In the aftermath of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, many rushed to blame their demise on a lack of regulation. In particular, they focused on the fact that these banks were not required to undergo a Federal Reserve stress test.
Indeed, small and midsize banks are exempt from the stress test requirement. Did that lead to the current banking crisis?
Energy prices have moderated and the price of some goods has dropped in recent months, but the cost of services continues to rise at a red-hot pace and is at the highest level since 1984.
As a result, the core personal consumption expenditures price (PCE) index rose by 4.6% year on year. This is yet another signal that the Federal Reserve is not anywhere close to winning the inflation fight.
Gold has been seeing a large number of contracts roll in the final day of the contract. That did not happen this month. This has resulted in a large delivery volume.
By now it should be common knowledge that the Fed has blown up its balance sheet rather quickly to combat the current banking crisis. As the chart below illustrates, the Fed added a gargantuan sum to its balance sheet in March, netting an increase of $324B.
The Federal Reserve has added nearly $400 billion to its balance sheet in just two weeks while simultaneously claiming to still be in the inflation fight. While things seemed pretty quiet this week after the bank bailout, Friday Gold Wrap host Mike Maharrey says it’s only a matter of time before the next shoe drops. What will that be? In this episode, he talks about one possibility. He also talks about some interesting demand news in the silver market.
Could the commercial real estate market be the next thing to break in this bubble economy?
The rampant money creation and zero percent interest rates during the COVID pandemic on top of three rounds of quantitative easing and more than a decade of artificially low interest rates in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis created all kinds of distortions and malinvestments in the economy and the financial system. It was inevitable that something would break when the Federal Reserve tried to raise interest rates in order to fight the price inflation it caused with its loose monetary policy.
The seasonally adjusted Money Supply in February fell $121B and the Money Supply in January was revised from positive $31B to -$142B. This is a major revision and now means the Money Supply has fallen for seven straight months.
Central banks have been gobbling up gold. On net, central banks bought 1,136 tons of gold in 2022. It was the highest level of net purchases on record dating back to 1950 and the 13th straight year of net gold purchases.
The question is will central banks continue to have an appetite for gold through 2023?
In the aftermath of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, everybody is trying to figure out what happened, who’s to blame, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. One of the most popular “solutions” is more bank regulations. But in his podcast, Peter Schiff explained why regulations are the problem, not the solution.
