There is a relentless push to raise the minimum wage, both at the state and national levels.
Minimum wage advocates somehow think that their wishful thinking can override basic economics. But no matter how much they tell you otherwise, supply and demand are a thing. Raising the cost of labor will mean less labor employed, all other things being equal.
But every so often, we get an economic study that claims basic economics has been overturned.
Fight!
The kids are throwing punches in the halls of Congress and there doesn’t seem to be a responsible adult willing to step in to stop it.
We’re talking about the debt ceiling fight that kicked off last week when the US government bumped up against its statutory borrowing limit.
We talk a lot about the Federal Reserve. Its policies have a significant impact on the economy and it moves markets week after week. For instance, over the last year or so, the Fed’s “inflation fight” has created headwinds for gold and silver.
But what exactly is the Federal Reserve?
During the pandemic, we got trillions of dollars in stimulus. The Federal Reserve alone pumped nearly $5 trillion into the economy. People gobbled up those stimulus checks, but there is no such thing as a free lunch. Now we’re paying for those stimmy checks with rampant inflation that is morphing into stagflation.
As Peter Schiff has said, “Every dollar that the government spends must be paid for by the public, one way or another.”
Jerome Powell still insists the Federal Reserve can beat inflation while bringing the economy to a “soft landing.” But there are underlying issues in the economy that make it extraordinarily doubtful that the economy can avoid a major downturn – despite Powell’s claims to the contrary.
One of the biggest problems facing the Fed is the amount of debt in the global economy.
For the last several years, we’ve enjoyed the fruits of an economic bubble blown up by easy money and debt. But ultimately, that debt is going to be the economy’s undoing. Simply put, these debt levels are unsustainable without runaway inflation.
So, pick your poison.
Last month, the New York Fed launched a pilot program for a “digital dollar.” Could this be the first step toward monetary totalitarianism?
Will the Federal Reserve pivot? That’s the question on everybody’s mind.
But why does it matter so much?
Inflation was running rampant for months before the Federal Reserve launched its inflation fight. As you’ll recall, we were told over and over again that inflation was transitory. But now that the central bank is on the job, most people are confident Powell and Company can get rising prices back under control.
Perhaps they shouldn’t be so confident.
The collapse of the FTX crypto exchange has been in the news. As SchiffGold analyst Tony wrote, “FTX isn’t the canary in the coal mine (that was Celsius, or one of the other firms that crashed this year). FTX is the coal mine, and it just collapsed.”
