Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell dumped cold water on the notion that we’re going to have a quick recovery during a speech this week and begged Congress for more fiscal stimulus. As Friday Gold Wrap host Mike Maharrey put it, Powell and the federal government are the arsonists trying to fight the fire they started. In this episode, Mike talks about Powell’s speech and points out just how clueless he really is. He also covers some of the week’s economic news and its impact on the gold market.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell went negative in a webcast speech on Wednesday, May 13.
I’m not talking about negative interest rates, although that could be coming down the pike as well. Powell went negative on the prospects of a quick economic recovery.
He’s right about the prospects for the economy, but he’s wrong about the solution. That’s because he doesn’t even realize it’s Fed policy at the root of the problem to begin with.
The April federal budget deficit came in at a staggering $738 billion as government coronavirus stimulus began flowing through the pipelines and revenue dipped due to the government lockdowns.
Gold continued to flow into gold-backed ETFs, setting another all-time record in April.
Globally, funds added another 170 tons of gold last month amounting to $3.9 billion, according to the latest data from the World Golf Council. It was the sixth straight month of net inflows.
The consumer price index fell 0.8% in April, according to the latest Labor Department data. It was the biggest plunge in consumer prices since December 2008. year-over-year, the CPI is up 0.3.
By all indications, it appears inflation is the least of our problems despite massive Federal Reserve money-printing and unprecedented government spending. But in his podcast, Peter Schiff said you need to ignore the CPI because despite what it might indicate, inflation is a huge problem.
Silver hasn’t been this cheap compared to gold in 5,000 years of human history. What is the silver-gold ratio telling us? Is silver about to shine?
Total household debt was over $1.6 trillion higher than the previous peak in 2008 even before the full force of the coronavirus pandemic government shutdowns hit the economy.
Household debt increased by $155 billion (1.1%) in Q1 to a total of $14.3 trillion, according to the latest data released by the New York Fed. The previous peak was $12.68 trillion in the third quarter of ’08 in the early days of the financial crisis.
Are negative interest rates in our future?
The markets are starting to think so.
On Thursday, Fed fund futures contracts began pricing in negative interest rates. They were initially priced in for December but then shifted to early 2021. This doesn’t guarantee negative rates, but it does indicate markets are beginning to expect them.
The US Labor Department released its April non-farm payroll report on Friday and it was as bleak as expected. As Peter Schiff put it, it was the weakest jobs report in the history of jobs reports. And even worse, a lot of these jobs are never coming back.
A record 20.5 million Americans lost their jobs last month and the unemployment rate surged to 14.7%. It was the largest and most sudden rise in joblessness since the government started tracking the numbers.
I have some advice for you wanna-be scammers out there.
Check your mailing list.
A scammer in British Columbia sent his pitch to a cop – a member of the Delta police economic and technical crime unit to be exact.
