Are the Chinese selling US dollar-denominated assets to buy gold?
It sure looks that way.
The Biden administration ran a $1.695 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2023. It was the third-largest deficit in US history. The only time the US government ran bigger deficits was during the COVID years of 2020 and 2021.
The government closed out the year with a $170.98 billion deficit in September, according to the final Monthly Treasury Statement of the fiscal year. That was more than double the projection.
Problems in the commercial real estate (CRE) sector continue to bubble under the surface. This is a major stress point for US banks and could precipitate the next phase of the financial crisis.
A combination of high interest rates and declining tenancy is putting the squeeze on commercial real estate owners. As a result, banks hold a growing portfolio of delinquent CRE loans.
Global debt rose $10 trillion to a record $397 trillion in the first half of 2023, according to the Institute of International Finance (IIF).
The big increase in debt occurred despite tightening credit conditions, and it is an increasingly worrisome problem because the “free lunch” of artificially low interest rates is over.
Joe Biden says the economy is great. Paul Krugman says the inflation war is over and we won. But Americans aren’t buying the narrative. They’re growing increasingly worried about the economy and inflation.
The University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment tanked in October with inflation worries at the highest level since last May.
I write a lot about the national debt.
And most people don’t care.
That’s because there’s a widespread belief that the dollar is invincible.
It isn’t.
After a more than 3-year pause, government student loan repayments started again this month and it’s already putting the squeeze on borrower’s wallets. This is bad news for an economy already strained by massive levels of debt and rising interest rates.
Interest accrual on student loans resumed on September 1 with the first payments coming due in October.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) has launched a digital payment system backed by physical gold.
The RBZ rolled out its digital gold-backed token in April after successfully implementing a program to produce physical gold coins in 2022. On Oct. 5, the central bank announced that these gold-backed digital tokens could be used as a method of payment for domestic transactions.
Twenty days.
That’s how long it took the Biden administration to add another half-trillion dollars to the national debt.
Bidenomics certainly requires a lot of borrowing and spending.
American consumers continued to pile up debt on credit cards while borrowing for big-ticket items fell into the basement in August.
This is the behavior of extremely financially stressed people.
