The CPI cooled in July. The White House and others in the mainstream continue to insist there is no recession. Is everything looking up?
Peter Schiff was on Fox Business with Liz Claman, Kenny Polcari (Slatestone Wealth Peak Market Strategist), and Teddy Weisberg (Seaport Securities) to discuss the Fed’s attempt to fight the inflation it caused. Peter said we haven’t seen peak inflation, and on top of that, the recession will get worse.
As expected, the Consumer Price index cooled a bit thanks to falling gasoline prices. The question is will this give the Federal Reserve the excuse it needs bow out of the inflation fight?
The Consumer Price Index for July was up 8.5% year-on-year. That was down from June’s 9.1% print and slightly below the 8.7% expectation. Of course, an 8.5% increase in prices over the course of a year is still extremely hot.
The Federal Reserve is all-in on the inflation fight.
Or is it?
While everybody focuses on interest rate cuts, the promised Fed balance sheet reduction isn’t going quite as promised.
Jobs are on everybody’s mind as the July employment report comes out. Will the labor market show more cracks? Or will it give the pundits more room to spin the idea that we’re not really in a recession? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey talks about the labor market and breaks the July jobs data news as it comes out. He also talks about the “health” of the American consumer and gold’s flirtation with $1,800 an ounce.
After the second straight negative GDP print in Q2, the markets began anticipating that the Federal Reserve would pivot away from its monetary tightening. But a few choice words from some Fed members this week caused thoughts of a pivot to pivot. As Peter Schiff put it in his podcast, it appears to be damn the recession! Full ahead with rate hikes. The question is how long can the Fed keep this up?
This week, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates another 75 basis points despite a second straight quarter of negative GDP growth. Meanwhile, Congress is debating a big government spending bill to “reduce inflation.” In this week’s Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey tries to unspin all of the spin and government propaganda to make some sense of what’s going on.
Another month in and the Fed is still struggling to implement Quantitative Tightening (QT). According to the plan the Fed outlined last May, the central bank should be shrinking the balance sheet by at least $47.5B a month, spread between $30B in Treasuries and $17.5B in MBS.
That’s not happening.
Rapidly rising prices put the squeeze on everybody’s wallets. A recent study showed that inflation is hitting rural Americans particularly hard. According to the Iowa State University report, people in rural areas now spend 91% of their income on expenses alone. Peter Schiff recently appeared on Rob Schmitt Tonight to talk about the pain of the inflation tax.
The Federal Reserve delivered another 75 basis point interest rate hike at its July FOMC meeting. This pushes the federal funds rate over the 2% threshold to between 2.25% and 2.5%.
The mainstream media emphasized the size of the hike. One headline called it “a second super-sized hike,” with many other mainstream pundits noting that it matched a June hike was the biggest since 1994. But it wasn’t as big as the full 1% hike everybody thought was on the table after we got June’s flaming hot Consumer Price Index (CPI) data.
Here’s the question: has the Fed reached the end of its rope? Will this be the last hike in this cycle?
It’s getting harder and harder to deny recession reality. Even as the Biden administration tries to spin itself out of that reality with a propaganda campaign, many in the mainstream seem to be waking up.
On Monday (July 25), Reuters reported that the tanking housing market is a red warning flag signaling a recession.
