Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell testified before Congress on Tuesday and continued to peddle the “transitory” inflation narrative.
Keeping with the dovish tone set after last week’s FOMC meeting, Powell reiterated that the central bank is not going to rush to raise interest rates, and he said the Fed would not hike rates merely in response to inflation worries.
Central bankers at the Federal Reserve are talking a lot about what’s going to happen in the future. But what do they really know about what lies ahead?
The fact is, they don’t know a whole lot. But we do know one thing for sure – the debt in the US isn’t going away. It’s only going to increase.
The US government continues to borrow money at a frenetic pace in order to cover its massive spending spree. It runs huge deficits month after month and there is more spending coming down the pike. The national debt is over $28 trillion and it is about to begin surging upward again. But with the exception of a few contrarians, most people don’t worry about the national debt. The conventional wisdom seems to be that since none of the doomsday predictions about skyrocketing debt haven’t come to pass, there’s nothing to worry about.
Of course, nothing is a problem until it is. And even if the borrowing and spending don’t ultimately precipitate a crisis, it is undermining the economy. The bottom line is more debt means less growth.
The Federal Reserve wrapped up its June meeting this week. The markets are convinced Jerome Powell has gone hawkish. Has he though? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about the messaging coming out of the FOMC meeting and reaches a completely different conclusion. He also compares and contrasts three competing narratives about the trajectory of Fed monetary policy.
In another sign of rapidly accelerating price inflation, import-export prices rose much faster than expected in May.
Import prices were up 1.1% month-on-month in May, and the Labor Department revised April’s increase from 0.7% to 0.8%. Projections for May were for a 0.7% increase. The actual number was higher than the high end of estimates.
We got another round of hotter than expected CPI data this week. The mainstream financial media is spinning this as good news. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey digs into the CPI data without the rose-colored glasses. He also talks about an announcement by a major restaurant chain that may well be a canary in the coal mine. His conclusion – in the end, economics wins.
Average Americans are worried about inflation, but the mainstream financial media doesn’t think they should be. Even though inflation is a hot topic, the conversation seems to primarily center around the notion that inflation is overblown. In this article, we explain why this mainstream media spin downplaying inflation is dead wrong.
Hurricane season started this week. That means those of us who live in Florida are in preparedness mode – or at least we should be.
For you landlocked readers, the notion of a hurricane kit is probably foreign to you. But for those of us who live in hurricane-prone coastal areas, updating the hurricane kit is a right of passage from spring into summer.
With some positive economic data coming out this week, investors suddenly went bullish on the economy again and decided that the Fed is surely going to deal with inflation now. Will it though? In this Friday Gold Wrap Podcast episode, host Mike Maharrey speculates about the Fed’s next move. He also looks ahead and talks about the long-term future of the dollar. Can we assume it will always be the reserve currency?
If you’ve been to the grocery store, or the gas station, or the building supply store, you know we have an inflation problem. Last month’s hotter than expected CPI confirmed what we already intuitively know. But the folks over at the Federal Reserve continue to tell us there’s nothing to worry about. They insist inflation is transitory.
Their reassurances notwithstanding, people are worried. Searches for the word “inflation” hit an all-time high on Google trends in May.
