When talking heads and politicians talk about inflation, they tend to make distinctions between “food inflation,” or “energy inflation,” or “wage inflation.” In this clip from his podcast, Peter Schiff explains that this isn’t the right way to look at inflation. In fact, there’s only one type of inflation. And the Federal Reserve is the source of it.
As Ron Paul pointed out, the recent brouhaha at the Federal Reserve when information came out revealing several central bank officials making multiple multimillion-dollar stock trades in 2020 even as the Fed was putting its big fat thumb on the economic scales was a minor thing compared to the bigger scandal – the everyday operation of the Fed.
The Fed engages in price-fixing. And it fixes one of the most important prices in the economy – the price of money. Peter Schiff said this always ends in a disaster.
The analysis last month showed that selling exhaustion may be near in the gold market. Since then, gold continues to be range-bound between $1750 and $1800 running up against both solid resistance and support. Meanwhile, silver has shown a mini-breakout.
The $1800 level for gold is in play this week and could open the door for a big move if it gets through it soon.
Both gold and silver are seeing quieter activity in Comex contracts. This is not atypical for October and November which are slow months in the lead up to December.
This analysis focuses on gold and silver physical delivery on the Comex. See the article What is the Comex for more detail.
The federal budget deficit for fiscal 2021 came in at $2.77 trillion. It was the second-largest deficit in US history, just behind last year’s $3.13 trillion shortfall. Despite falling shy of the deficit record, Uncle Sam spent even more money in 2021 than it did during the depths of the 2020 coronavirus recession.
In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey answers listener questions. Some of the topics covered include bitcoin, fractional reserve banking, the silver/gold ratio, gold as a safe haven, precious metals in a crisis, and more.
We know that the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates artificially low by manipulating the federal funds rate (the target interest rate that commercial banks borrow and lend their excess reserves to each other) and using monetary policy maneuvers such as quantitative easing. But could we have low interest rates without Fed intervention? In this clip, Peter Schiff explains the difference between artificially and naturally low interest rates and how the Fed messes up the economy with its intervention.
The inflation that we were emphatically told would be transitory and unmoored continues to persist and entrench. As the troubles gather momentum Washington is doing its best to ignore the problem or actively make it worse.
As governments shut down the economy in response to COVID-19 and the Federal Reserve put money printing into hyperdrive, we warned that it was a recipe for stagflation. Today, it looks like stagnation is here.
Stagflation is an economic environment with rapidly rising prices, a weak labor market, and low GDP growth. It’s looking more and more like we have all three elements.
Gold and bonds are both considered to be safe havens. But in a recent podcast, Peter explained why bonds are not a safe haven in an inflationary environment. In fact, bonds – including US Treasuries – are risk assets when inflation is running hot. If you want safety from inflation, you need to buy gold.
