The People’s Bank of China was the first central bank to roll out a digital currency. The digital yuan recently got a boost when China’s biggest online retailer announced it has developed the first virtual platform to accept the Chinese digital currency.
Digital currency is nothing more than a virtual banknote or coin that exists in a digital wallet on your smartphone instead of a billfold or a purse. Digital currencies issued by central banks are backed by the state, just like traditional fiat currency.
Peter Schiff shared his son’s Christmas list and drew a rather disconcerting conclusion – a lot of Americans think like a 7-year-old kid.
Saxo Bank recently projected silver will soar to $50 an ounce in 2021, powered by loose monetary policy along with the push for “green energy.” Bloomberg Intelligence is now making a similar call, saying silver will be “the primary metal” benefiting from electrification and quantitative easing in 2021.
Gold set a new record earlier this year and briefly traded above $2,000 an ounce. In a recent report, Bloomberg Intelligence senior commodity strategist Mike McGlone predicted silver will follow gold toward a record high of its own.
President Trump threw a wrench into coronavirus stimulus relief, calling the massive spending bill “a disgrace” and threatening to veto the legislation if Congress doesn’t go back and up the individual checks from $600 to $2,000.
It remains unclear how the politics will play out. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tweeted “Let’s do it!” putting pressure on Sen. President Mitch McConnel to go along with the increased stimulus. What is pretty certain is stimulus is coming down the pike – whether sooner or later. Before Trump made his surprise remarks, Peter Schiff talked about the stimulus bill on his podcast.
This is not the ideal time to own an apartment building. Millions are struggling to pay rent and despite the extension of the federal eviction moratorium through Jan. 31 in the latest stimulus bill, a lot of people will likely face eviction in the coming months. According to data released in November, 17 million households are behind on rent or mortgage payments.
Of course, this has a trickle-down effect. If renters can’t pay their rent, that makes it difficult for apartment building owners to keep up with their mortgage payments. If they default, who’s on the hook?
Increasingly, the US taxpayer.
The US government is stimulating everybody. Just not you.
Congress finally pulled together a stimulus deal. Both houses of Congress passed the $900 billion measure. It ranks as the second-largest “stimulus” bill in history, only behind the CARES Act passed earlier this year.
The money supply grew by 37.08% year-on-year in November based on the True Money Supply Measure (TMS). It was effectively the same rate of growth we saw in October and remains near September’s all-time high rate of growth.
The staggering growth in the money supply becomes more clear when you compare this year with last. TMS growth in November 2019 was just 5.9%.
The big story last week was the dollar’s slow meltdown. The dollar index broke below 90 for the first time since the spring of 2018.
The financial media hasn’t ignored the dollar weakness, but Peter said they don’t seem to grasp the significance of what’s going on, nor do they realize how much further the dollar has to fall. In fact, a lot of the talk has focused on the positives of dollar weakness. In his podcast, Peter argues this growing dollar weakness is not America’s win.
Have you heard about the guy who’s spent five years in federal prison because he won’t give up the location of about 500 gold coins he found in a historic shipwreck?
Yes. Five years.
How many years would you spend in prison for millions in gold?
The Federal Reserve held its last meeting of the year this week. There were no big surprises policy-wise. But Jerome Powell and company made it clear that the easy-money spigot will remain wide open pumping trillions of dollars created out of thin air into the economy. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, Mike Maharrey talks about the Fed meeting and the ramifications of its monetary policy.
