The Federal Reserve released the minutes from its January meeting this week. It featured some pretty thick Fed-speak. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey translates and tells you what the Fed is telling you about inflation. He also talks about why he thinks gold and silver are both struggling in an economic environment that should be bullish for precious metals.
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell called for a “society-wide” commitment to reaching full employment. As Peter Schiff put it, Powell basically handed the US government a blank check in order to achieve this “maximum employment goal.” We’re told we shouldn’t even worry about the massive deficit spending and additional debt this will incur. It’s all hands on deck and everybody needs to sacrifice. But what exactly does the Fed mean by “maximum employment?” What are we to sacrifice for?
Nobody knows. Not even the Fed.
Talk of hiking the minimum wage at the national level has ramped up in recent weeks. With the Democrats controlling the House and the Senate, and Joe Biden in the White House, it seems increasingly likely that we’ll soon see a federal $15 per hour minimum.
In other words, it may soon be illegal to take a job that pays less than $15 an hour.
Why buy gold?
The Relevance of Gold as a Strategic Asset report released by the World Gold Council offers four reasons to add gold to your portfolio.
The bond market is getting clobbered. Long-term interest rates are rising and that is putting significant pressure on gold. Peter Schiff talked about rising rates and the gold market in a recent podcast. He said the rise in long-term yields is a function of inflation and people seem to forget that inflation is good for gold.
Silver enjoyed a moment in the spotlight when the Reddit Raiders turned their attention to the white metal. The online investors weren’t able to pull off a short-squeeze in the silver market, but we’ve said all along that there are fundamental reasons to be bullish on silver. Given the supply and demand dynamics coupled with the prospect of inflation, $30 silver is likely quite a bargain.
The US government is spending money at a torrid pace. Uncle Sam blew through $547 billion in January. That brings total spending through the first four months of fiscal 2021 to $1.92 trillion.
And the spending spree is only going to increase. Congress continues to debate another $1.9 trillion stimulus package and there’s already talk of an infrastructure spending bill in the pipeline after that.
This raises the $1.9 trillion question: how is the government going to pay for all this?
After running the biggest December budget deficit in history, the US government followed up with another massive budget shortfall in January.
According to the Monthly Treasury Statement, the January deficit came in at $162.83 billion. That’s nearly five times bigger than the January 2020 shortfall.
Last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said he wasn’t worried at all about inflation. But there are signs that inflation is heating up everywhere, from surging commodity prices to rising bond yields. In his podcast Friday (Feb 12) Peter Schiff talked about increasing inflation and the unreasonable expectations Wall Street has when it comes to the Fed’s willingness or ability to do anything about it.
In the Friday Gold Wrap podcast this morning, I talked about the minimum wage. Making a point about how raising prices lowers demand, I pointed out that McDonald’s wouldn’t sell many $15 hamburgers. But you know, there is a way Micky-Ds could make that work. Wrap those burgers in gold.
