The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
So, here’s a little nugget I dug out of the deep, dark depths of the internet this week.
A truck driving along a major highway in South Africa lost its load. This caused a major frenzy, not to mention a horrendous Los Angeles-style traffic jam. And what did this truck dump that resulted in such chaos?
Gold!
The US dollar dropped to its lowest level in three years Friday.
Extending losses on Thursday, the dollar index against a basket of six currencies dropped to 88.253. This marks its lowest level since December 2014.
A Reuters report noted that “Traders’ confidence in the dollar has also been eroded by mounting worries over the United States’ twin budget and current account deficits.” Interestingly, just last month Peter Schiff said these twin deficits may ultimately doom the stock market.
Inflation is back. So what does this mean for gold?
The consumer price index came in hotter than expected at 2.1%. A CNBC report said the number “pushes the economy toward a potential danger zone for inflation.”
Could the house of credit cards Americans have built be on the verge of collapse?
Earlier this week, the New York Fed released the latest data on US household debt, revealing it has grown to a record $13 trillion. Americans have been spending, but they’ve been putting a lot of it on plastic. Credit card balances grew by $24 billion in the last quarter of 2017 alone. Meanwhile, US consumers owe $1.22 trillion on vehicle loans. This can only go on for so long. And there are indications that the American credit card spending spree may be winding down.
Retail sales unexpectedly fell in January, recording their biggest drop in nearly a year.
Peter Schiff recently appeared on Ivan on Tech for a wide-ranging interview. Ivan and Peter talked cryptocurrency, gold, government debt, fiat currency, the dollar and more.
Ivan is one of the foremost experts on cryptocurrency. He is an international speaker, blockchain educator, software developer and data scientist.
Ivan and Peter don’t see eye-to-eye on everything, but they did manage to find some common ground. If you are interested in cryptocurrencies and gold, you will find their friendly debate both entertaining and informative.
Passage of a GOP budget that added $300 billion in new spending has focused plenty of attention on surging federal government debt over the last week or so. But Uncle Sam isn’t the only one running up those credit cards. Everyday Americans are also piling on the debt.
Total household debt soared to a record $13 trillion dollars in 2017, according to the latest data released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data.
Investor Jim Rogers has seen a lot in 75 years. So when he starts talking about the worst bear market in our lifetime, we probably ought to sit up and take notice.
And that’s exactly what Rogers said in a recent phone interview with Bloomberg.
When we have a bear market again, and we are going to have a bear market again, it will be the worst in our lifetime.”
During a podcast last week, Peter Schiff asked a key question: Who is going to buy all of this US debt?
The US Treasury Department plans to auction off around $1.4 trillion in Treasuries this year. And it won’t end there. The department expects that pace of borrowing to continue over the next several years.
That’s a lot of bonds. Who will buy them? Because the biggest purchasers of US debt aren’t in a buying mood.
The Babylon Bee captured the current state of the Republican Party in all of its hypocritical glory. The satirical website proclaimed “Republicans announce plan to pretend to be fiscally conservative again the moment a Democrat takes office.”
The GOP said it would begin to decry deficit spending and the $20 trillion debt in order to win votes as soon as political power swung back to the opposing party.
“‘The second a Democrat is back in the White House, we will once again start yelling about fiscal responsibility,’ Speaker Paul Ryan said in an address to the House of Representatives Friday. ‘For now, we will continue to vote for unsustainable and irresponsible budgets that your children’s children’s children will pay for for centuries to come.’”
