On Friday afternoon, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell did a Q&A session with Princeton economist Alan Blinder. Powell admitted that the central bank had “crossed a lot of red lines,” but insisted he was comfortable with the actions given “this is that situation in which you do that, and you figure it out afterward.”
In his podcast, Peter Schiff called it the Nancy Pelosi version of monetary policy. “We need to print the money to see where it goes.”
The Dow Jones is back of 25,000 and despite increasing tensions with China, people seem pretty optimistic about the economic future as states begin to open back up. SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap host Mike Maharrey says people should know better. He makes his case by digging into some of the long-term ramifications of the economic shutdown and the government/central bank response to it. He also recaps the last month in the gold and silver markets.
Sometimes you need to look back at where we come from to understand where you’re going. Peter Schiff does just that in his May 27 podcast. He analyzes the stock market surge of last year and concludes the mainstream might be a little over-optimistic on where we’re heading. The recent surge in stocks isn’t based on economic reality. The economic reality is we’re an insolvent zombie nation. We’re just on a giant Fed-induced sugar high.
For years, I have been warning that during the age of permanent stimulus (which began in earnest with the Federal Reserve’s reaction to the dotcom crash of 2000), each successive economic contraction would have to be met with ever larger, increasingly ineffective, doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus to keep the economy from spiraling into depression. I have also said that the enormity of the asset price gains over the last 10 years had increased the danger because reflating the bloated stock, real estate, and public and private debt markets would bring on doses of stimulus that could prove lethal for the economy. But even though I expected that the next financial crisis would be catastrophic, I thought that it would come into the world in the usual way, as a credit crisis triggered by over-leverage. But the Coronavirus ripped up those stage notes, and instead ushered in a threat that is faster and deeper than I imagined, and I imagined a lot. It’s a perfect storm, a black swan with teeth.
The Federal Reserve and the US government are rerunning the exact same policies they turned to in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but on a much grander scale. We have bigger QE, more money printing, more government spending and bigger deficits. During his podcast, Peter Schiff said it was a mistake then, but they got away with it. They won’t get away with it this time.
Jerome Powell went on 60 Minutes last week and said there was “no limit” to what the Fed could do to support the economy. Of course, that’s not really true. All the central bank can really do is print more dollars. And the economy isn’t just about dollars. It’s about stuff. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, Mike Maharrey talks about the real problem facing the economy – Powell’s “cure.” He also puts silver in the spotlight.
Earlier in the week, gold sold off on the announcement that initial trials on a coronavirus vaccine looked promising and on Thursday, gold was selling because, as CNBC put it, the yellow metal was “pressured by hopes of a swift recovery from the coronavirus-driven recession.” During a recent podcast, Peter Schiff said this just goes to show that people don’t understand gold or why its price is generally rising and why they need to buy gold now.
Are negative interest rates in our future?
Jerome Powell says absolutely not. But Jerome Powell also once said balance sheet reduction was on autopilot and that the Federal Reserve wasn’t going to cut interest rates. What the Fed chair says today doesn’t necessarily line up with what the Fed chair does tomorrow.
In fact, the markets are starting to bet on negative rates. They are, after all, the next logical step in the Fed’s trek down the path of extraordinary monetary policy.
The printing presses are running at full speed as the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air at an unprecedented rate. Peter Schiff recently appeared on Kitco News to talk about the impact of all money-printing, borrowing and government spending. Somebody has to pay for this and we all will. In fact, a lot of people will be wiped out by the inflation tax.
The money supply growth rate surged to an all-time high in April as the Federal Reserve created cash at an unprecedented rate through quantitative easing and other money-creating monetary policies.
According to Ryan McMaken at the Mises Institute, the only time the Fed has come close to this level of money creation was in the 1970s – the era of stagflation.
