We got more bad inflation news this week as the Federal Reserve wrapped up its final FOMC meeting of the year. Supposedly, the central bank has launched its war on inflation. Has it though? In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about inflation and the Fed meeting and explains why it looks more like the Fed is taking a pea shooter into a bazooka fight.
The silver-gold ratio has climbed back above 80-1. This has historically signaled silver on sale.
As I write this article, the ratio stands at just over 80:1. That means it takes just over 80 ounces of silver to buy an ounce of gold. To put that into perspective, the average in the modern era has been between 40:1 and 50:1.
The federal government continues to run big budget deficits as spending skyrockets. Increasing tax revenues are the only thing keeping the deficits from blowing up even further. But how long will this tax windfall last?
The latest seasonally adjusted inflation rate for November was .76% month over month, with a non-seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.81%.
These numbers were generally in line with mainstream expectations that have finally gotten high enough to match the blistering hot inflation numbers coming out month after month.
Pretty much everybody now expects the Federal Reserve to go to war against inflation, but the central bank has a problem not many people seem to be talking about – an economy buried under debt. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about consumer debt levels and their ramifications. He also discusses central bank gold-buying and breaks the November CPI data live.
The October trade deficit fell but the drop was primarily due to a data anomaly.
October 2021 charted a total trade deficit of -$67.1 billion. It was the lowest trade deficit since April 2021. Month-on-month, the trade deficit fell 17% from the record set in September.
Similar to August and September, the total national debt has not increased due to the current debt ceiling that’s in place. Similar to August, the Treasury has raided public retirement accounts to continue funding government spending (light green bar below).
Looking at the bigger picture, Covid has forever shifted the landscape of US Debt.
Looking at the data, it appears hedge funds are currently driving price action in the gold market
Please note: the COTs report was published 12/3/2021 for the period ending 11/30/2021. “Managed Money” and “Hedge Funds” are used interchangeably.
November was the weakest jobs report of the year, coming in at a paltry 210,000, missing consensus expectations of 573,000. There were modest revisions upwards over the last two months of 8,000 and 15,000 for September and October respectively. Nothing to be excited about.
After President Biden announced he was reappointing Jerome Powell for a second term as Federal Reserve Chairman, Powell went hawkish, saying it’s time to retire the word “transitory” when it comes to inflation and talking about speeding up the taper. In this episode of the Friday Gold Wrap podcast, host Mike Maharrey talks about the Powell transformation and questions whether a dove can really change his feathers.
