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Tag Archives: inflation
Helicopter Money Will Send Gold Soaring…
Fiat justitia ruat caelum – Let justice be done though the heavens fall
…and the current gold/silver ratio indicates silver will soar even more.
Central Banks and sovereign Governments have been given a free pass to print money and bail out the banking, hedge fund and corporate interests from catastrophically hopeless loan, bond, subprime asset and derivative positions. The coronavirus crisis will be fingered as the culprit but market forces would have forced a financial collapse eventually anyway (see 2008 for the playbook). While the helicopter money will bail out the real perpetrators, it will also effect insidious currency devaluation aka inflation.
Chris Powell at GATA posted a must-read essay on the systemic effect of the impending acceleration of Central Bank printing presses:
“The success of a system of infinite money requires infinite commodity price suppression to defend government currencies. Gold price suppression has been Central Bank policy since the London Gold Pool of the 1960s. But not only are government currencies becoming harder to defend amid the dislocations caused by the virus epidemic, governments no longer may want to defend their currencies so much. They want to reflate asset valuations. But even before the virus epidemic, equities and bonds already were highly overvalued by traditional measures, and how can they be worth as much as they were now that world production is declining? Only devaluation of currencies can accomplish reflation.”
You can read the entire essay here: “As infinite money chases collapsing production, gold is on call“
Coming Soon: More Money Printing And Higher Gold Prices
Two economic reports were released which demonstrate that the money printing is not helping the economy. In the fourth quarter of 2019, U.S. household debt pushed over $14 trillion, reaching an all-time record high. This was fueled by a surge in mortgage and credit card debt. Much of the the new mortgage debt consisted of cash out” refis, which helped exacerbate the last housing bubble/collapse.
Second, the U.S. Treasury announced that the Government spending deficit for January was $32.6 billion. This was considerably worse than the $11.5 billion deficit expected. The cumulative deficit for the first four months of the Government’s Fiscal 2020 year (which starts in October), surged to $389 billion, or an annualized rate of $1.16 trillion. The four month cumulative total was 25% higher than a year ago and was the widest since the same four month period of time in 2011.
Make no mistake, the Fed is printing money to keep the fragile financial system glued together and to monetize new Government debt issuance. The economy will continue to contract with or without the help of coronavirus. The Fed knows this, which is why several Fed officials including Jay Powell are already telegraphing more money printing.
The good news is that you can benefit from this – or at least protect your wealth – by moving a significant amount of your investible money into physical gold and silver that you safekeep yourself. I joined up with Arcadia Economics to discuss why the Fed is compelled to further crank up the printing press:
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Fake News And The “Healthy Economy” Myth
The “narrative” architects and fairytale spinners are desperately looking for evidence to fit their “consumer is still healthy / economy still fine” propaganda. The hype over strong holiday sales was premature if not fraudulent, as data-manipulators appear to have taken the growth in online holiday sales and projected it across the entire retail sales spectrum. I guess they overlooked the fact that online sales took market share from brick/mortar stores.
Despite the plethora of data showing that U.S. manufacturing was down last year, real retails sales are declining, restaurant traffic – including delivered food – has been contracting almost every month for two years and most households are over-bloated with debt, the Fed continues to insist that the economy is healthy with “sustainable moderate growth.” This is sheer and nonsense and the Fed knows it, which is why the Fed printed over $400 billion and tossed it at the financial system.
Chris Marcus – Arcadia Economics – and I discuss the truths underlying the U.S’ fake news economy:
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Jerome Powell Fails The Gold Standard Test
“You’ve assigned us the job of two direct, real-economy objectives: maximum employment, stable prices. If you assigned us [to] stabilize the dollar price of gold, monetary policy could do that, but the other things would fluctuate and we wouldn’t care,” Powell said from Capitol Hill. “We wouldn’t care if unemployment went up or down. That wouldn’t be our job anymore.” – Jerome Powell in response to a question about returning to the gold standard
Everything about that answer is incorrect. To begin with, the Fed apparently now has three “assigned” jobs: employment maximization, price stability and “moderate long-term interest rates” (federalreserve.gov). How can we take anything Powell says seriously if he’s not aware of the the duties of his job?
But let’s set that issue aside. In fact, if the dollar was backed by gold, the Fed would be irrelevant – the gold standard would take away completely any need for a Central Bank. Powell and his cohorts would not have any job at the Fed.
The function of a gold standard is not to “stablize” the price of the currency which is backed by gold. Interest rates can be used to “stabilize” the value of currency. Free markets, if ever allowed, would set the price of money. The function of the gold standard, fist and foremost, is to stabilize the supply of currency in relation to the wealth output of an economic system.
A Central Bank is not necessary to any economic system which has its currency backed by gold. If the U.S. had its monetary system tied to the value of the gold it holds in reserve, it would automatically serve the function of price stability. Remove gold from the equation and the macro variables fall apart rather quickly.
But let’s use reality to test this. Prior to the closure of the “gold window,” the U.S. largely was a creditor nation and never incurred unmanageable Government spending deficits except during wars. In fact, the amount of Treasury debt issued to fund the Viet Nam war ultimately led to the removal of the last remnants of the gold standard. This is because the U.S. Treasury did not have enough gold left to redeem debt issued to foreigners with that gold per the Bretton Woods Agreement. In short, the U.S. ran out gold so Nixon closed the gold window.
Take a look at the economic and fiscal condition of the United States from inception to 1971 and post-1971. Any “economist” or Central Banker (Powell is not an economist and probably never thought about gold until he was prepped to answer the possibility of a gold standard question) who opposes the gold standard is ignorant of historical facts or has ulterior motives.
Aside from his inability to respond intelligently to the gold standard question (he should have taken notes from Greenspan), Powell knows that a zero interest rate policy and money printing are the only ways that he and his elitist cronies can keep the system from collapsing until they finish extracting the last remnants of wealth from the public. A gold standard would stand in the way of this effort.
Under a gold standard, the amount of credit that an economy can support is determined by the economy’s tangible assets, since every credit instrument is ultimately a claim on some tangible asset. But government bonds are not backed by tangible wealth, only by the government’s promise to pay out of future tax revenues, and cannot easily be absorbed by the financial markets. A large volume of new government bonds can be sold to the public only at progressively higher interest rates. Thus, government deficit spending under a gold standard is severely limited. The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit. – Alan Greenspan, “Gold And Economic Freedom,” 1966
Modern Monetary Insanity And The Three Stooges
James Kunstler summarized it perfectly. So rather than reinventing the wheel, here’s an
excerpt from his Monday commentary:
Jerome Powell [was] wheeled out on CBS’s 60 Minutes Sunday night, like a cigar store Indian at an antique fair, so vividly sculpted and colorfully adorned you could almost imagine him saying something. Maybe it was an hallucination, but I heard him say that “the economy is in a good place,” and that “the outlook is a favorable one.” Point taken. Pull the truck up to the loading dock and fill it with Tesla shares! I also thought I heard “Inflation is muted.” That must have been the laugh line, since there is almost no single item in the supermarket that goes for under five bucks these days. But really, when was the last time you saw a cigar store Indian at Trader Joes? It took seventeen Federal Reserve math PhD’s to come up with that line, inflation is muted.
What you really had to love was Mr. Powell’s explanation for the record number of car owners in default on their monthly payments: “…not everybody is sharing in this widespread prosperity we have.”
And so it went on 60 Minutes on Sunday evening. I strongly recommend reading Kunstler’s entire essay: Ides and Tides…The Fed and the FOMC are not mandated to set monetary policy to stabilize employment and inflation. The Fed’s role is to help the banks maximize profits. That’s it in a nutshell.
The best way to fight and protect yourself from the Fed’s mandate is to own physical gold. Phil Kennedy of Kennedy Financial invited Bill “Midas” Murphy and I to discuss the gold market and where it’s going from here:
The Fed: Lies, Propaganda And Motive
The agenda of the Fed is to hold up the system for as long as possible. The biggest stock bubble in U.S. history has been fueled by 10 years of negative real interest rates. The only way to justify that policy is to create phony inflation statistics. Based on historical interest rates and based on the alleged unemployment rate, a “normalized” Fed funds rate should be set at 9%, which reflects a more accurate inflation rate plus a 3% premium. The last time the unemployment rate was measured at 3.7% was October 1969. Guess what? The Fed funds rate was 9%. I guess if you live an a cave and only buy TV’s and laptops, then the inflation rate is probably 2%…
Silver Doctor’s Elijah Johnson invited me to discuss the FOMC policy decision released on Wednesday afternoon:
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If you are interested in ideas for taking advantage of the inevitable systemic reset that will hit the U.S. financial and economic system, check out either of these newsletters: Short Seller’s Journal information and more about the Mining Stock Journal here: Mining Stock Journal information.
WTF Just Happened? Stock Market Ignores Escalating Trade War & Spent US Consumer
Every month Government, corporate and household debt hits a new all-time high. The entire financial system is heading down an unsustainable path of debt issuance. The delinquency rate for auto and credit card debt is already at levels last seen in late 2008. The only reason the banks are not on the ropes – yet – is because they are still sitting on most of the liquidity the Fed injected into the banking system from 2009 to 2015.
This “slush fund for a rainy day” has been declining. As this money flows into the economic system, it’s starting to ignite inflation. Even the monthly Government-generated CPI and PPI reports, which are highly manipulated to minimize the true inflation rate, are starting to show rising inflation. Of course, with wage growth stagnant, the average household disposable income level is dwindling rapidly, which is why the personal savings rate is at a historically low level and revolving credit use is at an all-time.
Consumer sentiment has been trending lower off a recent peak. While the media puppets explain that trade war headlines are weighting consumers expectation, in truth consumer sentiment is falling because the average household is suffocating from the crushing weight of debt and a diminished ability to service that debt because real disposable income is declining. In most areas, home prices are falling. In fact, the home buying sentiment component of the U of Michigan sentiment survey is at its lowest level since 2008.
In this episode of WTF Just Happened?, we discuss these issues plus whether or not gold is forming a tradable bottom here (WTF Just Happened is a produced in association with Wall St. For Main Street – Eric Dubin may be reached at Facebook.com/EricDubin):
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I recommended Arizona Mining in May 2016 at $1.26 to my Mining Stock Journal subscribers. It was acquired for $1.3 billion, or $4.65/share. My subscribers and I are making a small fortune shorting homebuilders plus this week’s issue features an idea that is the ultimate contrarian play.
Visit these links to learn more about the Investment Research Dynamic’s Mining Stock Journal and Short Seller’s Journal.
Retail Sales: Inflation Plus Extrapolation
The footnotes are the most interesting section of every financial and economic reports. They also happens to be least studied section of these reports. Those who prepare these reports rely on this fact.
The monthly headline retail sales is based to a large extent on estimates, guesswork, invalid assumptions and statistical magic. Examine the line-item details in this retail sales report link. Note the numerous lines for the May “estimate” that contain “(*).” Then scroll down to the footnotes.
“(*)” indicates, per the footnotes, that “advance estimates are not available for this kind of business.” Footnote 3 further explains that “Advance estimates are based on early reports obtained from a small number of firms…”. In other words, a significant percentage of the retail sales are based on guesswork and inference.
Scroll further down the retail sales report and Table 2 shows the summary table (Table 2) which presents the month to month percentage change comparison for the latest month’s report. The data in first four lines in this table is the data used for the headline reports.
Everyone uses these numbers, most without any knowledge whatsoever about the degree to which the data “behind” the numbers is comprised of highly questionable guesswork and unsubstantiated, if not entirely problematic, statistical inference and adjustment calculus.
Additionally, there’s a section in the report that explains methodology for the guesswork. “Advance estimates are computed using a link relative estimator.” A “link relative estimator” is a polite descriptor that basically means, “we assume that the historical growth rates implied by our historical reports can be applied to growth rate we assume in this month from the previous month.” On top of all of that, the Census Bureau then applies its nefarious “seasonal adjustment” factors to the data. Keep in mind that a significant portion of the data is pulled out their ass.
All of this methodology is explained in further detail in the tabs on the main Monthly Retail Trade page of the Census Bureau. The information spread out in this section substantiates every assertion I have put forth above. It requires sifting through the “how data are collected,” “definitions” and “FAQs.” I’m probably one of the few analysts curious enough to subject myself to this brain damage.
By the Census Bureau’s own trumped up numbers, most of the “gain” in retail sales from April to May, if indeed a bona fide gain occurred, was from gasoline and clothing inflation. The numbers in the report are expressed in nominal terms. They are not adjusted for the effects of price inflation. Removing the effect of price inflation would yield the change in “unit” volume of retail sales. This would be the number of true interest.
Finally, the estimated change in retail sales is not consistent with the patterns in consumer credit. Based on the Fed’s consumer credit report, the use of revolving credit (credit cards, checking overdraft accounts, etc) has been contracting. With the savings rate at an all-time low, the only way that retail sales unit volume could possibly increase is through the use of credit. Thus, while guesswork and inflation is driving today’s headline report, in all likelihood unit volume of sales declined. This latter assertion is indeed supported by recent manufacturing, factor order, durable goods and wage growth data.
Navin R. Johnson Goes To The White House
(Note: with apologies to Carl Reiner and Steve Martin, who directed and co-wrote “The Jerk,” respectively)
Just when you thought Trump’s “leadership” could not get any more insane, he adds a third ring to the circus going on at 1600 Pennsylvania by hiring “economist,” Larry Kudlow to be the head of his economic advisors.
For those of you not familiar with financial market history beyond the last 10 years, which includes the majority of money managers and other sundry financial “professionals,” Kudlow was the chief economist at Bear Stearns from 1987 to 1994. His tenure at Bear ended infamously when it was revealed that he had developed a nasty cocaine and alcohol addiction at some point in his career.
Prior to Bear, Kudlow began his post-college career as a Democratic political operative. He parlayed his political connections to get a job as a junior staff “economist” at the Fed. I use quotations marks around the term “economist” in reference to Kudlow because he does not have a degree beyond undergrad from the University of Rochester, where he majored in history.
At some point Kudlow, likely for political expedience given the political “winds” of the country in the early 1980’s, became a Republican. He wheeled his political connections into a job in Reagan’s OMB (David Stockman was the Director). From there, he moved on to Bear Stearns. The rest is history.
I thought it would be interesting to peer into the mind of an untrained economist to examine the thought process. Clearly Kudlow excelled at wheeling and dealing his political connections. But is he qualified to be the president’s chief economic advisor, especially at a time when the U.S. is systemically collapsing?
In November 2007, Trump’s new Chief Economic Advisor, Larry “Señor Snort” Kudlow wrote an article about the economy titled, “Three More Years of Goldilocks” for which he should receive the Darwin Award (credit goes to @RudyHavenstein for posting the article). Let’s examine some excerpts – keep in mind Kudlow wrote this about 5 months before Bear Stearns collapsed, triggering a financial crisis that anyone with more than two brain cells could see coming:
“I think the election-year economy will be stronger than the Fed’s estimate — closer to 3 percent. Too much is being made of both the sub-prime credit problem and the housing downturn.” IRD note: Many of us predicted and made big bets on the outcome of “too much being made of the sub-prime credit problem;” a caveman could see what was coming.
“What’s more, the entire market in sub-prime debt is just 1.4 percent of the global equity market.” – IRD note: Maybe 1.4% of a global stock bubble – but that’s like saying a small nuclear bomb in the hands of a madman is just 1.4% of the total stockpile of nuclear weapons. Notice that Kudlow overlooks the $10’s of trillions of OTC derivatives connected to the sub-prime debt, something that was obvious to many.
In issuing a forecast for 2008, Kudlow goes on to say: “Both consumer spending and business capital investment are advancing…Right now, stocks are in a classic declining-profits correction. This downward trend has so far reduced the Dow by roughly 8 percent. As a rough guess, a 10 percent correction ought to spell the end to the Dow’s slump. And Fed rate cuts should be a big booster for stocks.” IRD note – Where on earth was he getting his data on consumer spending? By November 2007, households that weren’t living in fear of foreclosure were living in fear of losing their job. Between October 2007 and March 2009, the S&P 500 collapsed 58%.
Kudlow’s assertions back in 2007 were a joke. What happened to Kudlow’s “Goldilocks economy?” This is the person who is now Trump’s lead economic advisor. Now Kudlow once again is asserting that, “the profit picture is good. It’s looking real good, and growth is not inflationary just let it rip for heaven’s sakes. The market is going to take care of itself.”
Based on his track record of issuing bullish forecasts right before a collapse, I’d suggest that the economy and financial system is closer to taking care of itself by “ripping” off a cliff without a parachute than it is to producing real growth. Retail sales have tanked three months in a row, the housing market appears to be headed south, auto sales plummeting, restaurant sales have dropped 19 out of the last 20 months. Where is this growth you seeing, Larry? Please do tell…