The number of corporate debt defaults in 2023 has already exceeded the total number of defaults last year.
According to data from Moody Investment Services, 55 American-based companies defaulted on loans through the first half of 2023. That was a 53% increase over the total number of defaults in 2022.
Can the Federal Reserve navigate a narrow path and slay price inflation while steering the economy to a soft landing?
During an interview on CNBC Squawk Box, financial analyst Jim Grant expressed his doubts.
He compared Jerome Powell’s task to Captain Chelsey Sullenberger’s when he was forced to land a US Airways plane on the Hudson River after an inflight emergency, noting Powell is “no Sully.”
Grant went on to explain that even if things don’t look so bad right now, rivets are popping in the economy.
As the saying goes, there’s no place like home. And more and more countries think that’s the case when it comes to their gold. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap, host Mike Maharrey talks about why many central banks and sovereign wealth funds are bringing their gold home. He also talks about gold’s performance through the first half of 2023 and the June CPI data.
In a recent podcast, Peter Schiff warned that we could be on the verge of a further breakdown in the bond market and that a bear market in bonds could also maul US stocks and the dollar.
Financial commentator and investment guru Jim Grant has similar concerns. In a recent interview on Odd Lots Podcast, Grant said he thinks we’re at the beginning of a long-term trend of a weak bond market with higher interest rates that could last decades.
Most people believe members of the Federal Reserve are highly trained experts who are imminently qualified to run monetary policy. Guided by this perception, the mainstream treats Fed pronouncements as gospel. But if you compare Fed projections to actual outcomes, it looks like they’re just guessing. In fact, you would probably get more accurate results throwing darts at a dartboard.
A month ago, the fake debt ceiling fight ended and Congress suspended the federal government’s borrowing limit for two years. Since the debt ceiling deal, the US Treasury has added a staggering $851 billion to the national debt.
Since the end of the fake debt ceiling fight on June 2, the Treasury has borrowed an additional $700 billion pushing the national debt over $32 trillion. Looking at the interest rates on this new debt, it becomes clear that the US government has a big problem.
Last week, the national debt pushed above $32 trillion. This is a ticking time bomb that will eventually explode.
There is the mainstream and market perception of what going on in the economy and financial system. And then there’s the underlying economic reality. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about the growing divergence between the two in the context of the June Federal Reserve meeting and the latest CPI data.
As was widely expected, the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) put rate hikes on pause at the June meeting, although it indicated we should expect additional hikes before the end of the year.
The question is how long will the pause last and will the next Fed move actually be a rate cut?
