There are plenty of signs that the economy is teetering on the brink as the Federal Reserve ratchets up interest rates. The air is coming out of the housing bubble, PMI has tanked, more Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and debt is spiraling upward. Those claiming the economy remains strong have one peg to hang their hats on – the “strong” labor market.
But in fact, the labor market is anything but strong.
Most people have a sense of history that goes back about two weeks. This is especially true in the world of investing and finance. As a result, people have a hard time seeing the big picture. For instance, a lot of people think the current inflation crisis was only due to the Fed failing to respond fast enough. As Peter Schiff pointed out, this inflation was in fact decades in the making.
And as James Anthony pointed out, the current inflation problem along with all of the big economic crises that occurred in the 20th and 21st centuries have one commonality — progressive government coupled with monetary policies run by the Federal Reserve.
Ben Bernanke was one of the architects of the inflation you’re suffering from today. He won a Nobel Prize for his efforts.
Bernanke rolled out quantitative easing to rescue the economy in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. At the time, he swore it was a temporary emergency measure and that the Fed would eventually sell all of the bonds it was accumulating on its balance sheet. He insisted that it was not a debt monetization scheme.
Gold is nature’s money.
Aristotle listed four characteristics of sound money: it must be durable, portable, divisible, and have intrinsic value. Gold possesses all of these characteristics, which is why gold has served as money for thousands of years.
The student loan forgiveness program recently announced by President Joe Biden stirred up quite the political brouhaha. Progressives praised Biden for helping students burdened by overwhelming student loan debt. Conservatives decried it as an unfair giveaway. But as with most issues, the popular political debate misses the bigger picture.
The student loan crisis was primarily a problem of the federal government’s own creation. And no matter what you think about the forgiveness program, it fails to address the root of the problem.
The dollar index is at 20-year highs. This has led to talk of the dollar getting “too strong,” even as some worry that a “post-dollar” world could be on the horizon.
What explains this dichotomy?
In a nutshell, it’s not so much that the dollar is “strong.” It’s just the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry basket.
The Fed continues to talk tough about fighting inflation. During his Jackson Hole speech, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the central bank will “use our tools forcefully” to attack inflation. Powell even promised some pain.
What exactly does Powell mean by “pain?”
Ron Paul pointed out that Powell wants to “soften the labor market.” In other words, he wants you to get fired.
Americans have been laboring under the burden of inflation for well over a year. We feel the pain everywhere, from the gas pump to the grocery store. Once it became impossible to sell the “inflation is transitory” narrative any longer, the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to fight inflation. As a result, the bubble economy is getting shaky. But even some people at the Fed seem to realize this is a fight they can’t win.
In a talk at the Ron Paul Institute, Mises Institute president Jeff Deist called inflation “state-sponsored terrorism.”
The so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” is another Washington DC lie. It won’t do anything to reduce inflation. In fact, it will do the exact opposite. Instead, they should have named it the “Liberty Reduction Act,” because that’s what 87,000 new IRS agents funded by this spending bill will do.
Yes, the tax man cometh. And he won’t just be coming for billionaires.
The CPI fell modestly in July, but prices remained near 40-year highs at 8.5%. Meanwhile, President Biden did a victory lap, and Congress passed an “Inflation Reduction Act” that will only make inflation worse.
It’s easy to look at inflation talk as political banter and wonky economic theorizing, but in fact, it hurts real people. As Brazilian economist André Marques explains, it makes us all poorer.
