This time Peter tackles Jerome Powell’s speech from Wednesday, in which he announced that the Fed is holding the federal funds rate between 5.25 and 5.5%. He also briefly discusses Bitcoin’s pullback and the media’s lies about Donald Trump.
Analysts at PIMCO say that for the Fed to reach its goal of lowering inflation to 2%, we need fewer people to be employed. Reduced incentives to offer raises and bonuses and less spending from the “resilient” American consumer can help cool down inflationary pressure. But there’s an elephant in the room: Why do we let a handful of unelected central planners decide what’s best for markets (and human beings) to begin with?
With President Biden’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan set to extend more student loan relief to borrowers this summer, the federal government is pretending it can wave a magic wand to make debts disappear. But the truth of student debt “relief” is that they’re simply shifting the burden to everyone else, robbing Peter to pay Paul and funneling more steam into an inflation pressure cooker that’s already set to burst.
This weekend, Todd Sachs interviewed Peter on the state of the economy. They discuss the parallels between now and the 2007-2008 housing crisis, the role of economic sentiment in voters’ opinions, and why foreign central banks are losing faith in the dollar.
This week Peter covers the highlights of a volatile trading week, paying special attention to Nvidia, Wall Street’s favorite AI stock, and Newmont Corporation, a heavy hitter in the gold mining industry. Both companies’ shares experienced dramatic price action this week, with NVDA gaining $260 billion in market cap and pulling the market up after an excellent earnings report. Newmont, on the other hand, saw shares fall 7% after a disappointing last quarter.