We got more signs that the economy is slowing down this week. And yet pundits and policymakers keep insisting everything is great.
In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff says he thinks people like Donald Trump and Larry Kudlow know deep down that things aren’t that great, but they want to keep kicking the can down the road for political reasons.
The “Powell Pause” is not enough. President Donald Trump not only wants interest rates cuts; he wants to put quantitative easing back in play.
During an interview Friday, the president once again complained about the Fed’s 2018 interest rate increases, saying “they really slowed us down.” Trump wants stimulus and called on the Fed to resume Obama era QE.
In the March 8 episode of the SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast, Mike Maharrey emphasized the importance of understanding sound economic theory. And as economist Frank Shostak explained, facts and figures aren’t enough to digest what’s going on in the economy.
In order to really make sense of the data one must have a theory, which stands on its own feet, and did not originate from the data. By means of a theory, one could scrutinize the data and could then try to make sense out of it.”
In a recent article published on the Mises Wire, economist Dr. Thorsten Polleit builds on this body of knowledge, explaining how central bank manipulations of interest rates not only distort the economy, the actually mess with our minds.
The Dow Jones closed out Q1 2019 with its best quarterly gain since 1998, rising 10.3% through the first three months of the year. And the Dow Jones wasn’t alone in its bang-up first quarter. The S&P 500 rose 12.3%. The Russell 2000 was up 13.8%. And the Nasdaq led the entire pack with a 15.6% gain.
As Peter Schiff said in his latest podcast, the entire rally was a gift from the Federal Reserve.
Last week we reported that the yield curve on US Treasurys had inverted after the yield on the 10-year fell below the yield on 3-year bonds for the first time since 2007 – the cusp of the Great Recession. This has historically been an early-warning sign signaling a recession.
Now we have some more bad news for bond markets – this time on a global scale. The amount of government debt with negative yields has vaulted back above the $10 trillion mark and now makes up a full one-fifth of the global bond market.
During its FOMC meeting last week, the Federal Reserve took 2019 rate cuts completely off the table. It said it will freeze bond sales from its $3.8 trillion balance sheet later this autumn. In other words, balance sheet normalization is pretty much a done deal. Peter Schiff has predicted this would happen. He said from the beginning if and when the Fed tried to normalize rate, it would have to abort the process.
And here we are.
But as Peter explained in his most recent podcast, the Fed still isn’t being honest about why it’s done a monetary policy 180. It’s making excuses.
The Fed wrapped up another FOMC meeting this week and came out even more dovish than expected. Rate hikes are off the table in 2019 and the central bank now only expects one hike in 2020. In his episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey talks about the meeting and the dirty little secret Reuters let slip out. The goal here is to get you to spend more money and keep the bubble full of air. As Mike put it, “The Fed is trying to feed the debt monster and it wants you to pick up the tab.” He also covered the meeting’s impact on the markets and the latest in political theater.
There’s that word again — patient.
Jerome Powell once again emphasized patience during the most recent FOMC meeting. The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged and took any hikes for 2019 off the table. It went a step further and projected just one rate hike in 2020.
During his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff said most people expected a dovish Fed, “But I don’t think they were expecting the Fed to be this dovish.”
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell took his dovish message to the masses during a recent 60 Minutes interview.
Powell continued to talk about “patience” and reiterated that the Fed “does not feel any hurry” to push rates any higher. He also said the interest rate is “roughly neutral” at this point, calling the current 2.25-2.5% rate “appropriate.”
Central bankers and politicians think they can run the economy.
They can’t.
In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey digs into some fundamental economic theories that explain why these central planners will always fail, no matter how noble their intentions.
