The US government is increasingly relying on the Federal Reserve to prop up the Treasury market and absorb the trillions of dollars in bonds it’s issuing in order to fund its massive budget deficits. The Fed now holds a record 16.5% of US debt. And it’s going to have to buy trillions of dollars of additional Treasuries in 2021 to keep pace with government borrowing.
In other words, there is no end in sight to quantitative easing. In fact, the central bank will have to double its scheduled monthly QE in 2021 to catch up to where it was in 2020.
The stock market is booming as everybody anticipates an end to the coronavirus pandemic with the rollout of a vaccine. But as Peter Schiff pointed out in this podcast, the rally isn’t really about a cure for COVID. It is being driven by government and central bank policies meant to shield us from the pain of the pandemic. The problem is this government “help” really isn’t helping. In fact, it’s made a bad situation much worse.
The Dow Jones cracked 30,000 this week and stocks continue to surge generally upward as investors are embracing risk-on sentiment based on high hopes a vaccine may put an end to the coronavirus pandemic. But there’s more to it than that. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey takes a deeper look at what’s really driving this market mania, and he also takes down the myth that printing more money means more wealth.
A lot of people are turning more bullish on the economy with the possibility of an effective COVID-19 vaccine. But in his podcast, Peter Schiff argued that coronavirus isn’t the problem. COVID-19 isn’t making the economy sick. All of the Federal Reserve stimulus and money printing is making the economy ill. And coronavirus vaccine isn’t going to make it well.
When governments started locking down the economy in response to coronavirus, the Federal Reserve sprung into action. First, it slashed interest rates to zero. Then it quickly launched what we’ve dubbed QE infinity. In effect, that meant printing trillions of dollars out of thin air and pumping them into the economy.
Meanwhile, the US government did its part, passing a massive stimulus bill – pumping trillions of dollars of borrowed money into the economy. Of course, the Fed monetized a big chunk of that debt via QE infinity. So, in effect, the federal government joined forces with the central bank to pump trillions of dollars out of thin air into the economy.
The central bankers at the Federal Reserve can be pretty clueless. A report issued by the Fed a few weeks ago serves as a prime example.
The stock market continues to climb on coronavirus vaccine hopes. But why should it? After all, it didn’t sell off because of the pandemic. It’s at record levels despite COVID-19. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey explains why this really isn’t about a vaccine. He also talks about one of the pernicious effects of this super-loose monetary policy – the theft of our savings.
As central banks continue to inject trillions of dollars created out of thin air into the financial system, the mainstream generally sits backs and shrugs. But a few lonely voices in the wilderness continue to warn about the potential for price inflation and its nefarious effects on the average person.
In a recent podcast, Peter Schiff warned that prices are going to surge because “the Fed is not going to take away the punch bowl.”
Stocks continue to surge upward thanks to optimism about a coronavirus vaccine. Of course, stocks have been on a bull run ever since their big March drop at the beginning of the pandemic. This led Peter Schiff asks a poignant question during his podcast: if COVID-19 didn’t hurt the stock market, why should a vaccine help?
We have argued that the Federal Reserve has no exit strategy from this extraordinary monetary policy. In fact, it never could extricate itself from the extraordinary monetary policy it launched during the Great Recession. Today, we’re merely witnessing the same policy on hyperdrive. And there is still no way out.
