The Fed balance sheet stands at $8.33 trillion, up $111 billion from the prior month-end.
The chart below shows how the Fed Balance sheet has grown by instrument over the last 18 months. The major surge from COVID can be clearly seen as $2.5T was added within 2 months. The monthly changes since then reflect QE on autopilot.
The mainstream narrative is that the Fed will soon admit that inflation isn’t transitory. At that point, it will raise interest rates and taper its bond-buying program to fight rising prices. But this narrative ignores the elephant in the room – the ever-increasing national debt.
In June, the US government ran another big deficit of $174.16 billion, continuing the trend of overspending and massive budget shortfalls.
Last week, President Trump tweeted the rug out from under stimulus when he announced that negotiations were going to be cut off until after the election. The markets immediately tanked. But Trump quickly reversed course. As Peter Schiff explained in his podcast, the president is now in the process of out-Democrating the Democrats on the stimulus issue. Peter said the Republicans lost the argument the moment they conceded stimulus is “good” for the economy.
On June 9, the national debt surged above $26 trillion. Just over one month before that, the debt eclipsed $25 trillion. And 28 days before that, the national debt stood at a mere $24 million. May’s budget shortfall came in at a staggering $398.8 billion, pushing the fiscal 2020 deficit to $1.88 trillion
And there is no end to the borrowing and spending in sight.
The US and China are reportedly getting closer to working out a trade deal. The Chinese have indicated they will import more US natural gas, semiconductors and soybeans. Peter Schiff recently appeared on RT to talk about it. He said that no matter what ultimately comes out of these trade negotiations, it’s not going to make America great again.
The government shutdown apparently didn’t save Uncle Sam any money. The US Treasury Department said it will borrow about $8 billion more than originally estimated in the first quarter of 2019 as deficits continue to spiral upward.
According to new Treasury Department projections, the US government will issue $365 billion through credit markets in the January-March quarter. This stacks on top of the $426 billion borrowed through credit markets in the October-December quarter.
The federal government ended up fiscal 2018 with the largest budget deficit since 2012. Based on the most recent US Treasury Department projections, that doesn’t look to slow down in fiscal 2019.
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.
Well, the midterm elections are finally over. The Republicans managed to hold on to the U.S. Senate, but the Democrats took control of the House. The “Blue Wave” was more like a “Blue Ripple.” To me, it smells a lot like gridlock, which is generally good news if you’re a person who favors smaller government. Gridlock means very little will actually get done in Washington D.C. The government not doing anything – well, that doesn’t sound so bad.
But in his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff brought up a potential problem with a divided government. We will likely end up with even higher budget deficits.
As we reported last week, China is dumping US debt. China’s holdings of US Treasuries fell for the third consecutive month in August. The Chinese shed another $6 billion in US debt, dropping its total holdings to $1.165 trillion. Over the last year, China’s holdings of Treasury bonds fell by $37 billion year-on-year.
But China has debt problems of its own. Local Chinese governments have reportedly piled up about $5.8 billion in debt. An S&P analyst called Chinese debt “an iceberg with titanic credit risks.”
Peter Schiff recently appeared on RT to talk about the US and Chinese debt.
