The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The Federal Reserve Open Market Committee met yesterday and held interest rates steady in the 2.25-2.50% range. This wasn’t really a surprise. More significantly, Fed Chair Jerome Powell kept up the dovish rhetoric, saying, “The case for rate increases has diminished. I would need to see a reason for further rate hikes that would have to include higher inflation.”
We’ve called this the Powell Put, and it appears it’s still solidly in play. But in his most recent podcast, Peter Schiff called it the “Powell Pause” and said it wasn’t going to be enough.
Stocks got a boost on Friday and gold rose 1.8% on further signs that the Federal Reserve is capitulating.
An article in the Wall Street Journal basically confirmed the Fed is now thinking about winding down its quantitative tightening program. As a CNBC headline put it, “The Fed may be moving closer to ending its rally-killing balance sheet reduction.” As Peter put it in a recent podcast, “The Federal Reserve is having to prematurely abort quantitative tightening, which is exactly what I said they were going to do before they shrunk the balance sheet by the first dollar.”
Not too long ago, it was on autopilot, they were just going to leave it alone and it was going to keep on going and then the market started to cave and then they change that to, well, we’re data dependent and now the market starts to go down a little bit more and all of a sudden we’re almost done. “
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
US stock markets had a strong week last week. The Dow Jones capped it off gaining more than 300 points on Friday.
Optimism about a trade deal with China along with increasing expectations that the Federal Reserve will slow the pace of interest rate hikes buoyed the markets.
This has led many pundits to declare that the correction is over. Some have even declared its a new bull market. In his latest podcast, Peter Schiff said that’s not what’s happening at all. What we’re seeing is a typical bear market correction and a recession is right around the corner.
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
The Federal Reserve bases its monetary policy decisions on where it thinks the economy is heading. The $64,000 question is how does it know? Or to put it another way, what makes us think a panel made up of a few economists and policy wonks can accurately predict the future and then make the “right” decisions?
During an interview on CNBC Squawk Ally, Jim Grant said we shouldn’t put this kind of faith in the Fed and that its monetary manipulations have created an environment of tremendous uncertainty.
I think people are too certain about things about which they should not be certain.”
The SchiffGold Friday Gold Wrap podcast combines a succinct summary of the week’s precious metals news coupled with thoughtful analysis. You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes.
Last week, we saw more huge swings in US stock markets. On Thursday, stocks fell sharply, but they recaptured all the losses on Friday in the wake optimism about trade talks between the US and China, of a strong December jobs report, and “dovish” comments by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell.
Peter Schiff hit on all of these topics in his most recent podcast.
What happens when central banks push interest rates to zero – in some cases below zero – and hold them there for nearly a decade?
You get debt.
Lots and lots of debt.
Record levels of debt, in fact.
