People in the financial media tend to talk about inflation as an academic exercise. As a result, it’s easy to forget that rising prices cause real pain for real people. And Americans are feeling that pain today. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey highlights some ways inflation is impacting regular people. He also explains why he thinks stagflation is the most likely outcome of this inflation fight.
Three key takeaways:
- For weeks, the Bitcoin market has looked propped up by the whales, especially after the recent FTX disaster.
- Bitcoin hodlers should strongly consider moving into gold, silver, or at least Ether.
- Full disclosure, I have a complicated relationship with Crypto.
The Federal Government ran a deficit of $88B in October which is down significantly from the deficit last month that was a record for September due to the student loan forgiveness program. The deficit is also down compared to last October which was -$165B.
They say perception is reality. Based on the October CPI data, the perception is inflation has peaked. But what’s the reality? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey digs into the CPI data along with the markets’ reaction to it and wonders if the inflation victory dance is a little premature. He also talks about the big rally in gold and central bank gold buying.
The perception is that CPI cooled significantly in October, but the data doesn’t quite bear this out.
The latest seasonally adjusted inflation rate for September came in at 0.44%. The YoY rate was 7.7%, or 7.8% when adjusting for Household Ops. which has not been consistently reported over the last year. The increase was actually above the previous month of 0.38%, but the YoY number fell because last October was 0.87% and fell off the report this month.
Gold rallied by over $50 an ounce last Friday and the rally has extended into this week with the yellow metal moving back above $1,700 an ounce. In his podcast, Peter Schiff explained why he thinks that gold has bottomed and this is a significant reversal.
Central banks added nearly 400 tons of gold in the third quarter, according to data compiled by the World Gold Council.
This was 300% higher than Q3 2021 and came in as the largest quarterly increase in central bank gold reserves since the World Gold Council started keeping records in 2000.
Another debt ceiling fight is looming on the horizon and it appears the US Treasury Department is preparing for the drama. Meanwhile, rising interest rates are rapidly increasing the cost of the massive national debt.
Despite the better-than-expected headline number, the job market continues to slow.
According to the BLS, the economy added 261k jobs in October with a big upward revision in September from 263k to 315k. October was a beat against median expectations of 205k. The employment rate (black line) increased from 3.5% to 3.7% while the labor force participation ticked down from 62.3% to 62.2%.
The September Trade Deficit increased for the first time in 6 months to -$73.3B. The deficit had been getting help from exports out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
As shown by the chart below, the increase this month was from a drop in Exports combined with an increase in Imports. The current value is still well below the record set back in March.