The Federal Reserve wrapped up its November FOMC meeting on Wednesday and finally did something other than talk. The central bank announced it will begin to taper its massive quantitative easing program.
The Federal Reserve has held interest rates artificially low for decades. Even after pushing rates to zero in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, “normalization” only managed to raise rates to 2.5% — hardly “normal.” The central bank began cutting rates in 2019, even before the coronavirus pandemic.
But what difference does it make? Why do artificially low interest rates matter? Peter Schiff explains in this clip from his podcast.
Is inflation transitory, as Federal Reserve Jerome Powell has claimed for months? Or are we on the verge of hyperinflation, as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey recently warned? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks inflation, digs into the data, and concludes that it’s pretty clear we’re in an inflationary spiral.
The “transitory inflation” narrative has completely broken down. And now Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey has warned us.
Hyperinflation is coming.
The Dow Jones and the S&P 500 hit new all-time records on Tuesday (Oct. 26). In his podcast, Peter Schiff focused on a few speculative stocks that have had meteoric rises (and in some cases crashes) over the last few days. He said this is evidence of the speculative fervor in this massive bubble.
When talking heads and politicians talk about inflation, they tend to make distinctions between “food inflation,” or “energy inflation,” or “wage inflation.” In this clip from his podcast, Peter Schiff explains that this isn’t the right way to look at inflation. In fact, there’s only one type of inflation. And the Federal Reserve is the source of it.
As Ron Paul pointed out, the recent brouhaha at the Federal Reserve when information came out revealing several central bank officials making multiple multimillion-dollar stock trades in 2020 even as the Fed was putting its big fat thumb on the economic scales was a minor thing compared to the bigger scandal – the everyday operation of the Fed.
The Fed engages in price-fixing. And it fixes one of the most important prices in the economy – the price of money. Peter Schiff said this always ends in a disaster.
We know that the Federal Reserve pushes interest rates artificially low by manipulating the federal funds rate (the target interest rate that commercial banks borrow and lend their excess reserves to each other) and using monetary policy maneuvers such as quantitative easing. But could we have low interest rates without Fed intervention? In this clip, Peter Schiff explains the difference between artificially and naturally low interest rates and how the Fed messes up the economy with its intervention.
The inflation that we were emphatically told would be transitory and unmoored continues to persist and entrench. As the troubles gather momentum Washington is doing its best to ignore the problem or actively make it worse.
Last week’s jobs numbers came in weaker than expected. September’s CPI came in hotter than expected. That puts the Federal Reserve between a rock and a hard place. Does it tighten monetary policy to fight inflation? Or does it keep stimulating to boost the economy? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey breaks down the data and says it’s about time for the central bank to pick its poison.
