Joe Biden might be confident in the US economy. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell might be confident about the US economy. But the average American? Not so much.
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell for the second straight month in February, dropping from a downwardly revised 106.0 in January to 102.9.
Peter Schiff appeared on Greg Hunter’s USA Watchdog.com show to talk about inflation and the economy. Peter didn’t paint a rosy picture, explaining that the Federal Reserve is ultimately going to throw in the towel on the inflation fight in order to fight something much worse – economic collapse.
The markets basically shrugged off the hotter-than-expected inflation data for January. Most people remain convinced that the Fed can easily get price inflation back to 2% without wrecking the economy. But in his podcast, Peter explains that stuffing that inflation genie back into the bottle is a lot harder than most people seem to think.
Why should you own gold in your investment portfolio? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about some reasons to own gold, including its historical wealth-preserving qualities and its role as a safe haven. He also talks about a new buzzword central bankers and politicians are using to make inflation seem less bad.
The January CPI report threw cold water on the idea that the Federal Reserve has inflation under control. While the headline annual CPI came down a tick to 6.4%, month-on-month prices rose by 0.5%. After the data came out, Peter Schiff appeared on NTD News to explain why inflation is going to get even worse.
After charting its biggest increase since 2007 in the third quarter, household debt surged again in Q4 as Americans try to borrow their way out of the squeeze soaring price inflation has put on their wallets.
Total household debt rose by $394 billion in the last quarter of 2022, according to the latest New York Fed Household Debt and Credit report. It was the biggest quarter-on-quarter rise in two decades.
Despite the hotter-than-expected CPI report, the mainstream still seems convinced that the Federal Reserve can get inflation under control and bring the economy to a soft landing. But Peter Schiff argues that the central bank can’t win this fight – at least not without crashing the economy. Since the Fed isn’t willing to do that, it won’t go all-in. In effect, the Fed brought a knife to an inflation gunfight.
Garbage in, garbage out. The phrase is usually associated with computers, but it also applies to the formulas used to generate government economic data. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey goes over the January CPI and retail sales data with that phrase in mind.
CPI came in hotter than expected in January and threw cold water on the “disinflation” narrative that was gaining steam in the mainstream. Less-reported were the revisions of past CPI data. These undercut that narrative even further.
The CPI data for October, November and December were all revised higher.
After the December Consumer Price Index (CPI) report, the mainstream was giddy. “Inflation is over!” they proclaimed. “The Fed is winning the inflation fight!” they cried. “We are entering a period of disinflation!” they insisted.
Well, the January CPI report threw cold water on that disinflation narrative.
