President Trump recently took aim at the Federal Reserve once again, accusing the central bank of “holding back” America’s economy. The president was responding to a FOX Business Varney & Co. segment about negative interest rates in Europe and Japan.
Trump said the Fed should follow the lead of European and Japanese central banks into the world of negative rates.
Foreign central banks have been stocking up on gold for months. According to the World Gold Council, a dozen central banks have increased their gold reserves by at least 1 ton through the first eight months of 2019. This continues a trend we saw through 2018. In total, the world’s central banks accumulated 651.5 tons of gold last year. The World Gold Council noted that 2018 marked the highest level of annual net central bank gold purchases since the suspension of dollar convertibility into gold in 1971, and the second-highest annual total on record.
Peter Schiff has talked about central bank gold-buying. He has noted that the US went off the gold standard in 1971, but he thinks the world is going to go back on it.
According to Elizabeth Warren, we have a problem. And like every good central planner, she believes she can fix it.
In fact, Warren has made, “I have a plan for that,” a campaign slogan.
These people never learn. They try to micromanage the economy, create all kinds of unseen consequences, blame “capitalism,” and repeat the process.
Years ago, markets used to pay a lot of attention to the money supply and trade deficits. Now, these numbers barely get a passing mention. In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said he thinks what is old will become new again and trade deficits and money printing will once again come front and center.
When is a $984 billion budget deficit good news?
When you thought you might get a $1 trillion budget deficit.
The Treasury Department released the fiscal year 2019 budget numbers on Friday. The budget shortfall came in at $984 billion right on the CBO estimate. A CNBC report said this would likely, “come as a relief to the Trump administration, which had previously forecast that the deficit would hit $1 trillion during the 2019 fiscal year.”
We’ve talked a lot about government debt and consumer debt. In this episode of the SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey highlights the massive corporate debt bubble. As he explains, it’s eerily similar to the mortgage debt bubble the blew up in the years prior to the 2008 crash. It’s a little like deja vu all over again. He also covers another round of gloomy economic data that came out this week.
The US government is spending money and running up debt at an unfathomable rate. The US national debt increased by a staggaring $814 billion in just two months. When confronted with this reality, most people just shrug. Policymakers certainly don’t care. They continue to ramp up spending and call for even more. Paul Krugman recently tweeted that we need more government stimulus — ie spending — to stoke tepid demand.
Democrats have never cared about spending and Republicans swear tax cuts will grow the economy and fix the debt problem. But as we’ve reported many times, debt retards economic growth.
Now we have even more evidence that government stimulus doesn’t stimulate. In fact, it has the exact opposite effect, as we can see from Europe’s spending binge.
There is a massive corporate debt bubble floating around out there, and when it pops, it will likely take a lot of companies down with it.
Outstanding corporate debt in the US stands at almost $10 trillion, according to SEC Chairman Jay Clayton. That’s nearly 50% of GDP.
Gold is the “shining embodiment of wealth.” It is not only used to add “extra bling” to our lives; it is also an important component in expensive high-tech electronics and medical devices. Even more fundamentally, gold is money.
But why is gold so expensive — even more valuable than other rarer metals? A video put together by Business Insider offers some perspective. Simply put, it’s a matter of supply and demand. People want gold and there isn’t very much of it.
