The Federal Reserve delivered a 75-basis point rate hike at its November meeting, as expected. But what’s next? That’s a little harder to decipher. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey digs into the mixed messaging that came out of the Fed meeting and concludes the central bank’s monetary policy is “a wing and a prayer.” He also covers the recently released Q3 gold demand data.
The Federal Reserve sent out mixed messages after its November FOMC meeting leaving markets wondering just how much more the central bank will tighten monetary policy.
As expected, the Fed delivered another 75 basis point rate hike, pushing the Fed funds rate to between 3.75 and 4%. The last time interest rates were this high was in January 2008.
Despite all kinds of economic bad news, as of Friday, the Dow Jones was on pace for the best October in history. As Peter Schiff explained in his podcast, this demonstrates the fact that for now, bad news is good news, and stocks are priced for perfection in an imperfect world.
A lot of people seem to think that if the Fed had just started fighting inflation a little earlier, we wouldn’t have seen the rapidly rising prices that continue today. The mistake, they say, was thinking inflation was transitory. But as Peter Schiff has pointed out, this problem didn’t start last year, or even with the pandemic. This problem was decades in the making.
And at the root of the problem was year after year of easy money. Wall Street was drunk on cheap money for a decade and it is ultimately going to end in another financial crisis.
The third quarter GDP data came out this week and it looks like the recession is over. (If there ever was one.) But in this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey digs into the data and says, “Not so fast!” He also talks about a mainstream economist who sounds a lot like Peter Schiff and a big problem brewing with diesel fuel.
Air continues to seep out of the housing bubble blown up with the Fed’s artificially low interest rates in the wake of the pandemic.
Sales of previously owned homes fell by 1.5% in September, according to a National Association of Realtors report. It was the eighth straight month of declining home sales.
The US government ran a $1.38 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2022 despite government receipts at near-record levels. This further highlights the federal government’s out-of-control spending problem. It’s also a big problem for the Fed as it tries to fight inflation.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell knew fighting inflation would cause big problems in a bubble economy loaded up with debt. He put it off as long as he could, calling inflation “transitory.” But once inflation became a huge problem, the central bank had no choice but to get into the fight and start tightening monetary policy. The problem is, the Fed’s plan won’t work. And one reason it won’t work is the massive national debt.
Is now the time to buy gold? Or should we be bearish on the precious metal? Peter Schiff debated TD Securities Global Head of Commodity Markets Strategy Bart Melek on the future of gold prices on CNBC Asia.
Last week, the Bank of England suddenly pivoted. It gave up its inflation fight to rescue its pension funds and bond market. What exactly happened? And what does it tell us about the Federal Reserve’s inflation fight? Peter Schiff explained it all on his podcast.
