Interest rates continue to rise. Gold continues to languish. The stock market bubble continues to inflate. In his podcast, Peter Schiff argues that investors are reading the tea leaves all wrong. They think rising rates are going to force the Fed to tighten monetary policy sooner than expected. But Peter says there is a reality out there that nobody wants to acknowledge.
After a dismal November, gold and silver are starting to show some signs of life. But what caused the big drop in the price of precious metals last month? Was it warranted? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey looks at the economic and monetary fundamentals and tries to bring us back to reality. He argues that despite the optimism about a coronavirus vaccine, nothing will fundamentally change.
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 US government has borrowed $4.2 trillion in the last 12 months, pushing the total national debt to over $27 trillion. In order for Uncle Sam to borrow, somebody has to lend. So, who is buying all of these government bonds?
Foreign and domestic investors, commercial banks and US government entities all buy US debt, but increasingly, the Federal Reserve is backstopping the market and making this borrowing binge possible.
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.
When governments started locking down economies in response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Federal Reserve sprung into action. The central bank immediately cut interest rates to zero and launched what we’ve called “QE infinity.” Since then, the Fed has ballooned its balance sheet by nearly $3 trillion and increased the money supply at a record pace. Along the way, Powell and Company signaled they were surrendering to inflation, moving the inflation targeting goalposts to allow for the inevitable increases in consumer prices. Meanwhile, the federal government has run the national debt to over $27 trillion.
The question is how long can this go on?
The Federal Reserve and the US government are rerunning the exact same policies they turned to in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, but on a much grander scale. We have bigger QE, more money printing, more government spending and bigger deficits. During his podcast, Peter Schiff said it was a mistake then, but they got away with it. They won’t get away with it this time.
Earlier in the week, gold sold off on the announcement that initial trials on a coronavirus vaccine looked promising and on Thursday, gold was selling because, as CNBC put it, the yellow metal was “pressured by hopes of a swift recovery from the coronavirus-driven recession.” During a recent podcast, Peter Schiff said this just goes to show that people don’t understand gold or why its price is generally rising and why they need to buy gold now.
Despite Fed Chair Jerome Powell throwing cold water on the prospect of a quick economic recovery last week, there is still a lot of optimism out there. There is also an appalling lack of concern about all of the debt and money printing going on. In a recent podcast, Peter said nobody expects this to lead to an inflation crisis or a dollar collapse. But what can’t last forever won’t. And it won’t be a crisis — until it becomes one.
People keep talking about the “new normal” we’ll all have to adjust to as we recover from the coronavirus pandemic. So, what does that mean for the economy? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey looks ahead at the new normal, the prospects of an economic recovery and speculates that we might have already caught a glimpse of the future last year. He also covers the gold market and looks at some of the economic data this week.
