After running the largest monthly surplus ever in April, the Treasury was back to running deficits in May. The Federal government spent $455B in May and collected $389B in taxes, which resulted in a net deficit of $66B.
The latest seasonally adjusted inflation rate for May came in scorching hot at 0.98% MoM and 8.62% YoY, beating expectations of 0.7% and 8.3% respectively. All prices rose in May with 9 of 11 categories rising faster than the 12-month trend, representing 97.5% of the total CPI.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) data for May came out this morning. The projection was for another hot headline number but some relief in core CPI. This would seem to indicate we’ve passed peak inflation. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharey explains why “good news” in the CPI data would be bad news for inflation. Then he reacts to the data in real-time. (Hint — it wasn’t good news.)
Everybody was thrilled to get stimulus checks in the mail during the COVID-19 pandemic. “It’s free money!” many exclaimed. But nothing in life is free. This includes “free” things handed out by the government.
So today, you’re paying for those stimmy checks and the government pandemic spending spree.
There are a number of signals that the US economy is getting weaker even as inflation gets stronger.
In other words, we are hurtling toward stagflation.
The Czech National Bank is about to go on a gold-buying spree. Incoming CNB Governor Ales Michl said he plans to increase the bank’s gold holdings nearly 10-fold during a recent magazine interview.
Consumer debt climbed to a new all-time record in April as Americans continue to cope with rapidly rising prices.
Total outstanding consumer debt rose by $38 billion in April, reaching a new record of $4.57 trillion, according to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. Total consumer debt was up 10.1% in April. It was the third straight month that consumer debt increased by $30 billion or more.
The April trade deficit came in at -$87B. This was the first time in 5 months that a new record had not been set (pink dot below). The Net Goods Deficit remained below -$100B for the fifth straight month. This Trade Deficit comes on the heels of an absolutely massive -$108B Deficit in March. It’s likely that some of the April deficit was counted in March, so expect a rebound in the May number.
The Treasury increased the total debt by $125B in May after a brief drop in April. This brings the total debt increase so far in 2022 to $880B. More importantly, though, the cost to service the debt is exploding. Total annualized interest has increased by $40B or 13.5% since the start of the year!
After increasing gold holdings by 84 tons in the first quarter of this year, central banks continued to be net gold buyers in April.
Globally, central banks added a net 19.4 tons of gold to their holdings in April.
