Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell all but confirmed a soft pivot by the central bank in its inflation fight on Wednesday, while trying to maintain a hawkish demeanor.
The markets appear to be buying the pivot, but they are ignoring Powell’s “tough guy” spin.
While the data this month looks weak, I think there is more to the story. My hypothesis is speculative in nature, so I will save it for the end after going through the data.
In another bad sign for a housing bubble that is quickly deflating, investor purchases of single-family homes tanked in the third quarter.
Meanwhile, overall home sales continue to tumble and prices are falling.
The powers that be keep telling you that the economy is fine and inflation has likely peaked. But you’re not buying the story.
Consumer confidence fell for the second straight month in November as worries about inflation and the trajectory of the economy persist.
When people talk about “inflation” today, they generally mean rising prices as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI). But historically, “inflation” was more precisely defined as an increase in the amount of money and credit causing advances in the price level. Inflation used to be understood as an increase in the money supply. Rising prices were a symptom of inflation.
I find this change in definition problematic. But many disagree with me. They argue that I’m being pedantic and the definition doesn’t really matter all that much.
In another sign of a struggling economy, small businesses are having an increasingly hard time paying rent.
According to Alignable’s November Rent Poll, 41% of US small businesses reported they couldn’t pay their rent in full and on time in November. That was a 4 percentage-point increase from the previous month.
Based on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), prices were up 7.7% year-on-year in October. That’s a pretty hefty inflationary bite. But we’ve been saying the impact of inflation is a lot worse.
The increased cost of a Thanksgiving meal this year bears that out.
Your Thanksgiving meal cost about 20% more than it did last year. Why did it cost so much more? As Peter Schiff explained in his podcast, your more expensive Thanksgiving came to you courtesy of the US government and its inflation tax.
There are a lot of things they didn’t teach you in school. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey tells you a Thanksgiving story you’ve probably never heard before – at least not from your school teacher. He also touches on the Fed minutes that came out this week that seem to confirm a soft pivot on rate hikes.
When I was a kid, we used to say some things only “sound good on paper.” In other words, they seem like good plans, but there is no way they’re going to work in the real world.
That’s socialism in a nutshell.
The Pilgrims found this out the hard way during their first couple of years in North America. Their experiment in socialism turned out deadly.
