Peter’s Blog

Central banks globally added a net 199.2 tons of gold in the second quarter of 2021. That was the highest level of quarterly net purchases since Q2 2019 and 73% above the five-year quarterly average, according to data compiled by the World Gold Council.

Inflation continues to run rampant and it’s distorting the entire economy. Rising prices create the illusion of economic growth. And they are also allowing the US government to stealthily default on its massive debt. This is not a sign of a strong economy.

GDP for the second quarter disappointed, coming in at an annualized rate of 6.5%. Is this a sign of impending stagflation? While 6.5% growth looks good on the surface, economists polled by the Wall Street Journal expected annualized GDP to chart around 9.1%. This was a huge miss and indicates the economy isn’t growing nearly […]

The Federal Reserve insists inflation is “transitory” and the economy is making “progress.” Yet, it continues with the extraordinary monetary policy it launched at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, we’re seeing all kinds of data hinting that the economy may not be as great as advertised. Despite this, and even as prices continue […]

India ranks as the second-largest gold-consuming country in the world, second only behind China, but demand has languished for the last couple of years. The pandemic crushed demand, particularly for gold jewelry, but record-high gold prices in rupee terms and government policy put a drag on the gold market even before COVID-19. There were signs of […]

While the Federal Reserve continues to downplay inflation in the US, insisting that it is “transitory,” the Bank of Russia has gone to war with rising prices. Bank of Russia Governor Elvira Nabiullina says she sees “persistent factors” to inflation, and on Friday, the Russian Central bank hiked interest rates by 100 basis points to […]

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell continues to insist the surge of rising prices is “transitory. But if this is true, why are inflation projections for 2022 rapidly rising? It seems the markets aren’t buying the transitory theme.

Chinese gold imports have nearly returned to pre-pandemic levels and the world’s biggest gold market continues to recover. According to the latest data reported by the World Gold Council, China imported 67.6 tons of gold in May. That was 65 tons higher than May 2020 and only three tons lower than May 2019, before the […]

The mainstream narrative is that the Fed will soon admit that inflation isn’t transitory. At that point, it will raise interest rates and taper its bond-buying program to fight rising prices. But this narrative ignores the elephant in the room – the ever-increasing national debt. In June, the US government ran another big deficit of […]

For the sixth month in a row, Consumer Price Index (CPI) data came in much higher than expected. But the question remains: how long will the Fed keep up the “transitory” inflation narrative? And when they do abandon this storyline and acknowledge inflation, what can the central bankers really do about it? The CPI surged […]