The stock market has rebounded nicely since those dark days of December leading many analysts to believe precipitous nosedive was nothing but a bull market correction. But Peter Schiff begs to differ. He’s been saying that the rally in stock since the Powell Pause is really a bear market correction. Furthermore, Peter says an upcoming recession is a done deal.
During the Orlando Money Show, Mark Skousen moderated a debate between Peter and Louis Navellier. The question was: were we witnessing a bull market correction or a bear market rally in the last three months?
After weeks of hinting, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell confirmed that the central bank will end its balance sheet reduction program this year. This just five months after insisting quantitative tightening was on “autopilot.”
“We’ve worked out, I think, the framework of a plan that we hope to be able to announce soon that will light the way all the way to the end of balance sheet normalization,” Powell said during testimony before the House Financial Services Committee.
There was a lot of Fed-talk on Friday and the big theme was inflation.
For quite a while, Peter has been asking an important question: what is the Federal Reserve going to do when the inflation level gets above 2%? Well, it looks like its setting the stage.
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Was Ben Bernanke lying or just wildly mistaken when he claimed the Federal Reserve wasn’t monetizing the debt in the early days of the financial crisis?
The Fed released the minutes from its January Federal Open Market Committee meeting yesterday. There really weren’t any surprises. The minutes emphasized the central bank will exercise “patience” in raising rates and also signaled that its balance sheet reduction program will end soon. A number of figures at the Fed have hinted that quantitative tightening will end in the near future, including Federal Reserve Governor Lael Brainard and Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester.
Right after the last Federal Reserve Open Market Committee meeting, Peter Schiff said the “Powell Pause” won’t be enough to save the stock market and head off a recession. He said ultimately, the central bank would have to cut interest rates and launch another round of quantitative easing.
Well, it seems the mainstream is starting to catch up with Peter’s thinking. Yesterday, Bloomberg ran an article asserting that “instead of pausing, the central bank may need to start cutting interest rates to avoid a recession.”
Once upon a time, quantitative easing was considered an “extreme measure.” But it may become more commonplace. According to a Reuters report, central bankers in the US are discussing whether they should turn to that “tool” more often.
In other words, the Fed may make the “extreme” the norm.
All of a sudden, former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen sounds a little bit like Peter Schiff.
During an interview on CNBC, Yellen conceded that the next Fed move could be an interest rate cut.
Of course, it’s possible. If global growth really weakens and that spills over to the United States where financial conditions tighten more and we do see a weakening in the US economy, it’s certainly possible that the next move is a cut.”
After Jerome Powell indicated that the Federal Reserve tightening cycle was on pause during last week’s FOMC meeting, Peter Schiff said, “The monetary drug pushers at the Federal Reserve gave the addicts on Wall Street exactly the fix that they had been craving.”
Peter often compares the markets to drug addicts. They are addicted to the easy money the central bank provides. Reuters used that same imagery to describe America’s business community in the wake of the “loose money era,” saying it left a “trail of US corporate debt junkies.
During his keynote speech at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference, Peter Schiff said we are at the beginning of the end.
The Fed appears to have paused interest rate hikes in order to save the stock market. The markets have reacted positively and a lot of analysts seem to think we’re out of the wood. But Peter traces the moves of the Federal Reserve all the way back to the first rate hike of December 2015 and shows how the central bank has put us on a path toward a financial crisis that will be bigger than 2008. Peter insists he’s been right about what would happen all along, it’s just taken us a little longer to get here than he expected.
