After Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell released a dovish trial balloon last week, hinting we could be close to an end of the interest rate tightening cycle, the mainstream has suddenly turned bullish on gold. A recent Bloomberg article proclaimed, “Gold may be poised to rally as speculation mounts that the Federal Reserve will hit the pause button on interest rate hikes in 2019.”
Last week, there was some significant news out of India that could further boost the country’s gold market.
The Indian government will now allow banks to engage in gold bullion business – including holding, buying, selling, hedging and leveraging the yellow metal. Under current rules, banks can only serve as a consignment or channeling agent in the import of gold bullion for jeweler and exporters.
The loosening of regulations could increase a gold market that already ranks as the second-largest in the world behind only China.
Northern Irish investors are buying gold and lots of it as a safe-haven in the midst of Brexit uncertainty.
Merrion Vaults, a leading Irish supplier of gold and precious metals storage services, said the number of clients from Northern Ireland purchasing and storing gold in the Republic of Ireland has increased by 70% this year.
Every morning, I get up and peruse the latest gold news. As part of that process, I just Google the word “gold.” I find a lot of useful articles that way. But I also have to filter through a lot of extraneous stuff – headlines like “Australian Bicycle Team Wins Gold Medal.” Anyway, I generally just scroll past that stuff. But as you can imagine, if it’s a big story, I end up seeing the headline over and over again. And sometimes, I click out of morbid curiosity.
That happened today. Over the last couple of days, I kept seeing headlines about how somebody has figured out how to melt gold at room temperature. At first, I thought, eh, I don’t really care. But after seeing the headline for the 894th time, I clicked.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
As Peter Schiff put it in his most recent podcast, Jerome Powell blinked.
In a surprising about-face, the Federal Reserve Chair hinted that interest rates are “just below” neutral, leading to speculation that the central bank might be close to ending its tightening cycle. Peter said the Fed has basically been playing a game of chicken with the markets.
And the way the game of chicken goes is the markets keep moving lower and the Fed keeps talking about how great the economy is and how many rate hikes are coming in the future and somebody his to flinch. Somebody has to blink. It’s like you have these two automobiles driving toward each other and there’s going to be a major crash unless somebody turns the wheel. And it seems like it was Jerome Powell that turned the wheel first and in fact was chicken.”
Are you prepared for a disaster?
People tend to stereotype “preppers” as tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists waiting for the zombie apocalypse. Suzanne Sherman busts all the stereotypes.
Stocks rallied and the price of gold got a bounce after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell released a dovish trial balloon on Wednesday.
During a speech at the Economic Club of New York, Powell seemed to indicate interest rates are “just below the broad range of estimates of the level that would be neutral for the economy.” Investors and pundits widely interpreted this to mean the central bank may well be near the end of its tightening cycle.
In this special episode of It’s Your Dime, Mike Maharrey switches roles and becomes the interviewee.
Mike recently appeared on Inside the News with Paul Jensen and Suzanne Sherman on K-TALK AM1640 in Utah to talk about the popping of the auto bubble and more generally how the Federal Reserve has set us up for the next big crash.
Bankers, investors and executives are increasingly worried about corporate debt, according to a Reuters report.
Specifically, the concerns center around “leveraged lending.” These are loans made to firms already deeply in debt. Think subprime loans for corporations. As the Reuters report put it, “the concern is that the loans would be difficult to either collect or resell in a downturn, putting both the borrower and lender at risk.”
