The US government budget deficit in March came in at $119 billion, according to the latest US Treasury Department Report.
That’s a massive budget shortfall. But it’s actually the calm before the storm.
A lot of people still seem to think the economy will fire right back up and things will snap right back to normal when the government-imposed coronavirus lockdowns end. I don’t believe we’re going back to normal for a number of reasons – primarily because things weren’t normal before coronavirus. The economy was a big, fat, ugly bubble. Coronavirus was a pin that popped the bubble.
But even if things were normal before the pandemic, the economy still wouldn’t just fire back up and restart on a dime.
There seems to be growing optimism that we’re nearing the end of the coronavirus lockdown. Stocks have rallied despite dismal economic numbers. But Peter Schiff says there are some important questions nobody is asking, especially when it comes to the insane Federal Reserve monetary policy.
Gold sold off overnight and stock futures soared after President Trump offered some guidelines to “reopen America.” There was also news of a promising COVID-19 treatment. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey throws a bucket of cold water on all of the optimism. He explains why the economy won’t likely just roar back to life even with an end to the economic lockdown.
Turn the key and the economy will restart.
That’s a myth a lot of people in the mainstream have peddled since governments started shutting down the economy in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
That’s not going to happen. We’re not going back to normal.
A lot of people in the mainstream still insist this isn’t a financial crisis like we saw in 2008. They say this is just a self-inflicted shutdown of the economy. Since we decided to shut it down, we can decide to start it back up again. Peter Schiff begs to differ. In his podcast, he explains that this is absolutely a financial crisis and it’s going to be worse than 2008.
The federal government is borrowing and spending trillions to bail out everybody. The Federal Reserve is enabling this by printing trillions of dollars out of thin air. On a recent InfoWars interview, Peter Schiff asked the question nobody seems to be grappling with: who’s going to pay for all this? Peter reminds us that ultimately we pay – either through taxation or inflation.
The economic lockdowns continued and another 6.6 million Americans joined the ranks of the unemployed this week. But the stock market rallied? How can this be a thing? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey explains what’s going on. And then he asks the burning question: what’s next? What is the exit strategy from all of these unprecedented government and central bank actions?
Earlier this year, Ray Dalio quipped that “cash is trash.” During a recent Reddit “ask me anything” session, Dalio doubled down, warning that the rush into the US dollar is a mistake.
Why?
Because the Federal Reserve has fired up the printing press and is pumping out cash at a dizzying pace.
The US national debt pushed above $24 trillion on Tuesday.
The US government was already running massive budget deficits long before the coronavirus pandemic and the debt was piling up at a dizzying pace. Response to the outbreak has put spending and debt in hyperdrive.
