Former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker passed away last week. Volker was appointed by President Jimmy Carter, but served most of his term under President Ronald Reagan. Volker was best-known for fighting inflation with interest rate hikes. At the peak, Volker pushed rates all the way to 20%.
Peter talked about Volcker in a recent podcast, noting that he was credited with slaying the inflation monster that today’s Fed seems happy to resurrect.
Peter Schiff recently appeared on Kitco news with Daniela Cambone to talk politics, the economy and the Fed. He said that no matter what Jerome Powell is saying, the Fed central bank isn’t finished with rate cuts.
We have a trade deal! Maybe. Meanwhile, the Fed wrapped up its last FOMC meeting of the year this week and did nothing. But Powell and Company did give us some indication about what we should expect next year. The week’s news played tug-o-war with gold. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey breaks it all down and says there’s a lot to be skeptical about, both with the trade deal and the rhetoric coming out of the Fed.
The Federal Reserve wrapped up its final Federal Open Market Committee meeting of 2019 on Wednesday doing pretty much what was expected — nothing. But in the processing of doing nothing, the central bank said a lot and managed to out-dove expectations.
After cutting interest rates three times in 2019, the FOMC stood pat during its final meeting of the year, holding the interest rate steady at 1.5%.
Stocks have pushed to record highs in recent weeks. If you read the headlines, you’d think it was all about optimism for a trade deal. Or maybe just some general bullishness on the US economy. But Peter Schiff has said that’s not the real reason stocks have continued to climb. In fact, there are a lot of things that should be causing them to go down, but only one thing causing them to go up — the Federal Reserve.
We’ve seen new records in the stock market in recent weeks. The headlines tell us it’s all because of a potential trade deal, but Friday Gold Wrap host Mike Maharrey doesn’t buy it. He says it’s really all about Fed money printing. That may juice the stock market, but there’s a downside – inflation. In this episode of the podcast, Mike talks about it along with the week’s gold news.
Do we even need the Federal Reserve?
Whether on the political left, right, or in the middle, virtually everybody thinks we do. After all, without the Fed, we’ll have wild economic swings and crashes.
Economist Edward Stringham disagrees. In this It’s Your Dime Interview, he talks about it with host Mike Maharrey and makes the case that the economy would function just fine without a central bank pulling strings. In fact, as he explains, the Fed actually stirs up economic chaos.
It’s been a pretty dreary week on Wall Street with another round of trade war pessimism. Otherwise, there hasn’t been a lot of economic news to roil markets and precious metals have remained pretty much rangebound. But host Mike Maharrey has a silver lining for you on this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, along with a little Fed analysis.
Jerome Powell lectured Congress about the national debt last week, calling it unsustainable. The Federal Reserve chairman is concerned. He admitted that with interest rates already close to zero, the central bank has very little room to cut rates in the event of an economic downturn. Peter Schiff appeared on the Claman Countdown, along with Milken Institute economist Bill Lee to talk about Powell’s comments.
Peter said that while Powell is lecturing Congress, it’s really the Fed’s fault.
Here’s a strange headline for you: “Gold prices near daily highs despite better-than-expected inflation in October.”
This headline is bizarre on a couple of levels. First, since when are rising consumer prices and good news? And second, why wouldn’t inflation be good for gold?
You really have to buy into the mainstream narratives to write that headline.
