing “rate cuts” as the Fed says “rates up”. Market cheerleaders need to understand the difference between disinflation (i.e., your rent went up 20% last year, and is going up 5% this year) and deflation (i.e., your rent goes down 10%). Read More |
12.04.23- Gold Spikes To Record High Over $2,130, Bitcoin Soars Above $40,000 On Friday, shortly after Powell failed to hammer the hawkish case in his “fireside” chat with stocks eager to take out 2023 highs, we said that Powell has a big problem on his hands not so much because if the market was indeed correct about imminent easing that only assures that inflation will come back with a vengeance and Powell would indeed be the “second coming” of a former Fed Chair – only Burns not Vlcker – but because the kneejerk surge higher in gold (and digital gold) meant that the once again deathwatch for the dollar – and fiat in general – had resumed. Read More |
12.02.23- Drumbeats of Recession Today’s news rumbles with the sounds of recession everywhere. It’s been a long time since global wars and recession have joined hands. Yet, with two major wars that each have the potential of becoming world wars, we also hear the drumbeats of recession growing very close now. Today’s economic reports were full of recession. We have also never faced so many bubbles blown up to such enormous sizes that are deflating together, which is where the potential lies for a deep recession. Read More |
12.01.23- Will Fed Chair Crash The Party After Biggest Easing In Financial Conditions On Record As noted earlier, November was a scorching blockbuster month for markets after a run of three fairly weak ones, which has led to a big turnaround in some of the YTD numbers for 2023. In fact, it was the best month for global bonds since December 2008, the best month for US bonds since May 1985, as well as the strongest month for the S&P 500 this year and the second best November for US stocks since 1980 (only the insane 2020 was better). Read More |
11.30.23- Major Central Bank Admits It's Preparing for New Gold Standard |
11.29.23- The Federal Reserve is Running Losses. Does This Cost Anyone Anything?
|
11.28.23- Fed Rate Cuts Will Not Save The Economy Market implied Fed Funds rate discount a string of cuts starting in January 2024 and culminating in a 4.492 percent in January 2025. These expectations are based on the perception that the Federal Reserve will achieve a soft landing and that inflation will drop rapidly. However, market participants who assume rate cuts will be bullish may be taking too much risk for the wrong reasons. Read More |
High mortgage rates have effectively frozen the US housing market. And while lower rates could be on the horizon, Americans might have to wait awhile. The average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is over 7%, up from roughly 3% at the beginning of 2022. This has deterred prospective first-time homebuyers from taking the plunge and made existing homeowners reluctant to sell their homes and buy another — they'd rather stick with the super-low rates they already locked in. Read More |
11.25.23- Skyrocketing Governmental Debt Threatens Financial Collapse We just read that the federal government is running its largest deficit as a percentage of GDP outside of WWII period. Another great achievement! And next year we are likely to see the greatest money creation out of thin air in the entire history of the US. The Fed has to create ways to finance the record deficits by the creation of new money. Read More |
11.24.23- People See Better Than Economists We're no longer even sure what economists are since they clearly are not people who understand economics, so maybe not even people at all. Can you believe the Treasury market is already unwinding its bets that the Fed is done fighting inflation, even as the Champaign is still bubbling in half-empty flutes left behind from everyone’s celebration of the Fed’s victory? Of all the odd things, the average consumer out there, who is not heavily invested in stocks and bonds, seems to believe inflation is actually kind of bad and getting worse. Read More |
11.23.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Celebrating Thanksgiving Remembrances of holidays past can enable us to appreciate the present all the more. On Oct. 3, 1789, America’s new president, George Washington, |
11.22.23- As Debt Skyrockets, So Does This Physical gold: The opposite of debt There are a few things that are now admitted even in the somewhat-mainstream. The U.S. federal government is indebted by over $33 trillion, and it matters. It not only matters, but gold stands to benefit from it. It must, or we wouldn’t be seeing these two mentioned together so often. The metal has had a good week on what some attribute to fears of loose monetary policy. We know how the boom and bust goes. The moment the Federal Reserve shows any kinds of easing, we expect an avalanche of selling to crush the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power. Read More |
This crybaby stuff is just funny. So let’s have a look.What we can loosely call our spoiled-rotten Wall Street crybabies – hedge fund magicians, investment bankers, bond-fund gurus, and what not – that got big and fat off the Fed’s free money, are now whining and crying and fearmongering about the Fed’s QT. For now, they’ve homed in on the Fed’s Overnight Reverse Repurchase agreements (ON RRPs) that were at $2.3 trillion this spring and are now down to $935 billion and will go to near $0, as QT is draining liquidity from the system. Read More |
11.20.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Leaving Blobtopia “The vibe shift being witnessed is nothing more then a managerial class losing the mandate of heaven as they squander the inheritance of empire.” —Jim Sharp A nation can only take so much corruption, crime, and unreality. ”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” said Karl Rove, veteran blobster and advisor to George W. Bush, when he uttered those fateful words. Even political junkies forget the rest of what he said: Read More |
11.18.23- Investors Are Running Back into a Building While the Fire Alarms are Still Sounding The inflation battle is about to get weird and chaotic. The fire alarm sounded, and everyone fled out the exits, practically trampling each other to death in order to save their lives. Then they all came running back into the flaming building, practically tripping over each other due to the thick the smoke in order to get in first. What on earth happened? Read More |
11.17.23- Gold soars as markets bet against December Fed hike Gold prices rally as weak jobless data cools expectations for more Fed interest rate hikes. Gold prices rebounded strongly on Thursday following higher than expected US jobless claims data, which led markets to scale back expectations of further interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve this year. Read More |
11.16.23- Exposing Our Fed-Driven David Stockman served for a short while as budget director during Ronald Reagan’s firstterm as president, but he soon resigned owing to Reagan’s refusal to cut government spending. He has since that time worked as a private investment adviser, at which difficult profession he has been highly successful, and he has written a number of books, among which the monumental Great Deformation (Public Affairs Press, 2013), is the most notable. The Great Money Bubble contains many vital lessons about money and macroeconomics, and in what follows I’ll discuss a few of these. But I’m not able to assess one part of the book. Read More |
Financial Conditions loosen further: credit markets blow off the Fed to make sure “higher for longer” gets entrenched? That would be funny. One of the big surprises this year is that the Fed’s 5.5% policy rates and $1.1 trillion in QT have neither meaningfully tightened financial conditions nor slowed the economy. Read More |
11.14.23- The Truth is Leaking Out FedNow is Broke. So is Labor. Watch out for CPI.The truth about the Fed’s errors isn’t exactly burning up the news yet, but it is slowly leaking out in the mainstream media. Some of it must have accidentally escaped because one multi-year major error was finally presented in stark terms in a hot headline about labor burnout today, though the publisher still didn’t hold the Fed accountable for its gross misunderstanding of labor. I’m not sure the publisher even understood the huge significance of what they reported. Read More |
11.13.23- Is the FedNow Broke? It sounds like the whole Federal Reserve System is creaking and breaking.Recently several major banks were unable for days to process hundreds of thousands of payments. The explanation by the banks given in one report in today’s news headlines was that
|
11.11.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Is A Cyber 9/11 Coming? Talk of a “Cyber 9/11” has been circulating for years. With the next presidential election twelve months away now, some folks are predicting that a major cyber event will happen before then, throwing a monkey wrench into the 2024 election process. What the heck is Cyber 9/11? What does Cyber 9/11 mean? Is there a real risk? What should we be preparing for? Read More |
11.10.23- Outsized Yield Swings Defy Bond Traders Bets For Calm Treasuries tumbled to undo part of this week’s sharp rally, and once more the longer end of the curve was a key pain point. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s pushback against the idea that interest rate hikes are done undoubtedly played a role, the spike in yields was the largest for 20- and 30-year notes. Read More |
11.09.23- U.S. Caught in Death Trap Imagine a fellow… This is a wastrel sunk impossibly in debt — credit card debt. Spiraling interest payments begin to swamp him. He must take on an additional credit card in order to satisfy interest payments on the original. Read More |
11.08.23- Fed Chair Powell Does Not Comment On Outlook Or Policy Update (9:18am ET). As is usually the case, Powell's prepared remarks which were just released, did not comment on the outlook for Fed policy or economy so soon after the FOMC meeting. Instead, the Fed chair focused on the Fed's forecasting voodoo and said the central bank must be willing to think beyond the complex mathematical simulations it traditionally uses to forecast the economy. Read More |
11.07.23- Stocks decided last week to trust J. Powell to save them. They will be wrong. People right now are wondering what the big upsurge in stocks last week means. Is the market going back into a bull rally? I gave my brief take in one section of my “Deeper Dive” this weekend, and I’m going to share that section with everyone, just as I wrote it because, as you can see in the headlines below (available to everyone on Mondays), trying to figure out what last week’s big turn in stocks means is on a lot of people’s minds. (My response essentially: “Not much; it will fade quickly.”) Read More |
11.06.23- The Fed Has a Commitment Problem This past Tuesday, I offered the following forecast of what would happen at the FOMC meeting this week:
|
11.04.23- Once Upon a Time in Flagstaff During the great bond bull market from September 1981 to July 2020 the yield on the 10-Year Treasury note fell from 15.32 percent to 0.62 percent. Since then, the yield has spiked up to where it currently sits at about 4.66 percent. The rapid interest rate flux has been unpleasant for bankers, borrowers, and businesses. By our estimation the unpleasantness has only just begun. Read More |
11.03.23- Why Biden’s Policies Are a Nightmare for Housing Affordability
|
11.02.23- Can The Fed Really Risk A Dovish Turn In This Kind Of Environment The FOMC opted to leave the Fed Funds rate unchanged yesterday with the upper bound at 5.50%. This was expected, so attention turned to parsing the statement and Jerome Powell’s prepared remarks to divine any shifts in the Fed’s reaction function. The economy expanded at a ”strong” pace in the third quarter, rather than the obviously more mediocre “solid” pace that it was previously travelling at. Hawkish! But lo, we are concurrently warned not to put too much emphasis on the September dot plot, which implies another rate hike. A new set of dots is due next month and the old ones lose reliability with age. Or so Powell tells us. Read More |
11.01.23- The Zombies are Dying It's Halloween madness in the markets.
|
Since QT started, stocks have been on their own, after having been babied by the Fed since 2008. And it’s not working out. There are some things happening in this inflationary world that contradict well-established previous wisdoms, including that stocks are a hedge against inflation. Turns out, since QE started in 2008, all prior wisdoms had to be thrown out the window, and the new wisdoms are all about QE and now QT: QE makes stocks go up, and QT makes stocks go down, no matter what inflation and the real economy do. Read More |
10.30.23- Death to Savers The Federal Reserve artificially suppressed interest rates from roughly 2008 to 2022. It did so by creating $8 trillion of credit out of thin air to buy Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. This pushed stock, bond, and real estate markets well beyond what the underlying economy could support. Falsified interest rates also birthed wild objects of speculation. Speculative manias always gain momentum through the expansion of credit. A look back at past manias tells a familiar story. Read More |
10.28.23- Cognitive Dissonance Hammers my Head Do you want Fedworld or Realworld? In the real world today, the Dow is negative for the year, with a third of the Dow down double-digits. At one point it was down over 400 points today. The S&P retired the day fully in correction while the NASDAQ, as I noted in the paid portion of yesterday’s “Deeper Dive” entered the correction zone Wednesday and crossed below its 200-day moving average on Thursday. It attempted to rise today on the positive energy of Amazon, which reported huge earnings, but it lost a good part of that rise by the end of the day. Unfortunately for it, its valiant effort was not enough to prove its bearish cross on Thursday was just a head-fake. So, it stuck the landing down in those nether regions, and stocks closed the week with a heavy thud. That’s Realworld. Read More |
10.27.23- JPM CEO Dimon Dumps $140 Million In Shares After Slamming Fed Forecasts For the first time in his long and tempest-ful tenure at the CEO of JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon has decided the time is right to dump 1 million shares in the mega-bank. According to a regulatory filing Friday, Dimon and his family will dispose of 1 million of the bank's shares, which amounts to around a $140 million haul, and the CEO's "first such stock sale during his tenure at the company."Read More |
10.26.23- Dollar's Fate Is Sealed As Fed's Independence Eroded US fiscal policy is increasingly infringing upon the Federal Reserve’s independence, heightening already elevated secular inflation risks and condemning the dollar to an even deeper debasement in its value... It was good while it lasted. But the modern era of monetary policy independence is drawing to a close, with central banks reverting to their usual position of subservience to their fiscal overseers. Read More |
10.25.23- Jerome Powell Isn’t Qualified to Be in Any Economic Club Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell delivered a speech at the Economic Club of New York luncheon. In his podcast, Peter Schiff broke down some of the Fed chair’s comments and concluded that Powell is not qualified to be a member of any economic club. Peter opened the discussion by saying Powell is not the person to bring in if you want answers about the economy. Read More |
10.24.23- The Next Gold Bull Market Could Be Around the Corner Gold nears $2,000 for the third time in three years It’s not the most accurate thing to say, perhaps, from a technical standpoint, as gold has seesawed across that level quite a bit over the last three years. But in that time, there were three spectacles that brought gold to $2,000 from various sideways trades. Those were the lockdowns, the Russia-Ukraine war and conflict between Israel and Hamas. Read More |
10.23.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Social Contract Is Shredded This is not about whether there is such a thing as a literal social contract. The phrase has always been a metaphor, and an imprecise one since it was first invoked by Enlightenment-era thinkers trying to sort through a rationale for collective practice of some sort. It’s easy enough to regard the social contact not as explicit but implied, evolved and organic to the public mind. At the most intuitive level, we can think of it as a widely shared understanding of mutual obligation, a tie that binds, and also the exchange relationship between society and state. Read More |
10.21.23- Restrictive Yields Will Be The Fed’s Waterloo Restrictive monetary conditions, from higher yields and tighter lending conditions, are the Fed’s “Waterloo.” If you don’t remember, the “Battle of Waterloo” was fought on June 18th, 1815. The battle was a catastrophic defeat for the Napoleonic forces and marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Before that defeat, Napolean had a successful campaign of waging war in Europe. Read More |
10.20.23- Powell Drops a Sledge Hammer on the Market's Dull Head Fed Chair Jerome Powell made the point clear for stock investors today: the Fed is in the fight to stay … taking interest as high as it takes for as long as it takes, and we aren’t anywhere near there yet. In response, the long brain-dead, zombie stock market tumbled another 250 points on the Dow today, but not until it first did its best to exhibit its zombie brain to denying Powell’s pungently clear statements with an attempted rise. Treasury yields also rose again in response with the 10YR tickling the underside of 5%. Read More |
10.19.23- Zombie Alert! Today we run a warning flag up our flagpole… For we have detected “zombies.” Zombies? Mr. Robert Burrows of BondVigilantes.com:
|
10.18.23- Too Much Debt! The Federal Reserve thinks economic growth comes with lots of debt and low interest rates. The Fed succeeded in that banks, consumers and The Federal government went wild in borrowing money, but now a hangover is happening as inflation surged and interest rates rose. First, debt laden banks Paper losses on the most opaque part of US banks’ bond portfolios are now close to $400bn — an all-time high, and 10 per cent above the peak at the start of the year that caused the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. Read More |
10.17.23- Buckle Up, Things Are About to Get MESSY The yield on the all-important 10-Year U.S. Treasury is spiking again. As I write this, it’s about to take out its former highs. There are no shortage of reasons. First and foremost, Inflation remains HOT. Read More |
10.16.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Global Release of Tensions It’s been a week since the skies over the Negev Desert filled with something eerily like the flying monkeys of Oz upgraded to Hamas Road Warriors in motorized paragliders, kicking off that third world war we’ve been hearing about all our lives, and not at all the way we expected either, which was more Dr. Strangelove style, with the mushroom clouds billowing everywhere — though, who knows, it might come to that too, before long. This new catastrophe, quickly globalizing, makes the war in Ukraine seem as comfortable as an old sweater. Read More |
10.14.23- Bad Money—The Bane Of Liberty And Prosperity, Part 1 Yes, the Alpha and Omega of almost everything that threatens the future of capitalist prosperity and constitutional liberty in America is the Federal Reserve. And its untoward impact goes back decades and decades, taking the form of multiple phases and transmutations as it made its way over the last 110 years to its current malefic incarnation. Read More |
10.13.23- Crisis Events Are A Hallmark Of The Federal Reserve As the “soft landing” narrative grows, the risk of a “crisis” event in the economy increases. Will the Fed trigger another crisis event? While unknown, the risk seems likely as the Fed’s “higher for longer” narrative is compromised by lagging economic data. Such is a question worth asking as we look back at the Fed’s history of previous monetary actions. Such was a topic I discussed in “Investors Push Risk Bets.” To wit: Read More |
Global central banks have been snapping up record amounts of gold since the start of 2022 - a trend that should continue as countries look to move away from an "overconcentration" of reserves in the dollar, according to State Street Global Advisors. Read More |
Via Washington Post:
|
10.10.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Israeli Flashpoint - Localized Skirmish... Or the Beginning of Major Global Black Swan? The eruption in Israel caught many of us off guard. But to some extents it was a long-expected flashpoint escalation meant to begin the denouement of the Ukrainian conflict, by taking heat off from it. There are many circulating accounts of all the things that seem “off” about Hamas’ attack, so I won’t recount every single point here as most of you have likely read them in multiple places; things like the very implausible breach of Israel’s high tech gates and defenses, to the unprecedented failures of Mossad and Shin Bet, to Netanyahu’s eerily scripted invocation of ‘Pearl Harbor’, which is very telling considering that Pearl Harbor was also a falseflag attack with the purpose of bringing the U.S. into WW2. Read More |
10.07.23- Why Paul Krugman Can't Admit Inflation Is Making Americans Poorer Paul Krugman recently suggested Americans are experiencing a profound "disconnect," but it's the New York Times columnist who is refusing to recognize economic realities. New government data have some unwelcome news: The public is getting poorer. Census Bureau data released last week show that median household income fell to $74,580 last year, down nearly $1,800 from the previous year, $76,330. Read More |
10.06.23- How the Fed's 'higher for longer' rate hikes will squeeze the US government Even small moves in interest rates can have big impacts on deficits. That's why the surge in bond yields has fueled concerns over the Federal Reserve and government debt, and what deficit watchers see as a looming crisis spelled out in budget lines. Read More |
10.05.23- It’s time to separate legend from reality Byzas of Megara must have been positively dumbfounded when he first set foot on the banks of the Bosporus River. It was the year 667 BC, more than 2,700 years ago, and Byzas was on a mission from the Greek mainland to find new colonies. His fleet had just landed on the European side of modern day Istanbul. And as he gazed across the river to the Asian side, Byzas could see another small settlement– a tiny colony known as Chalcedon. Read More |
10.04.23- It's All Coming Down! Today all three of the biggest bubbles in history are finally collapsing together.News of new jobs is supposed to be great, right? So, what kind of weird world do we live in when it is considered horrible? Welcome to Fedworld where most market decisions are nothing but bets on what the Fed will be doing next with its free money for millionaires.Read More |
There has been a dramatic spike in the number of Chinese nationals that are coming across our borders. The vast majority of them are men, and the vast majority of those men are of military age. Most of the time, when these men are intercepted by U.S. officials they claim that they have come to apply for asylum in the United States. Read More |
10.02.23- Time To End The Fed And Its Mismanagement Of Our Economy Every major economic downturn of the last 110 years bears the mark of the Federal Reserve. In fact, as long as the Fed has been around, it has swung the economy between inflation and recession. Yet Americans, surprisingly, have tolerated it. But we shouldn’t expect that to go on forever. We had three central banks before the Fed, and confined each to the ash heap of history. Read More |
09.30.23- The Costco Gold Indicator Can we all agree that once it becomes common knowledge just how ridiculous Modern Monetary Theory is, it'll be a treacherous day for the confidence that Americans place in the Fed? All I do is write about the Federal Reserve. I've been talking about them for the last 15 years nonstop and have constantly been skeptical of monetary policy in this country. This policy can best be described as a combination of Sam Bankman-Fried's and Bernie Madoff's management styles—combined and on a sovereign scale. Read More |
09.29.23- What Should the Federal Reserve Do Now? Inflation in the United States has fallen from its elevated levels a couple of years ago, although not quite all the way to the Federal Reserve’s target average rate of two percent per year. The Federal Reserve has been raising the federal funds rate progressively since early 2020 to lower inflation. It is well known that these increases affect the economy and inflation only over time. The effects of these increases still are playing out. Read More |
09.28.23- Lawmakers Oppose Digital Dollar. There's Just One Problem. There’s a move afoot to prohibit a central bank digital dollar from ever being issued by the Fed – without “authorization” that is – according to this article shared by E.G.(with our thanks): US lawmakers advance legislation blocking the digital dollar When I read this article (the first time) I thought, “Well, that’s good, someone out there realizes what Catherine Fitts and many others including yours truly have been warning about: a central bank digital currency is too easy to couple to a social engineering system, and affords no privacy. Read More |
09.27.23- A Crisis Is Coming: We recently wrote The Lag Effect Unveiled to appreciate why it takes time for higher interest rates to inflict economic damage. We follow that up with a discussion of something equally worrying that also lags Fed rate hikes. A financial crisis will likely follow the Fed’s “higher for longer” interest rate campaign. We are not clairvoyant in predicting a crisis; however, we do appreciate financial history. Read More |
09.26.23- The Fed Holds the Fed Funds Rate Steady – Because it Doesn’t Know What Else to Do The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) on Wednesday left the target policy interest rate (the federal funds rate) unchanged at 5.5 percent. This "pause" in the target rate suggests the FOMC believes it has raised the target rate high enough to rein in price inflation which has run well above the Fed's arbitrary two-percent inflation target since mid-2021. Read More |
09.25.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Understanding the Paul Craig Roberts –Before I answer the questions it needs to be clearly stated that my answers are not merely my opinion, but hard facts supported in the historical record. Like John Maynard Keynes, I like to keep my views in accordance with the facts. In the case of what is called “the Civil War,” the facts are clear enough. Lincoln and the Republicans understood that the 2 March 1861 Morrill Tariff would result in secession of Southern states from the Union. On the same day in an effort to prevent secession, the Republicans passed and Lincoln endorsed the Corwin Amendment. The Corwin Amendment would have made it impossible for slavery to be abolished. Read More |
09.23.23- Future Headline: Federal Reserve Announces Latest Rate Cut to Minus 4% In a world full of unimaginable absurdity, we spend a lot of time thinking about the future… and to where all of this insanity leads. “Future Headline Friday” is our satirical take of where the world is going if it remains on its current path. While our satire may be humorous and exaggerated, rest assured that everything we write is based on actual events, news stories, personalities, and pending legislation. Read More |
09.22.23- 5 Ways the Fed Just Made Americans Poorer The FOMC met Wednesday and Thursday. After that meeting, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell announced that the Fed would (at least momentarily) pause their recent string of interest rate hikes. This decision surprised almost no one. Read More |
09.21.23- Fed Continues to Signal Another Rate Hike The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) voted to hold its federal funds rate target range at 5.25 to 5.50 percent on Wednesday. However, FOMC members also signaled that another rate hike is likely in the fourth quarter of this year. In the latest Summary of Economic Projections, twelve of nineteen FOMC members projected rates would fall between 5.50 and 5.75 percent by the end of 2023. The remaining seven FOMC members projected rates would remain in the current 5.25 to 5.50 percent range. Only twelve members vote on the policy rate—the seven governors, the New York Fed president, and four of the remaining regional Reserve Bank presidents. And we do not know what those specific twelve members have projected. Still, the latest projections suggest that another rate hike is on the horizon. Read More |
09.20.23- Central Bankers Systematic monetary policy means a framework where tools such as the level of the Fed funds rate and the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet maintain a reasonably stable and predictable relationship with observable economic data such as output, inflation, employment, and the ‘gap’ between real gross domestic product and its estimated full-employment potential. Departures from systematic monetary policy distort behavior in ways that cause misalignments between financial quantities and real economic quantities, and as a result, they invariably produce damage as the two are ultimately realigned. Read More |
09.19.23- The Soft-landing Narrative The US recession is merely delayed, not canceled. The soft-landing narrative is a myth. The government's fiscal stimulus in 2023 has temporarily lifted the GDP growth rate. However, fiscal stimulus is not a reliable source of economic growth. It undermines productivity in the long term. It also creates problems such as higher taxes, higher interest rates, and harmful destabilizing inflation. Read More |
09.18.23- Deflation, Stag or Crack-Up Inflation? Goldilocks is transitional; it’s what’s next that will represent the next major macro themeEver since the the 30 year Treasury bond yield (one ‘top-down’ macro tool NFTRH uses to gauge the environment so that we may invest in, speculate upon or avoid certain situations, accordingly) broke its Continuum of pleasantly declining long-term Treasury bond yields, macro nerds have been called to task in order to correctly interpret the forward backdrop that this break implies. The note at the upper right of the chart asks the key question. Read More |
09.16.23- Lots of Red Ink at the Fed The Federal Reserve has officially reported a loss of $57 billion for the first six months of 2023. Quite a number! So the “Federal Reserve Banks Combined Quarterly Financial Report as of June 30, 2023” (CQFR)—a little-known document—is especially notable for its red ink. We can anticipate an annual loss of over $100 billion for 2023 and for the losses to continue into 2024. How does a central bank, especially the world’s greatest and most important central bank, lose tens of billions of dollars in six months? An average person, influenced by the mystique of the Fed, might understandably be baffled by this fact. Read More |
09.15.23- The Biggest Con Job in Banking: The Savings Account When the Fed raises interest rates to curb inflation, ripple effects spread across the economy. Some of the impacts are negative (especially if you owe a lot of money), but others are positive for savers. Today, let’s take a break from exploring the downsides of higher interest rates. Let’s focus on the positive. Read More |
09.14.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Rothschild Admits ESG Failure As Globalists Shift To “Inclusive Capitalism” Agenda
|
09.12.23- We're Living On Borrowed Time! Peter Schiff recently appeared on Nino’s Corner with David Nino Rodriguez to talk about the trajectory of the economy. Peter explained why the dollar is doomed to crash and what we can do to prepare. He also emphasized that the powers that be have managed to kick the can down the road for a lot longer than he expected. But you can’t kick the can down the road forever. Eventually, you will run out of road. Read More |
09.11.23- The Fed Is Flying America into an Economic Storm At the Federal Reserve’s annual conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, participants came to a rather disturbing economic realization. The so-called “experts” at the central banks who are trying to lead the United States out of the current economic mess marked by persistent inflation – could be doing so without understanding where things truly are, nor in what direction they are truly headed. Read More |
09.09.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Theory of the Game Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss was a bigger shock to the Washington DC deep state Blob than Donald Trump’s victory. But the dynamics of this trauma operated at many levels. At the most superficial level was the hysterical response of Democratic Party rank-and-file women who regarded Donald Trump as the most extreme and horrifying embodiment of an archetypal “bad daddy.” This was all sheer psychodrama of course, but women are engrossed with psychodrama — generating it and relishing it — which men often fail to appreciate. Read More |
09.08.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The New Authoritarian Agenda Revealed (Globalism Rebranded) In July of last year as the hype surrounding the Covid pandemic was finally dying out, I came across a video promoting a barely publicized project called the “Council for Inclusive Capitalism.” The group, headed by Lynn Forester de Rothschild, is the culmination of decades of various globalist agendas combined to represent the ultimate proof of conspiracy. Remember when people used to say that global governance by elitists was a paranoid fantasy? Read More |
09.07.23- The U.S. Fiscal Situation Deteriorates The price of gold and silver can be influenced by a variety of factors, including economic conditions, investor sentiment, and geopolitical events. The U.S. fiscal situation and the possibility of a debt crisis can play a role in affecting the prices of these precious metals, although the relationship is not always straightforward. Read More |
When the first shot rang out at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, most bystanders didn’t even realize that it was the sound of gunfire. But Texas Governor John Connally was an avid hunter. He recognized the sound, sensed danger, and turned behind him to check if President Kennedy was OK. Read More |
09.05.23- Are We Heading For a Great Depression? Or Something Worse? |
09.04.23- More Americans Are Realizing the Fed’s Role in Causing Higher Prices
Precious metals markets enter trading for the month of September with bulls hoping positive seasonal forces kick in. Gold and silver markets have traded mostly lower since late spring. They did rally, though, during the second half of August. Read More |
09.02.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Upcoming Gold Bull Market: How High Will Gold Prices Go? Gold is no different than any other asset class: it becomes popular, rises in price, is overvalued, and ultimately represents a poor investment. Other times, it undergoes periods of investor disinterest, suffers sustained price declines, becomes undervalued, and ultimately represents an excellent investment. |
09.01.23- What the Central Bank Cartel has Planned for You The Austrian(TA): What is the global currency plot, and who benefits most from the success of this effort? Thorsten Polleit (TP): The global currency plot denotes a rather inconvenient truth: the existence of states (as we know them today) sets into motion a dynamic process toward creating a single world fiat money controlled by a world central bank, and most likely a central world government. The beneficiaries will be the very few—the “elite”—in charge of running the state and those few privileged by the state, such as big business, big banking, Big Pharma, and Big Tech. However, the great majority of the people will suffer a very great disadvantage. In fact, a single world fiat currency would most likely entail tyranny. Read More |
08.30.23- "Central Banks Just Made It Clear They Aren't In Control, Jackson Hole: "Does my R* look big in this?" The Jackson Hole central banking symposium has been running at its Wyoming venue since 1981. As such, it spans almost the entire neoliberal economic era in which central banks have been independent rockstars, not the boring civil servants following a political lead of prior decades. Ironically, 2023’s event, titled "Structural Shifts in the Global Economy," pointed out an intellectual hole at central banks and their sudden lack of power, prompting look-in-the-mirror criticism. Read More |
08.29.23- Will This Be The Fall Of Falls? For years we have both warned investors about the consequences of a system based on unlimited money printing, debt creation and money debasement. The world economy and the financial system is now on the cusp of a precipice. No one can forecast when the coming violent turn will come. It can take years or it can happen tomorrow. Read More |
08.28.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: "The Covenant of Death" The Most Devastating Interview of my Life -- with Dr James Thorp: How HHS Paid Millions to get 1000s of Drs to Damage Women; Hurt, Kill Babies. Please forgive my recent silence. I am locked in an apartment in Brooklyn, copyediting a new book (out in November with Chelsea Green), titled Facing the Beast. You can guess what it is about. Read More |
08.26.23- "A Long Way To Go" - Fed Chair Powell Delivers Hawkish J-Hole Speech Powell's full speech is below but to summarize - "we ain't done yet." Chair Powell said The Fed is prepared to raise interest rates further if needed and intends to keep borrowing costs high until inflation is on a convincing path toward the Fed’s 2% target.
|
08.25.23- Stocks Will Have One Last Hurrah After Jackson Hole Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole this week promises to give stocks a boost. But it’s likely to be short lived as the liquidity outlook soon worsens. After months of rising almost uninterruptedly, stocks finally hit resistance as longer-term real yields rose to a 15-year high. The main driver though - a belief that the Fed will up its estimate of the neutral rate at Jackson Hole - is likely to come unstuck, prompting a relief rally in stocks. Read More |
08.24.23- De-dollarization "Irreversible" - Putin Tells BRICS Summit In Remote Address In their inaugural day 'family photo', BRICS leaders posed without Russia's President Putin, as FM Lavrov took his place given the ICC arrest warrant and Rome Statute would require the South African government to seek his arrest. Putin addressed the summit remotely, and emphasized in the Russian-language speech that de-dollarization is "gaining momentum". Read More |
The Coming Collapse of the It won’t be long before governments around the world, including the one in Washington – self-destruct. Strong words, but anything less would be naïve. As economist Herbert Stein once said, “If something cannot go on forever, it has a tendency to stop.” Case in point: fiat money political regimes. Interventionist economies of the West are in a fatal downward spiral, comparable to that of the Roman Empire in the second century, burdened with unsustainable debt and the antiprosperity policies of governments, especially the Green New Deal. Read More |
08.22.23- The Fed Is In A No-Win Situation
|
08.21.23- Two Years to Bust Financial commentators marvel how the Fed has been able to increase the fed funds rate from 0% to 5.3% without a major financial accident (other than the failure of a few regional banks).1 The previous time the fed funds rate was this high was in 2007, when there was $51 trillion in total debt instead of the current $94.7 trillion;2 and everyone remembers what that rate produced: the largest financial crisis in history. Read More |
08.19.23- The U.S. Dollar’s Monopoly
|
08.18.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Did Big Pharma Buy So Many Governments? Among the many alarming revelations from the "Facebook Files" is the discovery of a strange official policy that dominated the platform in the COVID-19 years.
|
08.17.23- The Federal Reserve’s Success Is a Failure for You and Me I’ve long been critical of the Federal Reserve – in fact, I wrote a book called End the Fed way back in 2009. My position on the Fed’s failings have been clear for a long, long time. Even so, the Fed’s failure to properly manage price stability has rarely been more clear than it is today. Many mainstream economists (Paul Krugman and Ben Bernanke spring to mind) would tell you the Fed is an indispensable institution, and our economy simply couldn’t function without it. Read More |
08.16.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Great American Blunder From a geopolitical perspective, the U.S. today has never been weaker than since the post-Vietnam era. Remember the images of U.S. helicopters taking off from its South Vietnamese embassy in 1975, loaded with refugees trying to escape the country? It was a national humiliation. Read More |
08.15.23- Powell's 'Abracadabra' The Fed has two mandates – Maximum Employment and Price Stability If we look at price stability, the Fed has failed miserably. The Fed employs 3,000 people in Washington DC of which 300 have a Ph.D. degree. Read More |
08.14.23- BRICS, CBDCs, and Misdirection - with a Personal Perspective
As a young first-year graduate student in 1997, I was required to take a class called 'Banking and Monetary Policy'. As I registered, the course itself sounded rather interesting - my undergraduate work had been in the field of what is now called Molecular Biology. It was an introductory course, taught by a professor who was in exile from South Africa. Read More |
08.12.23- Why Uncle Sam Really Hates Cash Created by the Federal Reserve, the FedNow instant payment system went operational on July 20, 2023. If you’ve ever sent a wire, ACH or e-check through a bank, and were frustrated that it took up to five business days to clear, that problem may be solved. At least, that’s what the Fed’s description of the service says: It is available to depository institutions in the United States and enables individuals and businesses to send instant payments through their depository institution accounts. The service is a flexible, neutral platform that supports a broad variety of instant payments. Read More |
08.11.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Information War International Man: Controlling information has always been crucial in military conflicts. How has information warfare evolved over time? Doug Casey: Information has always been, and still is, the single most important factor in any conflict. Read More
|
08.10.23- Credit Crunch: The Money Supply Has Shrunk For Eight Months In A Row
|
08.09.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Why Don’t We Trust |
08.08.23- The Real Threat Is A Market-Driven Dollar-Downgrade Last week, Fitch Ratings downgraded the US’s long-term credit rating from AAA to AA+. While the downgrade won’t significantly impact the US government’s ability to borrow, it should serve as a wake-up call because there is a much bigger problem looming on the horizon: a market-driven downgrade of the US dollar. The bond market got pummeled last week with four losing days before a rally on Friday driven by a weaker-than-expected jobs report. That rally wasn’t enough to recover all the losses, and yields finished the week above 4% across the board. Read More |
08.07.23- Secretary Yellen Whines about Fitch’s Downgrade of U.S. Credit Rating As debt downgrade concerns push up bond yields, metals markets are facing selling pressure. Credit ratings agency Fitch this week issued a surprise downgrade of the U.S. government's once vaunted AAA credit rating. Recent political brinksmanship surrounding the debt ceiling helped prompt the move. But broader concerns about the size and sustainability of the national debt itself also figured into the downgrade. Read More |
08.05.23- German Central Bank: Gold Revaluation Account Underlines Soundness of Balance Sheet At a press conference early 2023, member of the Executive Board of the German central bank Joachim Wuermeling made clear that the soundness of the central bank’s balance sheet, in light of general losses, is guaranteed by the bank’s gold revaluation account. Wuermeling’s testimony implies the bank is willing to use its gold revaluation account to cover losses. The President of the Dutch central bank made a similar remark in November 2022. These statements accentuate gold’s role as a remedy regarding financial challenges created by boundless money printing. Read More |
08.04.23- The Fed Hits The US economy was pushed to extremes during the pandemic recession and subsequent recovery. The unemployment rate peaked at 14.7 percent, the highest in the post-World War II period. Inflation reached its highest rate in 40 years, prompting the Fed to raise short-term interest rates to their highest levels since 2007. As of June, the economy hit another dubious milestone: Inflation has now reached 3,000 percent under the Federal Reserve. Read More |
08.03.23- The Fed's Perfect History of Textbook Crash Landings In today’s lead article, Jesse Felder decries the numerous stories in recent financial headlines written by analysts who are inhaling the “soft landing” narcotics that have floated the recent stock rally, and he notes how this euphoric disconnect from the harsher realities below happen before all major market crashes during deep recessions: Investors have now gone “all in” on the soft-landing narrative, just like they did in 1989, 2000 and 2007. Read More |
08.02.23- Here’s What the Fed Does Next The Fed raised interest rates again last week. But that’s the past. What does the future look like? Today, you’ll receive a full recap of what happened with last week’s Fed meeting. I’ll explain what happened in terms of policy moves, what Fed Chair Jay Powell believes will happen next, and what will actually happen. Read More |
08.01.23- The Federal Reserve has $910 billion in losses The Federal Reserve– the most critically important central bank in the world– is completely, hopelessly insolvent. This isn’t some wild conspiracy theory or overly dramatic interpretation of the facts; we’re extremely data-focused in this organization and base our conclusions on indisputable, open-source figures. Read More |
07.31.23- Bond Market’s Mirror Image
|
07.29.23- How the Fed Might Trigger Another Great Depression After the most recent FOMC meeting, Chairman Powell issued an official statement explaining the decision to raise interest rates another quarter-point. That brings the Federal target funding rate to 5.25-5.5%, the highest rate in over two decades. (Granted, those were two decades of perpetual emergency, the lowest-for-longest rates in U.S. history.) Powell summarized the FOMC decision as follows: Read More |
07.28.23- Private Corporations Don't Cause Price Inflation. Governments Do Interventionists always blame inflation on everything and anything except the only thing that makes aggregate prices rise: Issuing more units of currency than the real demand. Seller inflation is the same excuse and fallacy as cost-push inflation. A way to confuse citizens and assign causation to something that cannot make aggregate prices rise. Read More |
“In determining the extent of additional policy firming that may be appropriate to return inflation to 2 percent over time…” The Fed’s FOMC raised its five policy rates by 25 basis points today, which pushed the upper limit of its policy rates to 5.5%, the highest since January 2001. The Fed had broadly telegraphed this move after the “very hawkish skip” meeting in June, when it projected two more rate hikes this year. The Fed has hiked by 525 basis points in 16 months, the fastest rate-hike cycle since 1980, to deal with the worst inflation in 40 years. The vote was unanimous. Read More |
07.26.23- Race to the Bottom The currency wars are alive and well. Here’s the latest battle… Over the past nine months, the Japanese yen rallied 13% against the dollar. But now the yen has started to fall in value. This decline is not surprising. Japan’s economy has been flirting with recession. A new recession, likely in my view, would be the ninth recession since the historic stock market and real estate crash in Japan in 1990. Read More |
07.25.23- Global De-Dollarization Accelerates – What’s Next? We’ve written before about how economic catastrophes often start gradually, then suddenly accelerate into utter chaos. Now it’s time to apply that idea to a different topic: de-dollarization. Mike Maloney surmises that the dollar will, at first, slowly be replaced by alternatives as the global reserve currency. Then, after alternatives build momentum (e.g. BRICS nation currencies), they could get adopted “suddenly.” Read More |
07.24.23- The Fed Craps Out #1 - Explorers' Guide To Scifi World |
07.22.23- Federal Reserve officially launches new FedNow instant-payments service The Federal Reserve launched its FedNow instant-payments service Thursday, following several years of developing a system officials say will allow the faster flow of cash for businesses and individuals. Whether it’s providing instant access to paychecks, allowing for last-minute bill payments or sending government payments out to individuals, the system is expected to improve the flow of money through the U.S. economy. Read More |
07.21.23- The Collapse of the ‘Risk-Free’ Delusion: Implications for the $133 Trillion Bond Market Did you know that 2022 was the WORST year for US Treasuries in American history? The benchmark 10-year Treasury fell nearly 18%, and the 30-year Treasury collapsed over 39%. Many other bonds did even worse. Read More |
07.20.23- Your Bidenomics Following the government’s panicked response to the Covid pandemic, the resulting economic devastation and two-plus years of historic inflation thus far… There is finally some good news! According to data released from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), wages are finally outpacing inflation: In June, for the first time in 26 months, US workers’ real weekly earnings (a week’s worth of wages adjusted for inflation) grew on an annual basis, according to data released this week from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Annual real weekly wages were up 0.6% last month, a rate that’s a tick below the 0.7% gain seen in February 2020. Read More |
07.19.23- Great King’s Days Are Numbered As I’ve been warning my readers, the most significant development in international finance since 1971 will be unveiled just over one month from today. A new BRICS gold-linked currency will be announced on Aug. 22 at the BRICS Leader’s Summit conference in Durban, South Africa (the BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). Read More |
07.18.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Our Alleged President is a Corrupt Scumbag – and the Ruling Class Is a backlash coming? It’s undeniable that PINO – President-In-Name-Only – Joe Biden is massively corrupt in every possible way. From leveraging his position as vice-president for cash to covering up for his meth-addled, stripper-banging, scumbag son – who is currently spilling his Bolivian party powder all over the White House – this senile pervert is a one-man crimewave. Read More |
07.17.23- The Fed's Big Inflation Battle Investors are keen to declare victory for the Federal Reserve in the war on inflation. But the June CPI data is only encouraging for bond bulls if you look at the world in a vacuum. Yes, there was a lot to like in last week’s report: Headline CPI rose just 0.2% and the year-over-year rate fell 1% to 3.0%, the lowest since March 2021. Core inflation rose 0.2%, to 4.8% y/y, down from 5.3% in May and the peak of 6.6% in September 2022. Read More |
07.15.23- Yellen Shocks Investors with Strange De-Dollarization Comment (Editor's Note: Janet Yellen is another failed affirmative action hire. - JSB) Janet Yellen, the current Secretary of the Treasury and former head of the Federal Reserve (2014-2018), assured us in 2017 there wouldn’t be another financial crisis during our lifetimes. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. I can forgive her for failing to predict the 2020 coronavirus pandemic panic, the Federal Reserve’s multi-trillion-dollar money-printing stimulus spree (and the subsequent 2nd, 3rd and 4th largest bank collapses in U.S. history). Read More |
07.13.23- Even If Jerome Powell Is Successful, We Still Lose In some ways it has been like two heavyweight sluggers battling it out over the course of an extended bout,exchanging one haymaker after another. With each monstrous blow, the receiver is staggered temporarily only to reform and then unleash one of his own. Back and forth, back and forth until such time a winner will be declared - and we all lose. I hesitate to elevate the Fed and its rate-hiking regime to the status of a serious challenger, though it qualifies for any short run period. Read More |
07.12.23- The Goldilocks Zone The latest meeting minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) offers valuable insights into the make-believe nature of monetary policy. While the true motives of the Fed's inner circle may forever remain a mystery, it is evident their narrative revolves around the quest for an ideal economic state or finding a Goldilocks Zone of economic data. Only when the data aligns perfectly will the Fed’s mission be complete and the battle against inflation be won. Read More |
07.11.23- Taxing Us to Death; I had this exact discussion at a family graduation party on Saturday. My brother-in-law and I were talking about all the woke bullshit they have been jamming down our throats and we eventually got around to taxes. I then launched into a tirade against taxes and the government that enforces them at the point of a gun. I told him everyone kept 100% of their earnings up until 1913 and the country had been able to grow and prosper up until that time without an income tax. He then said what the regime media and the government has drilled into the minds of the masses – “but who would build and maintain the roads and infrastructure of the country?”. Read More |
07.10.23- Would you honestly hire the Federal Reserve to manage your finances? On August 4, 1964, two US Navy destroyers were conducting intelligence patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam, when the task force commander grabbed the radio and reported that they were under attack by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The news traveled very quickly all the way to the Pentagon, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara briefed President Lyndon Johnson on the situation. Read More |
07.08.23- A Cure Worse Than The Disease Yesterday’s data releases gave markets little reason to revisit the narrative from Wednesday’s FOMC minutes. Recall that these revealed about as hawkish of a hold as possible, given that some FOMC members had actually wanted to raise rates, before participants judged it “appropriate or acceptable” to hold. Particularly the latter does not sound like a ringing endorsement and is quite possibly the weakest support for the decision without actually casting a dissenting vote. Read More |
07.07.23- The Federal Reserve Has Been a Disaster for America Like all indoctrinated economics PhDs, I used to teach students that the Federal Reserve was created as a central bank in order to provide cash to banks experiencing a run on deposits so that bank failures would not become general and collapse the money supply and, thereby, employment and output. It all sounds so reasonable and rational until you realize that finance least of all is idealistic. Read More |
International Man: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is challenging Joe Biden to be the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election. Unlike most Democrats, RFK Jr. is against escalating the war in Ukraine and seems to be generally anti-war. Likewise, he’s not on board with a lot of the woke insanity. Read More |
07.05.23- Our Purchasing Power Is Getting Wrecked This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving gold and the overall economy. Stories include: Mike Maloney goes deep into the inflation issue, a Great Economic Reset, and Indian households have more physical gold than any single central bank. Purchasing power is getting destroyed, and those without assets suffer most Read More |
07.04.23- Holiday Special: Declaring Independence From The Parasite Caste July 4 is upon us, and many Americans are excited to celebrate their so-called independence. Why? How will this July 4 be any different from that of 2020? Haven’t the past three years revealed that Americans not only take liberty for granted but readily reject it? Is it not the least bit curious that some, if not most, of those who’ll be setting off fireworks also begged to be locked down and masked? Read More |
06.30.23- Washington’s Bias for Continuous Inflationism This week Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivered his semiannual testimony to Congress. A main feature of the discussion was the status of rate hikes and the fight against inflation. In short, Powell’s inflation fight isn’t over. Core CPI, which excludes food and fuel prices, is increasing at an annual rate of 5.3 percent. Similarly, core personal consumption expenditure (PCE) prices are up 4.7 percent from a year ago. Read More |
06.29.23- The Fed’s “One Weird Trick” The U.S. economy has been saved time and again over the past two decades by this one weird trick: “Bringing Demand Forward” by lowering interest rates and lending standards so Americans could continue to buy stuff they didn’t really need because the monthly payment dropped as interest rates were pushed toward zero. Read More |
06.28.23- What’s Going on With the Fed Balance Sheet? We tend to focus a lot on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy, while the central bank’s balance sheet stays in the background. But the balance sheet arguably has more impact on the economy over the long run. Since the Fed began hiking interest rates in March 2022, it has also shrunk the balance sheet. But balance sheet reduction hasn’t been aggressive. In fact, the decline in the balance sheet since the pandemic is like a drop of water in the ocean compared to the expansion we’ve seen since 2008. Read More |
06.27.23- Fed Paused To Prevent Banking System Collapse |
06.26.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: A Legacy for America’s Children
|
06.24.23- Apocalypse FedNow Within Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s recent congressional appearance is regulatory signaling with large implications for stablecoins, the dollar, CBDCs, and bitcoin...
|
06.23.23- Economies and Central Banks: The Disconnect This week we bring you a short half-year update on the gold and silver price, but after that we are once again forced to ask “What Are Central Banks Playing At?”. They have all the potential to do great things like a small child (if you will) but also like a small child they keep shaking a broken toy asking why it’s broken and continuing to do the very things that broke it in the first place. Nothing right now suggests they know what they’re doing or that they are prepared to learn. Luckily for us, we know what happens next…that’s why we invest in gold and silver bullion. Read More |
06.22.23- The Reset: When Will Globalists Attempt To Introduce Their Digital Currency System? I want you to imagine, for a moment, a future world in which everything we now know about functioning and surviving within the economy is completely upended. This world has gone fully digital, meaning people live within a cashless society where physical monetary interactions are abandoned or prohibited, replaced by CBDCs. All transactions are tracked and traced, nothing is private any longer unless you are operating as a criminal within a black market. Read More |
06.21.23- Would you honestly hire the Federal Reserve to manage your finances? On August 4, 1964, two US Navy destroyers were conducting intelligence patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam, when the task force commander grabbed the radio and reported that they were under attack by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats. The news traveled very quickly all the way to the Pentagon, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara briefed President Lyndon Johnson on the situation. Read More |
06.20.23- Don’t Skip! In a leak to The Wall Street Journal earlier this month, the Federal Reserve no doubt believed they were adding clarity to the market situation. But in true Fed tradition, all they did was add confusion that will trouble markets for months to come, if not longer. Let’s untangle the Fed’s latest web of miscommunication… Read More |
06.19.23- Expect The "Pivot" Next...Rates Could Go NEGATIVE!! |
06.17.23- Elon Musk Warns a New Economic Problem Is Looming The Federal Reserve has just ended a streak of ten consecutive interest rate hikes in the space of 15 months. Elon Musk does not disarm. The billionaire has just repeated a warning he issued last September. For him, the American economy is at great risk because of the series of interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve. Read More |
06.16.23- Sound Money Is Required for Real Budget Discipline News here in the USA has been full of the latest farce known as raising or not raising the debt ceiling. After the usual dog-and-pony show, a budget deal was reached. But was it progress? It was a foregone conclusion that the debt ceiling would be raised, yet again, for the simple mathematical reason that unless the budget is cut, via spending cuts or increases in taxes, it can do nothing else. Read More |
06.15.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Annual US Excess Deaths Relative To Other Developed Countries Are Growing At An Alarming Rate People in the U.S. are dying at higher rates than in other similar high-income countries, and that difference is only growing. That’s the key finding of a new study that I published in the journal PLOS One. In 2021, more than 892,000 of the 3,456,000 deaths the U.S. experienced, or about 1 in 4, were “excess deaths.” In 2019, that number was 483,000 deaths, or nearly 1 in 6. That represents an 84.9% increase in excess deaths in the U.S. between 2019 and 2021. Read More |
06.14.23- The Great Dollar Paradox The de-dollarization story is everywhere. You see it in publications from The New York Times to The Economist and in financial media including CNBC, Fox Business and Bloomberg. The idea is that countries around the world are preparing to ditch the dollar. This takes many forms including efforts by China to pay for imported oil from Saudi Arabia and the UAE with yuan and a major bilateral agreement between China and Brazil that allows each country to pay for exports from the other using their local currencies. Read More |
06.13.23- The Fed is Once Again Using the Wrong Tools to End Inflation There are two primary reasons why inflation has remained so persistent despite the Fed raising rates from 0.25% to 5.25% in the span of 14 months.
Today we’re going to dissect #1. Read More |
06.12.23- The US Economic Fairytale - Save The System Or The Currency When Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall and took a big fall, “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men could not put Humpty-Dumpty together again.” I see a similar fate for the US debt egg, whose cracks are just about, well… everywhere. Read More |
06.10.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: Is AI the Beginning of The End, Or Just A Beginning? So, here we are… it’s 2023 and the world seems to believe that we are on the verge of both World War 3 AND a terminator-driven apocalyptic nightmare from which there is no escape. I’m sure that the most tempting reaction is to simply throw your hands high into the air, quit your job(s), stop by the store on the way home, purchase copius amounts of alcohol, marijuana, psilocybin, whatever drug of choice you have and just party and f*** your way to the next aspect of this game that we call “life.” If that’s the way you want to go heading into the end, I wouldn’t blame you, but I will judge you. I prefer to take a more adult, intelligent tact at viewing our current landscape. With a particular focus on this thing we call artificial intelligence. Read More |
06.09.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: “Does Anyone Believe American Propaganda Anymore?” “Does anyone believe American propaganda anymore?” This is the question of investigative journalist Matthew Taibbi. We can offer no answer of course. Yet we hazard the number of those who do dwindle daily. You recall the dynamiting of the Nord Stream 2 energy pipeline. Through this underwater tube Russia funneled natural gas to Germany. Read More |
06.08.23- Is Inflation Taxation? I received an interesting follow up question from Heath B. He says, “This is a follow up question for the post you wrote about ‘Why Does the Federal Reserve Target 2% Inflation?’ Milton Friedman once stated that, ‘Inflation is taxation without legislation.’ Are you able to give your insight into that claim? If that is correct then why do we as American citizens allow that to happen? One of the reasons we fought the revolutionary war was because of taxation without representation.” Read More |
06.07.23- The Trouble with Printing Money Hello everyone, thrilled to bring you yet another exciting development in our ongoing content evolution. This, my friends, is our next significant move in our newly implemented content schedule – the inauguration of Throw Back Tuesday. But before we dive into that, allow me to reassure you that the familiar two-part content you’ve come to expect and appreciate is not disappearing – it’s merely moving to a new slot on Fridays, ready to kickstart your weekend with the in-depth analysis and perspectives you cherish. Read More |
06.06.23- Front-Running The Fed: How Gold & Chess-Players Beat A Rigged Market We have hardly been the first nor the last to realize that rising rates “break things.” We’ve all seen the disastrous credit events in the repo crisis of late 2019, the UST debacle in March of 2020, the gilt implosion of October 2022 and, of course, the banking crisis of March, 2023. And behind, beneath, above and below each of these debacles lies a bemused central banker. Read More |
06.05.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: New CDC Director In the old Soviet Union, citizens were not required to be a member of the Communist Party. But if you were not, you could never expect to rise far professionally or socially. You would never be the head of a department in university, a factory manager, much less the General Secretary. They were always recruited out of the party. Party membership was proof of loyalty. It was a demonstration that you were willing to put loyalty over morality. Rising high in the party also meant that others in the ruling class likely had something on you. No one gained power without other powerful people knowing of your grim deeds. That way there was mutual trust, or, to put it another way, mutual blackmail. Read More |
06.03.23- The World According On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Governor Philip N. Jefferson offered insights on the economy and the role of the Fed. The irony is evident as we find that those entrusted with overseeing the economy appear to be continuously involved in a journey of self-discovery, yet their understanding often lacks any connection to the real-world economy. He begins with an overview of the Federal Reserve's approach to financial stability: Read More
|
Brace For The $1 Trillion Aftershock |
The moniker of my website originated from a quote by David Walker, then Comptroller General of the U.S., in 2007. I wholeheartedly endorsed Walker’s viewpoint and become politically active in trying to get Ron Paul elected as president in 2008 and 2012. It was a fruitless effort, as the uni-party in Washington DC, controlled by the dark forces of the Deep State, do not allow men and women who truly want to reduce the size and scope of government to ever get elected. His warning sixteen years ago is a perfect example of being right but being early. When talking about the decline of empires, you are really deliberating about a process, not an event. Read More |
05.31.23- FedNow Is a Precursor to the Digital Dollar The Federal Reserve’s new digital payment system, FedNow, will launch in July. I talked about this in my essay yesterday. FedNow is a milestone in the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Read More |
05.30.23- The Bankruptcy Caravan Is Now Arriving: Time to Pay for the Easy Money The character Mike Campbell in Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises was asked about his money troubles and responded with a vivid description embracing self-contradiction: “‘How did you go bankrupt?’ Bill asked. ‘Two ways,’ Mike said. ‘Gradually and then suddenly.’” Ground-hugging interest rates for more than a decade kept the inefficient and the incompetent in business. Now, the jig is up, with a Mother’s Day weekend corporate massacre that saw the bankruptcies of seven corporations, each with liabilities of nine figures or more—in four cases, with more than a billion dollars in liabilities each. Read More |
05.29.23- Facts vs. Fed-Speak: A Comical History with Tragic Consequences Below, we look at simple facts in the context of complex markets to underscore the dangerous direction of Fed-Speak and Fed policy. Keep It Simple, Stupid It’s true that, “the Devil is in the details.” Anyone familiar with Wall Street in general, or market math in particular, for example, can wax poetic on acronym jargon, Greek math symbols, sigma moves in bond yields, chart contango or derivative market lingo. Read More |
05.27.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Great Silence The kids are two years behind in education. Inflation still rages. White-collar jobs are disappearing thanks to the reversal of Fed policy. Household finances are a wreck. The medical industry is in upheaval. Trust in government has never been lower. Major media too is discredited. Young people are dying at levels never seen. Populations are still on the move from lockdown states to where it is less likely. Surveillance is everywhere, and so is political persecution. Public health is in a disastrous state, with substance abuse and obesity all at new records. Read More |
05.26.23- Jamie Dimon Warns QT Will Lead To More Bank Failures At the start of May we explained that it's not just the Fed's rate hikes that are behind the nascent regional bank crisis (because with Fed Funds rate at 5.25% and both T-Bills and money market funds offering similar yields, there is no way small banks can compete with these returns, prompting a bank jog (which periodically turns to a sprint) and deposit flight from both checking and saving accounts). Read More |
The Biden regime won’t admit it and neither will most Democrats because it would only add to their reputation of being unable to run a successful economy, but it’s pretty much official now: Inflation is out of control despite the fact that the Federal Reserve has been hiking rates to reverse price spikes. Read More |
05.24.23- Crash Course 2.0: The Fed |
05.23.23- The Federal Reserve’s Anti-inflation Policy Makes No Sense Another agenda is in play Dear readers and fellow economists, the Federal Reserve is treating a rise in prices from supply shocks and disruptions from the Covid lockdowns and sanctions against Russia, Iran, and other countries as if it were a monetary inflation. It is true that too much money is chasing too few goods and services, but the cause is supply shortages and not excess consumer demand. Read More |
05.22.23- How Fed incompetence will drive inflation higher Getting my in-laws out of Ukraine last year felt like it was as complicated as planning the Normandy invasion. My wife is Ukrainian, and her family had been stuck in Kiev since the start of the war. For months leading up to the invasion, they ignored the Russian troops massing on the border and casually rejected my offer to fly them out of the country. Read More |
06.20.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: How Corruption Makes You Poor Are you the type of person who works hard, saves money, and invests with the intent of accumulating lasting wealth? If so, you’ve likely noticed that things don’t quite add up between what you’re regularly told about how the economy and financial markets work and what you actually experience. We think there’s more to this than just dollars and cents. Read More |
05.19.23- “A Corrupt Tree Bringeth Forth Evil Fruit” “Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit,” says Matthew — “but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.” Today we are in transit. We lift our siege of Jekyll Island, Georgia… and take to the aerial ways. Our destination is the Maryland city of Annapolis, by way of the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Read More |
05.18.23- Fed Up Yet? You would think the Fed wanted housing to become as overpriced as possible, having supported the market with $2.575 trillion in purchases of mortgaged back securities on its balance sheet to keep those securities flowing through with very low yields. That translated downward, of course, to very low mortgage rates, which the Fed sustained throughout the post-Covid years when housing prices were skyrocketing at their fastest rate to toward their highest prices ever, making housing unaffordable for just about everyone. Read More |
05.17.23- The Creature From Jekyll Island The New Jersey railway station was bitterly cold that night. Flurries of the year’s first snow swirled around street lights. November wind rattled roof panels above the track shed and gave a long, mournful sound among the rafters… At a gate seldom used at this hour of the night was a spectacular sight. Nudged against the end-rail bumper was a long car that caused those few who saw it to stop and stare. Read More |
05.16.23- Why the Government Debt Crisis Will Blow up before we Even Get to Default The Fed’s fight has become much more complex this month. Inflation is fighting back harder all of a sudden, while the US debt ceiling is putting bond markets and banks at considerable extra risk by driving bond yields up even faster than the Fed was doing. This extra thrust is happening just as the Fed was trying to end its rate increases and even as additional banks are poised to collapse from the already-high bond rates. The situation appears to be cascading into a nuclear market meltdown. Read More |
05.15.23- Circa: Now! America’s economic landscape is becoming littered with one steaming pile after another. The primary offenders include consumer price inflation, interest rates, gross domestic product, and unemployment. Here we’ll take a sniff of the unpleasant odor that’s wafting around us. To begin, consumer price inflation is still well above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week that consumer price inflation, as measured by the consumer price index, is increasing at an annual rate of 4.9 percent. Read More |
05.13.23- Federal Reserve’s “Great Pause”… And What Happens Next Every headline in the financial press earlier this week says the same thing. The Fed’s “Great Pause” has now commenced. The Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter point—and could be done. Well, they might be done “raising” rates, but they shouldn’t be in the rate setting business—up, down or sideways— in the first place. That’s because market capitalism doesn’t work if financial asset prices are being pegged artificially and falsely by a 12-man monetary politburo rather than the vast throng of suppliers and users of funds in the global marketplace. Read More |
05.12.23- The Dynamics Driving the Dollar Down This article examines the currency imbalances between US dollars and the other currencies and concludes that should foreign holders decide to reduce their dollar exposure, the consequences for its value would be dramatic. The dollar’s problems should be laid at the door of the wishful thinkers who think the state knows better than free markets. It is that which has led to currency imbalances. Central banks attempting to manage economic outcomes by manipulating interest rates and “stimulating” economic activity have acted in defiance of Say’s law, which defines the relationship between production and consumption, and the true role of a medium of exchange. Read More |
05.11.23- The Great Wealth Illusion It’s no secret that for the past decade and a half the Federal Reserve has made it its mission to create a “wealth effect” in the economy by boosting asset prices. Back in 2010, Ben Bernanke explained, “…higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending. Increased spending will lead to higher incomes and profits that, in a virtuous circle, will further support economic expansion.” And so he began a process of printing money with the explicit purpose of inflating asset prices, a policy that has been continued by each of his successors. Read More |
05.10.23- "Stagflation Is Much More Likely Than Deflation" Stagflation is much more likely than Deflation “Hope is never a strategy.” This morning: The Market Commentariat think deflation will counter inflation, rates will fall, and recession will be limited. The world is more complex – supply side factors are more volatile. Stagflation is a more likely outcome than recession. Read More |
05.09.23- Build Your Own Crystal Ball
|
05.08.23- "This Shows They're Panicked, Flipping Things On & Off Like Light Switches" |
05.06.23- The Fed Has Virtually Guaranteed a 2023 Recession At their May 3rd meeting, the Federal Reserve Committee appears to have established two key things (in their estimation). First, the Fed continues to promote the delusion that the banking system is “sound and resilient.” Second, they remain focused on bringing inflation back down to Chairman Powell’s pet target rate of 2%. Read More |
05.05.23- What if the Fed Has Lost Control?
|
05.04.23- Peter Schiff: The Fed Has Screwed Up Everything That Is a Function The failure of First Republic Bank reveals that the banking system isn’t nearly as sound as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell would have us believe. But as Peter explained in a recent podcast, it’s not just the banking system that’s messed up. The Fed has screwed up everything that is a function of interest rates by keeping rates at zero for so long. Read More |
05.03.23- Fed’s Looking in Wrong Direction What’s the situation with the economy? The short answer is not good. Here’s why… There are literally hundreds of economic indicators either as hard data or sentiment surveys released daily. It’s impossible for any analyst to keep up with all of them. Read More |
05.02.23- The US Dollar is Finished Are You Ready for High Inflation and Collapsing Living Standards? US power since World War II has been based on its financial dominance stemming from the dollar being the reserve currency held by central banks in place of gold. As the dollar was the currency used to settle international trade accounts, every country needed dollars. That ensured a large demand for dollars to absorb the supply of dollars from the growing US budget and trade deficits. Read More |
05.01.23- The Fed is Trapped: This Recession Will Be MASSIVE! |
First Republic, is this you?The Federal Reserve’s balance sheet, released today, dropped another $30 billion for the week, to $8.56 trillion, bringing the plunge in the five weeks since peak bank bailout to $171 billion, as quantitative tightening (QT) continued at the normal pace and liquidity support shifts and unwinds, though First Republic seems to be sucking hard on the Fed’s teat. Read More |
04.28.23- What the End of Fed Rate Hikes Means for Stocks According to this week’s Commerce Department report, U.S. GDP increased at an annualized rate of 1.1 percent during Q1 2023. The experts thought GDP would grow by 2 percent. They were wrong. By now, it’s very well possible GDP has already slipped into reverse. We won’t know until the Commerce Department’s Q2 report is released in late July. In the interim, there’s an important question to be asked: Is a recession bullish or bearish for stocks? Read More |
04.27.23- Fedbucks Coming to a Theater Near You This Summer! We are nearing the time in early summer when the entertainment industry rolls out its new blockbusters and flops. June is also that time when the Fed had said it will roll-out its own special feature (and likely future flop) — the platform that will be used as part of its eventual central bank digital currency (CBDC). The Fed is about to introduce a system that allows immediate processing of transactions between banks to take away whatever float you thought you might have had left between the time when you ran your debit card or wrote a check to the time it cleared the bank. Read More |
04.26.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Federal Judiciary Is More Dangerous Than Russia, China, or Iran I think we need to thank Joe Biden. Really, I do! And the reason why is he’s nominating people for important federal positions and the federal judiciary that are absolutely unqualified, and in many cases, to put it kindly, strange, and the Democrats are approving them. He hired Sam Brinton, and the left thinks you’re the problem: “The rest of us all wondered what kind of vetting process was involved when this person was identified as the most qualified individual to oversee America’s nuclear policies. “BIGOT!” they screamed at us when we gave the natural side-eye to this obviously disturbed individual.” Read More |
04.25.23- The Credit Crunch Is Going To Be One Of The Biggest Stories Right now, financial institutions all over America are getting really tight with their money. That means that less credit will be available for consumers and businesses, and that will mean less economic activity in the months ahead. When economic activity slows down, more businesses fail, more layoffs happen, and more consumers start defaulting on their debts. Of course if economic conditions steadily deteriorate it will cause financial institutions to get even more stingy with their money. It appears that a vicious cycle has now started, and I believe that this will be one of the biggest stories of the next 6 months. Read More |
04.24.23- Bank reserves could fall by $2.5 trillion as the Fed reduces its balance sheet, Fitch Ratings says The Federal Reserve's quantitative tightening measures could take trillions of dollars from the banking system and intensify a credit squeeze, Fitch Ratings said Friday. "System-wide banking liquidity indicators are still robust, but our projection is for reserves to fall significantly by USD900 billion to USD2.5 trillion by year-end," the ratings agency said. Read More |
04.22.23- Millennials Are Slowest Generation To Hit 50% Homeownership, Fear That Fed Is Making A Permanent Renter Class (Fed Policy Errors Strike Again!) Former Federal Reserve Chair and current Treaury Secretary Janet “The Evil Hobbit” Yellen has created numerous catestrophic messes thanks to Fed policy errors, both at The Fed and now as Treasury Secretary. For example, the massive almost hysterical overreaction of The Fed under Powell (following Yellen’s Reign of Error) to the Covid economic shutdowns resulted in a massive surge in M2 Money growth [green line]. Read More |
04.21.23- How Quickly Will the Dollar Collapse? This article looks at the factors behind the growing rejection of the dollar for trade settlement purposes by non-aligned nations around the world. They no longer fear political or economic reprisals from America. The dollar’s monopoly was notably challenged by Saudi Arabia, which removed itself from the US’s sphere of influence to that of China and Russia. Consequently, peace has broken out throughout the Arab lands. Read More |
04.20.23- Revealing the Fraud Greetings from a lovely Northern Italy! First, last week’s piece on financial formulas received fantastic feedback. I’m grateful. I won’t do financial mathematics every week, but the feedback gave me a clue to dial it back a bit. So I’ll try to keep things as simple as possible so you can protect yourselves from what’s eventually coming. Read More |
04.19.23- The Fed Is Bankrupt "The Fed has experienced significant operating losses over the last six months, which have exhausted its existing capital."Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently testified before Congress on the current state of the US economy. In addition to monetary policy, Powell was questioned about the Fed’s regulatory proposals regarding cryptocurrencies and climate-related financial risks. Read More |
04.18.23- Christine Lagarde Made 10 Key Points Today and I Agree With All of Them. Central Banks in a Fragmenting World Please consider a speech by Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, on Central Banks in a Fragmenting World
|
04.17.23- The Fed Is Bankrupt Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell recently testified before Congress on the current state of the US economy. In addition to monetary policy, Powell was questioned about the Fed’s regulatory proposals regarding cryptocurrencies and climate-related financial risks. Barely mentioned, however, was the Fed’s balance sheet. The Fed has experienced significant operating losses over the last six months, which have exhausted its existing capital. Those losses represent foregone revenue to the US Treasury. Read More |
04.15.23- Slavery in America Was Resurrected in 1913 Just as Jews claim exclusivity as holocaust victims of WW II despite that more Germans died and many times more Russians died and it was a holocaust experience for a number of ethnicities, black Americans claim to be the only victims of slavery despite the historical fact that all races have been enslaved usually by their own kind. Black slavery, for example originated in slave wars between African tribes. Read More |
04.14.23- Fed Minutes Circus:
|
04.13.23- Just How High Are Interest Rates? Inflation cooled in March as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases showed more impact, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The consumer price index, a widely followed measure of the costs for goods and services in the U.S. economy, rose 0.1% for the month against a Dow Jones estimate for 0.2%, and 5% from a year ago versus the estimate of 5.1%. Read More |
04.12.23- Damn You All! If this were a war we would be mobilizing our forces to deny the implementation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), or, at a minimum, require any such currency to be accompanied by an alternative cash currency option backed by gold, silver or other precious metal, perhaps a metal commodity of an equal value of one or more metals held in reserve. Read More |
04.11.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Cultural Decline of America and the West, and the Ensuing End The people of any country desiring to be prosperous and free, must be cognizant of their past history, traditions, and legitimate strengths and weaknesses, so that the pitfalls of cultural declination leading to societal failure can be avoided. History is replete with failed empires and civilizations. In fact, most all have failed, and with the seemingly imminent death of America and the West, virtually every civilization to date will have succumbed to its own greed, immorality, mass division, dependence on State, and complete lack of courage in the face of adversity and accepted tyranny. This is the way of humanity, but does it have to be so? Read More |
04.10.23- “No Way Out” for Global Markets Trapped in a Doom Loop of Debt |
With egg prices still high, the potato industry is looking to scramble up Easter traditions with a budget-friendly alternative: Easter potatoes. Why it matters: Potato producers are taking advantage of the fact that the price of eggs was up 55.4% in February compared to a year earlier while potato prices only increased 13.5% year over year, according to the latest Consumer Price Index. Read More |
04.07.23- Texas Bill Would Create State-Issued Gold-Backed Digital Currency Bills introduced in the Texas House and Senate would create a state-issued, gold-backed digital currency. Enactment of this legislation would create an option for people to transact business in sound money, set the stage to undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money and create a viable alternative to a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Read More |
04.06.23- Why the Fed must pivot According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the value of global debt was slightly below $300 trillion in 2022. The world debt to GDP ratio fell last year but it is still above pre-pandemic levels. The US debt to GDP ratio in 1982 was around 35%. Today it is more than three times higher, at 120%. Read More |
04.05.23- Fire! Fire Sale of Failed Bank Assets Speeds Plunge of CRE Values US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is the God of Hellfire! Thanks to Yellen’s catestrophic Too-Low-For-Too-Long (TLFTL) and insane Federal spending, we are seeing the aftermath of The Fed trying to fight inflation. A fire sale of failed bank assets!! Read More |
04.04.23- Can Civilization Survive without Sound Money? As long as states are around, money will never be sound. But first, some clarity. Sound money, per Ludwig von Mises, has two aspects: It serves as a commonly accepted medium of exchange, while also making it difficult for governments to meddle with it. We can see immediately that sound money is nowhere to be found in today’s world. All the current rhetoric about banks and their systemic risks are about money that’s subject to political expediency, the kind that brings civilization to its knees. Read More |
04.03.23- China Accelerates
|
04.01.23- The Fed Knew Should we leave the creation of new money in the hands of bankers or place its creation solely with our government?
|
03.31.23- Please Send Powell This Article Here you have the central defect of the monetary and fiscal authorities who presently afflict us:
There we cite Mr. Lance Roberts of Real Financial Advice. More from whom: Read More |
03.30.23- Aftershock!
|
03.29.23- A Textbook Case Of Mismanaging Everything, Everywhere, All At Once A textbook case of mismanagement “A textbook case of mismanagement” is how the Fed Vice Chair responsible for bank supervision is going to describe SVB when he testifies to Congress today. He will also stress the Fed is prepared to use “all of our tools for any size institution, as needed, to keep the system safe and sound.” Read More |
03.28.23- Futures Flat As Attention Turns To Fed Rate Hikes US futures are flat with bond yields reversing an overnight drop, lifted by the belly of the curve; the USD weaker for 8 of the past 9 days, and commodities mostly higher as investors shift their focus back to concerns about inflation and potential further monetary tightening from the recent banking-industry chaos; after all, a bank hasn't failed in at least a few days. WTI has soared 5.6% this week. Read More |
03.27.23- Is This the Tipping Point? After almost 15 years of Fed-fueled cheap money offered at near-zero rates that was leveraged into overinflated speculative bubbles, the lights are on, the crowd is dispersing – and the party might finally be over. At an actual party, it’s easy to know when it’s time to say your goodbyes. The hosts turn the music off, start looking at their watches and taking away the snacks. Read More |
03.25.23- Incompetent Federal Reserve Goofs Again The Federal Reserve decided it had not wiped out enough banks and again raised interest rates, thereby pushing more banks toward insolvency. The goofs think, or pretend to think, that too many Americans are working, making and spending too much money, and causing inflation despite the obvious fact that the rise in prices is due to the lockdowns and sanctions which busted up supply chains and reduced supply. Read More |
03.24.23- Why the Fed Keeps Getting It Wrong The market’s in a highly unstable state right now. These violent swings show the inadequacy of the standard models that the Fed and other mainstream analysts use. The Fed assumes so many things about markets that are simply false, like that markets are always efficient, for example. They’re not. Under volatile conditions like these they gap up and down — they don’t move in rational, predictable increments like the “efficient-market hypothesis” supposes. Read More |
03.23.23- The Fed Proposes A 4th Function Of Money: Means Of Social Control A Federal Reserve white paper has come up with a new function for money. Let's tune in... Docket No. OP - 1670 Please consider Docket No. OP - 1670 on Interbank Settlement of Faster Payments. Read More |
03.22.23- It Turns Out That Hundreds of Banks Are at Risk It’s the weekend, but our fresh Financial Crisis does not sleep. And a recent study says we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg. The Washington Post wrote: “If banks were suddenly forced to liquidate their bond and loan portfolios, the losses would erase up to 91 percent of their combined capital cushion.” In other words, we were already right up against the edge. Read More |
03.21.23- Prepare for governments to push CBDCs in the wake of the Over 100 of the world’s governments are planning to push central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank may have given them the perfect opportunity to introduce this nightmarish surveillance tech. (Article by Tom Parker republished from ReclaimTheNet.org) The heightened fear of bank runs and the growing calls for more government controls to prevent another Silicon Valley Bank-style event has created space for governments to swoop in and present CBDCs as the solution. Read More |
03.20.23- Washington's Panicked Bailout Of Bank Deposits... Here's What Comes Next Why would you throw-in the towel now? We are referring to the Fed’s belated battle against inflation, which evidences few signs of having been successful. Yet that’s what the entitled herd on Wall Street is loudly demanding. As usual, they want the stock indexes to start going back up after an extended drought and are using the purported “financial crisis” among smaller banks as the pretext. Read More |
03.18.23- Silicon Valley Bank, Just Silicon Valley Bank is yet another example of corruption in the banking sector. I’ve read that SVB is the second largest banking failure in US history. A woke and ‘green’ bank, SVB was devoted to ‘DIE,’ or Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity. Maybe the latter in particular contributed to their collapse, but before it did go bust executives running the sorry show made sure they cashed out of their stock and rewarded all the top executives with generous bonuses. The taxpayers will pick up the rest of the tab via FDIC insurance… Read More |
03.17.23- The Federal Reserve Is the Root Cause of the Banking Crisis The Justice Department has announced it is investigating the banking crisis. It will undoubtedly charge that banking officials are responsible for the crisis. One thing is for sure: It will not indict the Federal Reserve System, which is the root cause of the crisis. In fact, in its search for scapegoats, it will not even acknowledge the Fed’s role in the crisis. That’s because the Fed plays a sacrosanct role in America’s welfare-warfare state, and every federal official knows that. Read More |
03.16.23- The Looming Quadrillion Dollar Derivatives Tsunami Ellen Brown’s analysis of derivatives is one of the most intelligent articles we’ve read about the financial system since banks started blowing up. She’s nailed the biggest risk. From Brown at unz.com: On Friday, March 10, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed and was taken over by federal regulators. SVB was the 16th largest bank in the country and its bankruptcy was the second largest in U.S. history, following Washington Mutual in 2008. Despite its size, SVB was not a “systemically important financial institution” as defined in the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires insolvent SIFIs to “bail in” the money of their creditors to recapitalize themselves. Read More |
03.15.23- How The Fed Broke The Banks The Fed's anti-inflation measures had to hurt someone... The Federal Reserve is in the unenviable position of achieving its mandate by crashing the economy. It's not something it wants to do, as Fed Chair Jerome Powell meekly admitted in his exchange with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) last week. But it's something that happens as an unavoidable outcome of slowing down an economy littered with excess money and inflation. Broad money growth has been negative since late November, and interest rate expenses on everything from corporate borrowing to credit cards to the government's own debt have been rising fast. Read More |
03.14.23- The Cover-up Begins The disinformation service, Bloomberg, takes the lead. Bloomberg points its finger at Donald Trump and “Trump era deregulation.” In Bloomberg’s rewriting of history, Trump is responsible because he signed a bill passed by Democrats and Republicans that allowed mid-sized banks to “skirt some of the strictest post-financial crisis regulations.” So, where was the federal reserve? Where were the bank regulators? Bloomberg doesn’t say. Presidents don’t write financial legislation. Financial legislation that the Federal Reserve and the SEC don’t approve doesn’t get passed. A third world immigrant-invader, Ro Khanna, who somehow represents in Congress Silicon Valley says: “Congress must come together to reverse the deregulation policies that were put in place under Trump.” Read More |
03.13.23- We Are All Counterfeiters Now Intellectuals and politicians often try to verbally summarize or justify conventional thinking in pithy ways. Milton Friedman (in 1965) and Richard Nixon (in 1971) both said different versions of the phrase “we are all Keynesians now.” . . . Friedman and Nixon were describing the thoughts behind the implementation of Great Society redistribution programs and an inflationary monetary policy designed to offset the cost of those programs. —Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein Read More |
03.11.23- Hard Landing Or Harder One? The Fed May Soon Need To Choose In his testimony to Congress earlier this week, Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell indicated “the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated” and “restoring price stability will probably require that we maintain a restrictive stance for some time”. This was the tough Fed on display, and markets accordingly tanked. Yet a few weeks earlier, Powell had set the financial markets off to the races when he said, “We can now say, for the first time, the disinflationary process has started.” Read More |
03.10.23- Central Bank Digital Currency Is the Endgame – Part 1 Central bank digital currency (CBDC) will end human freedom. Don’t fall for the assurances of safeguards, the promises of anonymity and of data protection. They are all deceptions and diversions to obscure the malevolent intent behind the global rollout of CBDC. Central Bank Digital Currency is the most comprehensive, far-reaching, authoritarian social control mechanism ever devised. Its “interoperability” will enable the CBDCs issued by various national central banks to be networked to form one, centralised global CBDC surveillance and control system. Read More |
03.09.23- Odds Are Rising That The Fed Will Trigger The Next Bust From March 17, 2022, to the end of January 2023, the US Federal Reserve (Fed) increased its federal funds rate from practically zero to 4.50–4.75 percent. The rise in lending rates came in response to skyrocketing consumer goods price inflation: US inflation rose from 2.5 percent in January 2022 to 9.1 percent in June. Notwithstanding inflation falling to 6.4 percent in January 2023, the Fed continues to signal to markets that it will continue to hike rates to bring down consumer price inflation. Read More |
03.08.23- Dear Fed, 'Speak Loudly Because Your Stick Isn't That Big Anymore' The big question facing the Fed is whether they should increase the Fed Funds rate by 25bps or 50bps on March 22, 2023. If Jerome Powell cared for our advice, we would tell him to take the opposite approach of President Theodore Roosevelt. Speak loudly because your stick isn’t that big anymore. Read More |
How much of policy tightening is too much? With the major central banks around the world already having raised their benchmark rates by the most in decades, it’s natural that the question is being asked. In fact, it seems that it was a point of discussion at the European Central Bank’s meeting last month, though such concerns were considered premature. When interest rates go from being the most accommodative they have perhaps ever been to a regime where they need to curb the worst bout of inflation in decades, central banks have to make up for lost time. Read More |
03.06.23- Interest rates: The silent killer Central banks were happy to suppress interest rates, even into negative territory, so long as the heavily managed consumer price inflation statistic was rising at an annualised rate of two per cent or so. But the expansion of credit during the covid pandemic changed that, with prices subsequently leaping above the two per cent target. The new price trend first became evident in mid-2020 in both producer and consumer prices. And when NATO decided to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine a year ago by cutting off this major energy and commodity supplier from global markets, prices soared, and interest rate suppression policies backfired. Read More |
03.04.23- Is the Golden Age Of 2% Inflation Over? Despite the Fed’s best efforts thus far to raise rates and cool off inflation, I don’t expect relief any time soon. With that in mind, let’s look into the past to see what a longer period of inflation looks like. The best place to start in the U.S. is to take a brief look at an extraordinarily long period of inflation that took place from the 1970s to the early 1980s. We don’t have to examine every detail, which would take hours, but this summary will suffice: Read More |
03.03.23- It's Now Impossible To Keep Politics Out Of Central Banks The court of public opinion Years ago, the start of quantitative easing caused a backlash over concerns that the central banks were prioritizing the asset-rich over the average Joe. It raised questions about mandates and the independence of the monetary authority, particularly in Europe where the ECB was the only actor to prevent a fragmentation of the Eurozone. And it even raised questions of ethics, after some of the FOMC members’ trading activitiescame to light. Read More |
03.02.23- The Best Speech About Money You'll Ever Hear: An Evil System vs Honest Money |
03.01.23- The Forces Upending The Global Economy Cannot Be Reversed So sorry, but the lifestyle of low-cost credit and all the goodies it could buy is permanently out of stock. In focusing on geopolitics, we lose sight of the dependence of every economy on a functioning global economy of low-cost goods, services, materials, shipping, transport, capital, labor and financial instruments, all flowing freely across borders and around the world. Read More |
02.28.23- My Origin Story, The Federal Reserve, and How We Got Here |
02.27.23- Kamikaze Strategies Kamikaze Strategies It’s a bad market strategy to stick to a fundamental view while ignoring a price trend the other way: it’s a kamikaze strategy when that fundamental view doesn’t capture reality. In 2021, inflation was not going to happen: then it rose sharply, but was called “transitory”. In 2022, inflation was not going to soar, nor rates rise: then it did, and rates rose. Read More |
02.25.23- Powell's Gettysburg Moment, The USDollar's Waterloo, & Today's Open Madness Below we examine the historical interplay of losing wars, cornered egos, tanking currencies, greater controls and gold’s loyalty in times of open madness. History Matters Despite the fact that universities even in the Land of Lincoln have had a say in cancelling Abraham Lincoln (good grief…) for apparently not being “woke” enough circa 1861 to be as wise as the neo-liberal faculties of 2023, I’d still make a case that history matters, and by this, I mean all its wonderful and ugly nuances (and lessons), whether they offend modern sensibilities or not. Read More |
02.24.23- Fed Forced to Choose Between These Two Equally Scary Possibilities In the recent era of what feels like endless inflation, we keep hoping for something that would cool it off. In fairness, the Federal Reserve led by Jerome Powell has been raising rates slowly after each meeting (even though they started later than they should’ve). The result of that approach has cooled inflation over the last six months, from 4.5 times over the Fed’s target 2% rate to just 3.2 times higher. Read More |
02.23.23- Will 7% Mortgages Crush Housing? Between 2020 and 2022 houses in America’s hottest real estate markets went from unaffordable to 50% above unaffordable. Put another way, they did what would have been impossible in an economy where market forces determined interest rates and home prices. But ours was not that kind of market. Central banks around the world had lost their collective minds and money was the cheapest it had ever been - far cheaper than it should or would be in a sane world. Offered 2.75% 30-year mortgages (read, shockingly low monthly payments), home buyers stampeded off the proverbial cliff en masse, paying any price, accepting any terms (no inspection, no problem!) to get houses in hot markets. Read More |
02.22.23- How The Fed Messes With People's Lives (A Mortgage-Rate Perspective) A four-month decline in mortgage yields may be over. Let's discuss what this means to the home buyer and how the Fed has messed with people's lives over time. Read More |
02.21.23- Central Banks, Recession 'Landing' Risks, & Why China Is The Issue To Watch “A great landing in one when you can fly the plane the following day..” The market is talking about a no-landing scenario – but should be watching what Central Banks are saying, and China’s position re Ukraine. The market remains vulnerable to recession and rising geopolitical tensions. They are very closely linked. Read More |
02.20.23- US Treasury 6-Month Yield Back Over 5% (Back To 2007 And The Financial Crisis As The Fed Withdraws Liquidity) Well, here we are again. Back to 2007 and the housing bubble and subsequent financial crisis. The US Treasury 6-month yield is back over 5%, a yield we haven’t seen since August 8, 2007. Well, there is one notable difference. The Fed’s balance sheet is still at $8.4 TRILLION whereas it was only $866 billion on August 8, 2007. Read More |
02.18.23- Treasury Traders Know Fed Has Missed The Boat On A Bigger Move On Thursday afternoon, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland President Loretta Mester remarked that she saw a compelling case for a bigger increase earlier this month when policymakers met. Not much later in the day, her colleague James Bullard commented that he would not rule out supporting a 50-basis point hike at the March meeting. Read More |
02.17.23- The Great Gold Rush: Central Banks in Frenzy Central banks have been buying gold in quantities not seen since 1967. After decades of efforts to demonetize gold, why would the guardians of the monetary system suddenly invest large sums into a metal that demands crippling mining costs and offers little return? The answer is not so simple. Read More |
02.16.23- Fed Raising Its Inflation Target and Other Shenanigans International Man: Recently, there have been whispers about the Fed raising its official inflation target above 2%. But before we get into that, we should define our terms. What is the proper way to think of inflation and the Fed itself? Read More |
02.15.23- "Higher Inflation. Higher Protectionism. Higher Global Tensions... When most of the market was saying “transitory!” this Daily was among the first to float the idea that inflation and rates risked being “higher for longer”. This was considered a ‘colorful’, counter-consensus view: like Russia invading Ukraine; or a US-China Cold War in 2017; or Trump winning the 2016 election. Yet Valentine’s Day saw a slew of Fed speakers say higher for longer in so many words; and the market --finally-- shifted its rate projections up to the most dovish end of the Fed’s dot plot, at least until 2024, while starting to price in the odds of rates rising in June rather than being close to the start of a series of falls. Read More |
02.14.23- Bond Market a Tad Antsy about Inflation Not Just Vanishing? One-Year Yield Nears 5%. Mortgage Rates Back at 6.5%
|
02.13.23- Unidentified Flying Inflation A Chinese balloon was shot down over the US early last week. An unidentified flying object was shot down on Friday over Alaska; another over Canada on Saturday; Montana airspace was briefly closed on Sunday for related reasons; and yet another unidentified flying object was shot down during the Super Bowl. You want “we are not alone” speculation, you got it: CNN reports the US fighter pilots who shot down one of the objects could not identify any propulsion, and that it was just staying in the air at around 40,000 feet. So, a balloon(?): which can actually be effective war weapons according to some experts. You want Sputnik Cold War national security paranoia, you got it too. The alleged origin of these and other balloons, China, is about to shoot down a flying object over itsterritorial waters. Read More |
02.11.23- The Final Chapter of Slavery Hinges on Widespread Implementation “We don’t know, for example, who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a $1000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBCD the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.” - Agustín Carstens–General Manager, Bank for International Settlements Read More |
02.10.23- The Yield Curve Would Invert By A Record 450bps If The Fed Hikes To 8% Duh, Kapital Balloons blow, and capital won’t flow. ‘US Makes Case That Chinese Balloon was Part of a Spying Program’, says Bloomberg, and “The Chinese spy balloon shot down Saturday included western components with English-language writing on them.” ‘US Aims to Curtail Financial Ties With China’, says the New York Times, with the White House preparing rules to restrict US dollars from flowing there. An inverse CFIUS would stop US investment in areas related to technologies like AI; or with dual civilian-military uses, which is a longer list; or balloons. Read More |
02.09.23- Two Bears... Cocaine Bear I get quite a lot of direct and indirect feedback to the Global Daily. Some of it is positive, some of it is negative - and a lot of that is downright unpleasant, and some of it is ‘eclectic’ - like a detailed analysis of the collapse of the economy of Atlantis. However, yesterday was the first time I was told I was “on cocaine” for arguing higher rates can, in some circumstances, lead to higher inflation. (For more on which, see here.) Read More |
02.08.23- Central Bank Gold Reserves Chart Second-Highest Increase Since 1950 In 2022 Central banks closed out 2022 with reported net purchases of 28 tons of gold in December. Including large unreported purchases, this brought total central bank gold buying in 2022 to 1,136 tons. It was the second-highest level of net purchases on record dating back to 1950, and the 13th straight year of net central bank gold purchases. China officially started buying gold again in November and made another large purchase of 30 tons in December. That raised China’s total gold reserves to over 2,000 tons for the first time. Read More |
02.07.23- Fed Loan Officers Paints Dire Picture: Loan Standards Approaching Record Tightness As Loan Demand Plummets Late last week, when looking at the most recent Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey held by the Fed, we noted that the surge in revolving credit has not gone unnoticed by lenders: the on bank lending practices showed banks tightening lending standards for commercial, mortgage, and credit card loans. As Bloomberg's Vincent Cignarella observed, "tighter credit likely will drive slower spending, a reduction in risk and the potential for the Fed to pivot sooner rather than later to avoid or shorten a potential recession. That would be more good news for bond bulls." Read More |
02.06.23- And Now, for Something Entirely Different: The Looming Emergence of Regional Reserve Currencies For some time, I’ve been predicting the emergence of a “multi-reserve currency” world, a bit of a paradigm shift that the world has not really ever experienced as a permanent feature of its financial system for a very long time, centuries probably. To be sure, there were periods of exception to this coming paradigm shift, as when during a brief period between the World Wars both the British pound sterling and the US dollar both served as reserve currencies. But the period was more of an interlude period of the transition from the British pound to the American dollar. What I’m talking about is a world were multiple reserve currencies coexist as a relatively stable feature of the financial system for a prolonged period of time. Read More |
02.04.23- COVID Stimulus Spending Played 'Sizable Role' in Inflation Fiscal stimulus during the pandemic contributed to an increase in inflation of about 2.6 percentage points. Stimulus spending played a "sizable role" in driving inflation to 40-year highs in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Read More |
QT is starting to make a visible dent. The Federal Reserve has shed $532 billion in assets since the peak in April, with total assets falling to $8.43 trillion, the lowest since September 2021, according to the weekly balance sheet released today. Compared to the balance sheet a month ago (released January 5), total assets dropped by $74 billion. Quantitative Tightening is starting to make a visible dent: Read More |
02.02.23- Warning Shot Fired! Another warning shot across the bow just happened… I warned my readers a few weeks ago about how the Federal Reserve, in cooperation with giant global banks, has launched a 12-week pilot project to test the message systems and payment processes on the new CBDC dollar. A pilot project is not research and development. That’s already done. The pilot means that what I call “Biden Bucks” are here, and the backers just want to test the plumbing before they roll the system out on the entire population. Read More |
02.01.23- "Disneyland Is Over" For 'Mickey Mouse' Investors: The Fed Still Has 'The Mother Of All Bombs' To Drop “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” – Karl Rove Read More |
01.31.23- The Federal Reserve Is The mainstream is optimistic about both the economy and the Fed’s fight against inflation. In his podcast, Peter Schiff took apart the mainstream narrative, explaining that the economy is much weaker than most people realize and the Fed is nowhere near victory in the war on inflation. We’re seeing a Santa Claus rally in stock in January, especially in the speculative momentum stocks. We’ve also seen a rally in the bond market. Peter called it a dead cat bounce. Read More |
01.30.23- Fed's words in focus as markets bet rate hikes will soon end Jan 30 (Reuters) - U.S. central bankers have unambiguously telegraphed this week's policy decision: a quarter-of-a-percentage-point increase in their benchmark interest rate, the smallest since they kicked off their tightening cycle 10 months ago with one the same size. Less clear is whether they will continue to signal "ongoing increases" ahead for the policy rate as evidence mounts that inflation and the economy are both losing momentum. Read More |
01.28.23- Weekend Rant: The world is groaning in every category, and it lacks a leader. Biden, Macron, Trudeau, et al, have all demonstrated behavior that resembles the Keystone Kops. So what’s ahead? I hear from a lot of people! Here are some of the scenarios they see playing out in the near term. They can’t all be right, but here’s a brief run-down of what many suggest is ahead of us. You may disagree with one or all points, but millions of people believe one of the following scenarios will play out. Read More |
01.27.23- The Biggest Collapse in M2 Money Supply Since the Great Depression If your measure of inflation is money supply, then the economy is in a deflationary period right now. M1 and M2 numbers are from the Fed, ODL is a derivative of M2, described below. Data for the above chart is from the Fed's H.6 Money Stock Report, released January 24. Read More |
01.26.23- A Dollar Collapse Is Now in Motion – Saudi Arabia Signals the End of Petro Status The decline of a currency’s world reserve status is often a long process rife with denials. There are numerous economic “experts” out there that have been dismissing any and all warnings of dollar collapse for years. They just don’t get it, or they don’t want to get it. The idea that the US currency could ever be dethroned as the defacto global trade mechanism is impossible in their minds. Read More |
01.25.23- Gold’s Breakout: It’s Not the Inflation Most assets have a poor record over the past year. Gold is one of the few assets that posted a gain — not a major gain, but a gain. Gold has really taken off since late October, from below $1,630 to almost $1,930 today. That’s a major move. What’s going on? You might want to argue that it has to do with inflation. The trouble with that argument is that (official) inflation has been coming down for the past few months. Meanwhile, gold seemed to massively underperform with respect to the very serious inflation we saw earlier last year. Read More |
01.24.23- What does this look like 10 years from now? On March 2, 1629, after years of escalating tensions with his own government, King Charles I of England dissolved parliament and ordered all the politicians to go home. He was only in the fourth year of his reign, but Charles was already a very unpopular king. One of his worst habits was frequently abusing his power and taking unilateral executive actions– raising taxes or passing new regulations– which would ordinarily require the approval of parliament. Read More |
01.23.23- CBDC and the Fed's Plan to Weaponize Money |
01.21.23- The Secret Reason Governments Love Inflation When people spend beyond their means, they increase the likelihood that they will suffer severe financial consequences – including foreclosure and bankruptcy. But when the U.S. government spends beyond its income, that doesn’t happen. It’s a mistake to think about government spending the way we think about our own household spending. The primary difference is a concept known by economists as modern monetary theory (MMT): Read More |
01.20.23- The Modern State Cannot Exist without Fiat Money The emergence of money is a market phenomenon. By surrendering fewer marketable goods for more marketable goods, individuals move closer to the goods they ultimately wish to consume but cannot acquire through direct exchange. The most marketable goods become common media of exchange (i.e., money). With money on one side of every transaction, the number of relevant prices is reduced, the division of labor expands, and specialization in the stages of production becomes possible. The basic function of money, then, is to facilitate exchange. Contrary to this purpose, the substitution of national paper currencies for commodity money has made trade more difficult. Read More |
01.19.23- Fed Announcement Has Unexpected Effect on Gold Demand This week, Your News to Know rounds up the latest top stories involving gold and the overall economy. Stories include: Is gold really underperforming?, more woes from COMEX and Austrian Mint discusses recent supply strains. No Fed U-turn means gold will disappoint… right? Last week’s gold news was, for the most part, how the Federal Reserve didn’t U-turn. It’s sticking to its hawkish monetary-tightening policy with general expectations that it will continue to do so. The subsequent headlines are surprising. Read More |
01.18.23- The Fed Is a Purely Political Institution, and It's Definitely Not a Bank. Those who know Wall Street lore sometimes recall that Fed chairman William Miller—Paul Volcker’s immediate predecessor—joked that most Americans believed the Federal Reserve was either an Indian reservation, a wildlife preserve, or a brand of whiskey. The Fed, of course, is none of those things, but there’s also one other thing the Federal Reserve is not: an actual bank. It is simply a government agency that does bank-like things. Read More |
01.17.23- Powell Answering Questions The average price of eggs increased by 49%, butter/margarine by 34% year-over-year, CNBC reported as of November. Yet, with his first speech of the year, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed the issue of the Fed’s independence. Yes, the conference was on Central Bank independence. But how many Americans have any concern, or the slightest care for this? At a conference in Sweden, Powell made his case using an appeal to democracy: With independence comes the responsibility to provide the transparency that enables effective oversight by Congress, which, in turn, supports the Fed's democratic legitimacy. Read More |
01.16.23- "Survive, Then Thrive": One River Digital On The Future Of Ethereum It was all about the Fed – or was it? US policy rates rocketed higher last year, dominating broader market dynamics. That’s all you needed to know. But there were quiet outliers. Turkey was the top-performing equity market in US dollar terms – a surprise given the unexpectedly rapid Fed tightening. Stablecoin being stable in both price and assets was probably not on your bingo card under the digital-1929-crash column. Read More |
01.14.23- Weekend Rant: Will You Beat Uncle Sam’s Relentless Pursuit of Your Wealth? The United States is lurching towards an epic financial catastrophe. This isn’t a novel insight. The great tragedy has been in the works for decades. Anyone with a mild inkling of curiosity knows what’s going on. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population clock, the U.S. population is over 334 million. This, no doubt, is a lot of mouths to feed and people to clothe and shelter. But that’s not all. Read More |
01.13.23- The Great Depression's Patsy The culprit responsible for the Wall Street crash of 1929 and the Great Depression can be easily identified—the government. To protect fractional reserve banking and generate a buyer for its debt, the US government created the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and put it in charge of the money supply. From July 1921 to July 1929, the Federal Reserve inflated the money supply by 62 percent, resulting in the crash in late October. The US government, following an aggressive “do something” program for the first time in American history, intervened in numerous ways throughout the 1930s—first under Herbert Hoover, then more heavily under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Read More |
01.12.23- Schiff: Is "Cooling" CPI Setting The Stage For More Inflation? Based on the headline numbers, price inflation cooled again in December, boosting market optimism that the Federal Reserve will continue to ease off the pedal on its monetary tightening. But this could be setting the stage for more price inflation down the road. And a deeper look at the data reveals that a lot of inflationary pressure remains despite the optimistic headlines. Read More |
01.11.23- What if the "Black Swan" of 2023 Is the Fed Succeeds? If the Fed succeeding is a "Black Swan," bring it on. What if the "Black Swan" of 2023 is the Federal Reserve succeeds? Two stipulations here: 1. "Black Swan" is in quotes because the common usage has widened to include events that don't match Nassim Taleb's original criteria / definition of black swan; the term now includes events considered unlikely or that are off the radar screens of both the media and the alt-media. Read More |
01.10.23- Here's The Truth About Before we get started this week, I want to show you a chart: Now, if this chart showed the stock price of a company, would you want to invest in it? If it’s the price of a commodity, would you be a buyer? Read More |
01.09.23- Has the Federal Reserve |
01.07.23- How FedGov Destroyed There is no real housing market in the US. Instead, an unholy trinity of Fannie/Freddie, the US Treasury, and the Federal Reserve Bank operate to distort the market at every turn and drive home prices up dramatically. Mises Institute Senior Fellow Alex Pollock, an economist and former mortgage banker, joins Jeff to describe the reality few Americans know. Read More |
01.06.23- Why the Threat of Deflation is Real I know — inflation has been grabbing all the headlines for a good while now — so you may wonder why the subject of deflation is relevant. First, the definitions of inflation and deflation go beyond commonly accepted meanings. As Robert Prechter’s Last Chance to Conquer the Crash says: Inflation is an increase in the total amount of money and credit, and deflation is a decrease in the total amount of money and credit. … Read More |
01.05.23- Central Banks Finally Own Up to the Crisis They Created As the Federal Reserve continues its fastest rate hike cycle since the stagflation crisis of 1980, a couple vital questions linger in the minds of economists everywhere: When is recession going to strike? When will the Fed reverse course on tightening? Read More |
01.04.23- Is There A Way To Stop Inflation Without Crushing The Economy One of the most dishonest games being played in economics today is the attempt by various groups (political and financial) to deflect blame for the rise of inflation. The Biden White House and Democrats desperately want to blame Russia and the war in Ukraine, even though inflation was spiking long before the war ever started. The Federal Reserve pretended for years that inflation was not a threat at all despite numerous alternative economists warning what would happen. Read More |
01.03.23- The Fed needs to jack rates up
This is nuts, we thought there was a crash? If you thought that the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes and the Nasdaq’s subsequent 33 per cent puke in 2022 were enough to finally kill the tragicomically engorged late-stage private market tech bubble . . . Read More |
01.02.23- Is QE returning by stealth? While the Fed is reducing its bond-buying programme, it is still providing stimulus via other means It has been a bleak year for many investors. Global investors have lost $23tn of wealth in housing and financial assets so far in 2022, according to my estimates. That is equivalent to 22 per cent of global gross domestic product and uncomfortably exceeds the lesser $18tn of losses suffered in the 2008 financial crisis. Read More |