Inflation

Trampoline Cliff Diving

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Pentoport

We start this week’s commentary with some rather depressing news from Reuters:

The ratio of downgrades to upgrades in the credit ratings of leveraged loans has spiked to a record level, five times above that hit during the last global financial crisis, reflecting the unprecedented stress in risky assets due to the coronavirus pandemic. Leveraged loans, which are loans taken out by companies that have very high levels of debt, usually with non-investment grade credit ratings–tend to be used by private equity firms as a way to fund acquisitions of such companies. The U.S. leveraged lending market has grown to more than $2 trillion, up 80% since the early 2010s, according to credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service.

Add in the $1.2 trillion junk bond market and the $3.2 trillion in BBB debt, which is just barely above the junk category, and you end up with nearly six and a half-trillion dollars’ worth of corporate debt that is primed for varying degrees of default. The catalyst for this default is the worst economy since the Great Depression.

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A Collapsing Dollar And China’s Monetary Strategy

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Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

This article describes how China can escape the fate of a dollar collapse by tying the yuan to gold. There is little doubt she has access to sufficient gold. Currently, her interest is to preserve the dollar, not destroy it, because it is the principal means of Chinese foreign interests being secured .

Furthermore, a return to sound money requires China to reverse its interventionism under Xi, returning to Deng Xiaoping’s original vision. Sound money can only last if the relationship between the state and the wider economy is properly addressed.

Of all the major economies, China’s is best placed to implement a sound money solution. At the moment it seems unlikely the necessary reforms will be forthcoming; but a general collapse of the global fiat currency regime presents the opportunity for reassessment and change.

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The Crisis Goes Up A Gear

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Dollar-denominated financial markets appeared to suffer a dramatic change on or about the 23 March. This article examines the possibility that it marks the beginning of the end for the Fed’s dollar.

At this stage of an evolving economic and financial crisis, such thoughts are necessarily speculative. But an imminent banking crisis is now a near certainty, with most global systemically important banks in a weaker position than at the time of the Lehman crisis. US markets appear oblivious to this risk, though the ratings of G-SIBs in other jurisdictions do reflect specific banking risks rather than a systemic one at this stage.

A banking collapse will be a game-changer for financial markets, and we should then worry that the Fed has bound the dollar’s future to their fortunes.

The dollar could fail completely by the end of this year. Against that possibility a reset might be implemented, perhaps by reintroducing the greenback, which is not the same as the Fed’s dollar. Any reset is likely to fail unless the US Government desists from inflationary financing, which requires a radically changed mindset, even harder to imagine in a presidential election year.

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Silver Is Going To Have A Sudden, Massive Move To $50 That Everyone Will Be Surprised Over

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By Mike Gleason – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to welcome back Michael Pento president and founder of Pento Portfolio Services. Michael is a well-known money manager, market commentator, and author of the book, The Coming Bond Market Collapse: How to Survive the Demise of the U.S. Debt Market. He’s been a regular guest with us over the years, and it’s always a pleasure to have him on with us.

Well, Michael, it’s been a few months since we’ve had you on last and just a little bit has been going on in the world. COVID-19 has hit the states to say the least and caused major disruptions in the economy. Governors have instituted stay-home orders. Tens of millions of people have filed for unemployment. Now we’re seeing major rioting and social unrest in many cities throughout the country over the police killing of a black man in Minnesota last week.

And in the face of all that, the markets are seemingly doing just fine. Stocks are still rallying and it doesn’t seem like Wall Street is all that concerned about any of this. So, let’s get your take on what’s going on there, Michael, because it’s pretty hard to connect the dots between Wall Street and Main Street these days. Help us out there.

Michael Pento: Yeah. So nothing is going on that much this year at all, right? It’s been pretty boring. </sarc>  The divide between the rich and the poor, which was already humongous coming into this year has grown exponentially. And you have to ask yourself the question, gee, if GDP, according to the Atlanta Fed is going to drop in the second quarter by over 52%, that is a seasonally adjusted annual rate, Mike. GDP is going to be cut in more than half during the second quarter of 2020, how in God’s name could it be possible that stocks are close to all-time record highs? And by evaluation metric at all-time record highs. There are about over 150% of GDP.

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MMT —It’s Just Neo-Keynesian Macroeconomics

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

The doyenne of MMT, Stephanie Kelton, has published a book this week explaining modern monetary theory. This article examines the foundations of MMT which Kelton explained in an earlier video released last year.

Introduction

Macroeconomics has become so far removed from reality that its practitioners cannot understand what is happening in the real economy. Never has this been more obvious than today. While they claim to be economically literate, macroeconomists are in thrall to their paymasters; a combination of government, quasi-government and financial institutions with a vested interest in not looking too closely at the full consequences of government economic and monetary policies. From this neo-Keynesian macro world, the latest spinoff is modern monetary theory, which is little more than a logical extension of Keynesianism —justifying intervention by the state and the use of fiat currency being expanded limitlessly. MMT is the end of the line for arguments based on macroeconomic fallacies that have their origin in Keynes.

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An Epocalypse Upon Us

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

I’ve missed a few predictions along the way, but usually only in part. When I missed, it was because I took the bad too far. The bad has almost always happened exactly when I said it would but hasn’t always been as bad as I said it would be. Now, it has all arrived and is turning out to be fully as bad as I said it would be.

It took the kick of a virus to set everything in place, but all the parts are now falling where I said they would once the next recession began.

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You Can’t Just Print More Gold

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By Frank Holmes – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

“I think there is a strong likelihood we will need another bill.”

That’s according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who supports additional fiscal stimulus to combat the economic impact of the novel coronavirus—within reason.

The secretary’s statement comes after the House passed a record-shattering $3 trillion relief package, though leaders in the Senate have said they will not put it up for a vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that the next coronavirus bill “cannot exceed $1 trillion,” according to reporting by Axios.

Even so, the U.S. government’s response is already massive, dwarfing anything that’s come before it.

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Federal Reserve – Conspiracy Or Not?

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 – Re-Blogged From Gold Facts

Conspiracy surrounding the Federal Reserve is a subject of much debate. A controversial topic, yes;  one which stirs the imagination of some, fires the suspicion of others, and provokes the declamation of not too few detractors.

From G. Edward Griffin/The Creature From Jekyll Island…

“Back in 1910, Jekyll Island was completely privately owned by a small group of millionaires from New York. We’re talking about people such as J. P. Morgan, William Rockefeller and their associates. This was a social club and it was called “The Jekyll Island Club.”

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The Global Forest Fire Is Here

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

It drives you absolutely mad to see a whole world living a lie. How can anyone believe that the fake world the Fed and their fellow central bankers have created has anything to do with reality. We have fake money, fake markets, fake companies, fake banks, fake interest rates, fake income, fake pensions, fake social security, fake wealth, fake bail outs, fake buildings, fake holidays, fake cars etc which create false lives for most of us especially in the West. All these fake material values have also created false moral and ethical values.

IT IS ALL AN ILLUSION 

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Get Ready for Some SERIOUS Sticker Shock as Inflation Heats Up

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By Mike Gleason – Re-Blogged From Money Metals

Gold and silver markets are inching closer to achieving major upside breakouts.

On Thursday, gold rallied above a near-term consolidation pattern to close at $1,747 an ounce. That put the monetary metal about $30 away from making new highs for the year. As of this Friday recording, gold prices are marching higher again and come in at $1,761, up 2.5% for the week.

Turning to silver, the white metal gained nearly 3% yesterday to touch a major resistance line just above the $16 per ounce level and the momentum is carrying over into today. A strong weekly close above yesterday’s high could trigger a wave of technical buying that propels prices much higher in the days ahead – and it looks as though such a close is in fact going to happen.

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Unintended Consequences Of Monetary Inflation

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

“In short, the Fed is committed to rescue businesses from the greatest economic catastrophe since the great depression and probably even greater than that, to fund the US Government’s rocketing budget deficits, fund the maintenance of domestic consumption directly or indirectly through the US Treasury, while pumping up financial markets to achieve these objectives and preserve the illusion of national wealth.

“Clearly, we stand on the threshold of an unprecedented monetary expansion.”

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Will Job Market From Hell Support Gold?

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By Arkadiusz Sieroń – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

April job report shows a terrible US labor market. Coronavirus destroyed 20.5 million jobs, pushing the unemployment rate to almost 15 percent. How far does the number reflect reality – and what does it actually mean for the gold market?

Apocalypse in the US Labor Market

14.7 percent. Remember this value well, as it will go down in history. This is the official US unemployment rate for April calculated by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate soared from 3.5 percent in February and 4.4 percent in March. As the chart below shows, the spike is really historic, as such high level has not been seen in modern history.

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Fed Now Owns All Markets

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Pento Portfolio Strategies

Since the Great Recession hit in 2008, central banks have been in the business of keeping insolvent governments from defaulting through the process of pegging borrowing costs near zero. These money printers are now in the practice of propping up corporations–even those of the junk and zombie variety–by ensuring their cost of funds bears absolutely zero relationship to the credit quality of the issuer. To be clear, central banks have been falsifying public and now private bond prices to historic and monumental degrees just as the intensity of issuances and insolvency deepens.

And now, the Fed is bailing out bankrupt consumers with helicopter money in the form of enhanced and extended unemployment, grants through the Payroll Protection Plan and direct UBI to consumers through the CARES Act Recovery Rebates clause. All together there has been about $2.8 trillion worth of deficit spending so far.

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Time To Learn About Money

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

An unexpected destruction of fiat currency has been advanced by the monetary and fiscal response to the coronavirus. Financial markets have yet to discount the possibility of such an outcome, but in the coming months they are likely to awaken to this danger.

The question arises as to what will replace fiat currencies. In the past the answer has always been gold but today there are cryptocurrencies as well, whose enthusiasts are more aware than most of fiat money’s failings.

This article describes the basics about money, what it is and the role it plays in order to understand what will be required by the eventual replacement for fiat. It concludes that gold will return as the world’s medium of exchange, and secure cryptocurrencies, unable to provide the scalability and stability of value required of a medium of exchange will be priced in gold after the demise of fiat. But then the rationale for them will be gone, and with it their function as a store of value.

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Central Banks And The Ponzi Scheme That Will Bankrupt The World

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

The destiny of the world is now in the hands of 6 central banks, Fed, ECB, BoE (England), PBOC (China), BoJ (Japan), SNB (Swiss). This in itself bodes extremely badly for the global financial system. This is like putting the villains in charge of the judicial system. For decades these central banks have totally abused their power and taken control of the world monetary system for the benefit of their banker friends and in some cases their private shareholders.

The central banks have totally corrupted and destroyed the financial system, by printing money and extending credit that doesn’t exist. Everyone knows that creating money out of thin air makes the money totally worthless. These bankers know, that if you stand next to the printing press and get the money first, it does have some value before it circulates. And this is exactly what they have done. Once the money reaches the people, it devalues rapidly. As Mayer Amschel Rothschild said over 200 years ago: “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.”

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Anatomy Of A Fiat Currency Collapse

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

This article asserts that infinite money-printing is set to destroy fiat currencies far quicker than might be generally thought. This final act of monetary destruction follows a 98% loss of purchasing power for dollars since the London gold pool failed. And now the Fed and other major central banks are committing to an accelerated, infinite monetary debasement to underwrite their entire private sectors and their governments’ spending, to prop up bond markets and therefore all financial asset prices.

It repeats the mistakes of John Law in France three hundred years ago almost to the letter, but this time on a global scale. History, economic theory and even common sense tell us governments and their central banks will rapidly destroy their currencies. So that we can see how to protect ourselves from this monetary madness, we dig into history for guidance to see who benefited from the Austrian and German hyperinflations of 1922-23, and how fortunes were made and lost.

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Where Is The Money Coming From?

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Will the Coronavirus be the catalyst of not just a depression but also major reduction in global population? The growth in world population since the 1850s has been explosive. In the 1850s there were 1 billion people and today we are 7.8 billion. Although many “experts” have extrapolated the growth to 10 billion and more in coming decades, this has in my view not been based on sound reasoning. Instead, as I been writing about and discussed many times the spike in population that we have seen in the last 170 years will not end well.

Anyone who can read a chart knows that a spike on a major sample doesn’t continue straight up. And it doesn’t just correct sideways either. At some point, a spike up is always corrected by a major spike down. I talked about this in my article from April 2018. Below is an extract from this article:

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The Four Horsemen Hate Silver

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By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From The Deviant Investor

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse bring pain and reset expectations. They are, according to some sources, pestilence, war, famine, and death.

Pestilence: News stories besiege us about the dangers of COVID-19, the pestilence released upon the world by (take your choice) bats, the United States, China, or a bioweapon lab. This pandemic is creating trauma for everyone. Confidence in governments and health agencies will decline. Trust in central banks will, hopefully, reset to much lower levels. Paper assets and fake money will be unmasked and understood for what they are. Real money will (someday) be appreciated as the only money without counter-party risk. But until that day… the paper derivative exchanges on COMEX “manage” prices.

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Welcome To The Hyperinflationary Depression

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By Clive Maund – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

The title of Leo Tolstoy’s massive tome, War and Peace, which many have heard of but few have read, implies a cyclical alternation between these conditions, which never ends, no matter how great the level of technological advance, because of the nature of men, which does not change.

It is the same with the great economic cycles which alternate between boom and bust. Once a parasitic overclass gain absolute power and a society is riven with corruption, decadence, graft and nepotism then its downfall is assured and is only a matter of time – and what empowers the parasitic overclass more than anything else is a fiat money system, which enables them to award themselves unlimited funds the better to live off the backs of the labor of everyone else, and no entity on the planet provides a more graphic example of this than the US Federal Reserve.

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Gold Investment Soaring!

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By Adam Hamilton – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Gold investment demand is soaring in the wake of the COVID-19 stock panic! Investors are rushing back into gold to diversify after seeing mind-boggling central-bank money printing and government spending. Since that epic monetary inflation won’t be unwound, and investors were radically underinvested in gold before the panic, this trend is likely to persist for years. It will catapult gold and its miners’ stocks far higher.

The most comprehensive look into global gold investment demand is published quarterly by the World Gold Council. Its experts have been deeply studying the gold markets for decades, which shows in their outstanding Gold Demand Trends reports. These must-read analyses are released about a month after calendar quarters end. But while that data is invaluable, in fast-moving markets like these it simply isn’t enough.

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What A Secular Bear Market In The 2020s Could Look Like

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Can the U.S. economy actually be turned on and off like a light switch? What are the implications for investors if it can’t?

The shutdown of much of the American economy in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has already created what is by far the single largest increase in unemployment in U.S. history in such a short period of time.

We are experiencing two quite distinct but interrelated forms of supply shortages that may just be in their early stages. One is the combined result of the collective (and very short-sighted) decision to make much of the world’s supply chain dependent on one nation, that of communist China, even while slashing the supply of inventory down to “just in time” levels, with no room for error.

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The Greatest Financial Crisis And Hyperinflation

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

A Hyperinflationary Depression has always been the inevitable end to the biggest financial bubble in history. And this time it will be global. Hyperinflation will spread from country to country like Coronavirus. It could start anywhere but the most likely first countries are the US and the EU or ED (European Disunion) They will quickly be followed by many more like Japan and most developing countries. Like CV it will quickly jump from country to country with very few being spared.

CURRENT INTEREST RATES ARE A FALSE INDICATOR

Ever since the last interest cycle peaked in 1981, there has been a 39 year downtrend in US and global rates from almost 20% to 0%. Since in a free market interest rates are a function of the demand for credit, this long downtrend points to a severe recession in the US and the rest of the world. The simple rules of supply and demand tell us that when the price of money is zero, nobody wants it. But instead debt has grown exponentially without putting any upside pressure on rates. The reason is simple. Central and commercial banks have created limitless amounts of credit out of thin air. In a fractional banking system banks can lend the same money 10 to 50 times. And central banks can just print infinite amounts.

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Crisis Exposes Devastating Result of Ongoing Fed Policy: Americans Have No Savings

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By Jp Cortez – Re-Blogged From Headline Wealth

Two weeks ago, during a March 17 address to the nation in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, President Donald Trump asked that Americans work from home, postpone unnecessary travel, and limit social gatherings to no more than 10 people.

And last week, on March 27, Trump signed a stimulus package of over $2 trillion dollars to provide relief to an economy on the precipice of collapse.

The aid package includes handouts and loans to individuals, small businesses, and other distressed industries.

Despite Trump’s “having created the greatest Economy in the history of our Country,” when the markets tanked, massive and immediate government intervention was the only thing left to forestall a total collapse.

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Silver and Sanity

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By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From The Deviant Investor

Silver is real money, not a debt-based fiat currency that will eventually fail. Silver bullion production requires capital and effort to mine and refine. We use it for solar panels, iPhones, cruise missiles and thousands of other items. Silver is monetary sanity.

Prices for silver rise as currency units are devalued. Silver sold for $1.29 in the 1960s. Today’s COMEX price is around $16.00 because dollars buy less. Prices for physical silver are much higher. The continual devaluation benefits the political and financial elite who own most paper assets – stocks and bonds. The bottom 90% pay higher prices for necessities plus interest on their debts. Savings in silver coins will offset devaluation and loss of purchasing power.

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The Out Has Not Yet Begun To Fall

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

So, the stock market has dropped. Every government in the world has responded to the coronavirus with drastic, if not unprecedented, violations of the rights of the people. Not to mention, extremely aggressive monetary policy. And, they are about to unleash massive fiscal stimulus as well (for example, the United States government is about to dole out over $2 trillion worth of loot).

The question on everyone’s mind is what will be the consequences?

The standard analysis is that governments will print massive amounts of money. And, this will, of course, cause massive inflation (i.e., skyrocketing consumer prices). There’s just one problem with this analysis.

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A Tale Of Two Markets

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By Michael Ballanger – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

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2020 Gold Price Forecast And Gold Thesis

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By Don Durrett – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle
Gold is currently showing some strength, with a price over $1600. However, there is still a lot of paper gold selling (where the spot price is determined), and there is no clear direction in price. In fact, I have been saying all year that until silver gets above $18.50, I won’t consider this a gold bull market.

gold mine

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Payments Panic And The Ending Of Fiat Currencies

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Money

The unilateral response from governments to the coronavirus is to helicopter money to people and their businesses in unlimited quantities. Their priority is to keep the debt-driven Keynesian show on the road, and policy makers are approaching the task with unseemly gusto.

There was evidence that the credit cycle was already on the turn with the global economy entering its regular period of financial and economic crisis even before the coronavirus hit. Thinking it is only a matter of dealing with the pandemic before returning to normal is therefore a common and fatal mistake. The combination of current events is leading to an infinite problem: central banks, and the Fed in particular, are trying to backstop everything and they will undoubtedly fail.

The central issue is the dawning inability of the Fed, in charge of the world’s reserve currency, to keep financial markets under control. The quantities of money required to rescue the US economy and dollar-centric supply chains abroad are potentially far greater than anyone realises and will destroy not just the dollar, but the whole fiat money system of rigged financial markets upon which debt financing depends. The EU is in a similar but more parochial fix with the addition of a banking system visibly on the verge of collapse.

The timescale for the demise of unsound fiat currencies is likely to be very short, by the end of 2020 – exactly three centuries since a similar fiat currency experiment failed in John Law’s Mississippi bubble.

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“Squad” Member Proposes Minting Trillion-Dollar Coins

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Re-Blogged From Headline Wealth

[As I recall, this originally was an Obama idea. –Bob]

Is America headed the way of Zimbabwe — an economically wrecked country that notoriously began issuing currency in trillion-dollar denominations?

A proposal by a U.S. Congresswoman would have the Treasury Department mint $1 trillion platinum coins.

As reported by the Washington Examiner:

Rep. Rashida Tlaib has proposed sending everyone in the United States $2,000 immediately and then $1,000 per month to counter the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

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How Dead Is The Fed?

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

You can only be so dead, and that’s just “plain dead.” But there is also Feddy Krueger dead. The kind of dead that keeps on happening like a demonic death that won’t stay dead. It is in that nightmarish Elm St. light that I’m going to review the Federal Reserve’s death.

It’s happened via face-plant failures over past month that I’m going to lay out to show how savagely the Fed is dying a perpetual-motion death.

Let me pause to assure you, I’m not saying Feddy Krueger is down for the count and will not rise again. He always revives by inventing powers over market death never seen before. Feddy will return with extraordinary and permanent powers beyond those he once used to bring counterfeit salvation from the Great Recession. Feddy gets more empowered by scared government politicians each time the economy crashes. You can’t get rid of Feddy. At least, it seems.

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Is Now a Good Time to Buy Gold?

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By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

We got hate mail after publishing Silver Backwardation Returns, Gold And Silver Market . It seems that someone thought backwardation means silver is a backward idea, or a bad bet. “You are a *&%#! idiot,” cursed he. “Silver is the most underpriced asset on the planet,” he offered as his sole supporting evidence. He doesn’t know that backwardation means scarcity, not that a commodity’s price is too high.

Since we wrote that on March 2 (our Reports are always based on the prior Friday’s close, in this case February 28), the price of gold and most especially silver has dropped. Silver was $16.67, and now it is $14.75. This is a drop of 11.5%. It is all the more scary when you realize that this drop occurred entirely over two days: Thursday and Friday this week.

The price action in gold was less dramatic, though its price did drop from $1,586 to $1,530, or -3.5%. Also on those same two days.

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The Demise Of The Financial System Is Imminent

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

“Next five years is not about winning but surviving.” This is the headline of an article I wrote in early August 2019. At that point I was primarily thinking of economic survival. But now the world is facing multiple threats and multiple failures. As I have already stated, the Coronavirus is not the cause of global market crashes but the catalyst.

But even if I have been totally certain that the world will see an economic collapse greater than any crisis for 100s of years, this is the worst catalyst that anyone could have expected. Yes, a global virus was always one of the potential risks but of all triggers, this one was certainly the most unwelcome and horrible.

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Crashing Markets and the Threat of Deflation Will Lead to the Next Great Inflation

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Stefan Gleason, Money – Re-Blogged From Headline Wealth

As the coronavirus spreads fear, sickness, and death, a specter haunts investors – the specter of deflation.

Despite central bankers’ attempts to push inflation rates higher, equity and commodity markets are collapsing. Inflation expectations as reflected in tanking U.S. Treasury yields, meanwhile, appear headed toward zero – and perhaps even below.

“I think that we have a real danger of deflation in the economy right now,” former Trump economic advisor Stephen Moore told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo last weekend.

Clearly, symptoms of deflation and leading indicators of economic contraction are now manifesting in dramatic ways:

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The Bear Is At The Door

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By David Haggith – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Yesterday was the greatest crash in Wall Street history by one measure, and took down many other milestones. The Dow plunged 2,012 points in its largest single-session drop on record! Percentage-wise it was down 7.8%, which still knocked out decades of lows, leading to “Black Monday” being the hot search term on Google today as people sought a comparison worthy of this Monday crash.

For comparison, the 1929 event looked like this:

The stock market crash of 1929 – considered the worst economic event in world history – began on Thursday, October 24, 1929, with skittish investors trading a record 12.9 million shares. On October 28, dubbed “Black Monday,” the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged nearly 13 percent. The market fell another 12 percent the next day, “Black Tuesday.” While the crisis send shock waves across the financial world, there were numerous signs that a stock market crash was coming.

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Fed’s Real Mandate: Ever Expanding Asset Bubbles

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By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

Wall Street hit a new all-time high on February 20th. It was supposed to be smooth sailing from there, riding along the global liquidity wave. But then, that wave crashed into what turned out to be the fastest correction from a new high in the history of the US stock market. Even though the fall was mild in comparison to the record-breaking bull run of the past few years, it was enough to frighten central planners to the core. Hence, we had further confirmation on Tuesday, March 3rd of what we already knew: our central bank has been fully corrupted and co-opted by Wall Street.

The Fed lowered rates by 50bps in an emergency meeting, even though its regularly scheduled meeting was just two weeks away–maybe Trump will now give Powell the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But someone should have informed the White House and the Fed that the 4th rate cut in a rate-cutting cycle has nearly always led to market panics. But to be clear, the only reason the Fed cut rates is that the stock market suffered a brief correction. It wasn’t a bear market or a recession. It wasn’t even runaway deflation or an outright recession scare, …but just an 8% fall in stock prices from an all-time bubble high at the time of its decision.

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Studies Show Fracking Ban Would Wreak Havoc on U.S. Economy

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By Tim Benson – Re-Blogged From WUWT

A new study from the American Petroleum Institute (API), with modeling data provided by the consulting firm OnLocation, details how a nationwide ban on hydraulic fracturing (colloquially known as “fracking”) could trigger a recession, would seriously damage U.S. economic and industrial output, considerably increase household energy costs, and make life much harder and costlier for American farmers.

In America’s Progress at Risk: An Economic Analysis of a Ban on Fracking and Federal Leasing for Natural Gas and Oil Development, API argues that a fracking ban would lead to a cumulative loss in gross domestic product (GDP) of $7.1 trillion by 2030, including $1.2 trillion in 2022 alone. Per capita GDP would also decline by $3,500 in 2022, with an annual average decline of $1,950 through 2030. Annual household income would also decline by $5,040.

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John Rubino Interview

usissuescom Foreign Policy, Monetary Policy, Stocks & Commodities , , , , ,

By John Rubino of Dollar Collapse interviewed by Mike Manwell of Silver Doctors

All ASSET BUBBLES MUST BURST… Today’s guest, John Rubino, shares his thoughts on why this current bubble economy has lasted so long. During our chat he elaborates on how Central Banks and Governments are trapped into experimenting with more ways to keep the economy afloat. Unfortunately, the music has to stop at some point and the only people that will be left standing will be holders of sound money.

CONTINUE READING –>

Coronavirus Cure: Print More Money

usissuescom GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , ,
By Michael Pento – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

A few days ago the market was crashing on Coronavirus fears. But recently, the market has soared back based upon the hopes of a vaccine and some better than expected economic data in the US. The ADP January employment report showed that a net 291k jobs were created, and the ISM Services Index came in at a healthy 55.5. However, a couple of good data points doesn’t change the fact that US economic growth has contracted back to 2% trend growth and will absolutely become more anemic–at least in the short-term. This is because the measures needed to contain the virus are also GDP killers. I have no clue if the virus will become a pandemic or if it will fade away like the SARS and MERS viruses–without long-term economic damage. But, for the stock market to remain at record high valuations, nearly everything has to go perfectly. That is, the Fed has to keep pumping in money, and EPS growth must rebound sharply.

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You Cannot Go Wrong With Gold

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By Egon von Greyerz – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

This is probably the most important article I have penned. It is about the destiny of three individuals who all followed different tides. We are today at the point when the consequences of taking the wrong tide will be ruinous whilst the right one will be extremely propitious.

I have quoted Brutus’ speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar many times in the last twenty years. But I believe that it is today more relevant than at any time in history, when it comes to economic affairs.

There is a tide in the affairs of men.
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.

Shakespeare – Julius Caesar

The moral of the story will be obvious. The outcomes are so vastly different that anyone who reads about the three human destinies below will easily sympathise with the one who took the tide that “leads to fortune” rather than the two who ended up “in miseries.”

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Coronavirus And Credit…A Perfect Storm

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

This article posits that the spread of the coronavirus coincides with the downturn in the global credit cycle, with potentially catastrophic results. At the time of writing, analysts are still trying to get to grips with the virus’s economic impact and they commonly express the hope that after a month or two everything will return to normal. This seems too optimistic.

The credit crisis was already likely to be severe, given the combination of the end of a prolonged expansionary phase of the credit cycle and trade protectionism. These were the conditions that led to the Wall Street crash of 1929-32. Given similar credit cycle and trade dynamics today, the question to be resolved is how an overvaluation of bonds and equities coupled with escalating monetary inflation will play out.

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Estimating The Shape Of The Coming Crisis

usissuescom GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , , , ,
By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

With a recession become increasingly certain and the end of the expansionary phase of the credit cycle in sight, we can expect a periodic systemic crisis to be upon us soon. The question arises as to how serious it will be, given that despite the massive injections of extra base money since the Lehman crisis, signs of liquidity shortages are already re-emerging in financial markets.

We don’t know what will trigger the crisis, but a likely candidate is foreign selling of US dollars combining with a collapse in the US government’s finances. Perhaps the coronavirus will turn out to be a black swan event, but the underlying conditions for an economic and monetary crisis already exist.

This article looks at alternative outcomes. It concludes that the current situation bears a worrying resemblance to the collapse of John Law’s Mississippi scheme exactly 300 years ago. The key to understanding why this is so is because of the link forged between asset prices and fiat currencies. One fails, and they both fail, more rapidly than the most bearish bear might expect.

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A Wormhole on Wall Street

usissuescom Monetary Policy , , , ,
By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From The Deviant Investor

Intense sunshine beamed down upon the canyons of Wall Street, illuminating potholes, dark alleys, secrets and mass delusions. Most people paid no attention because phones, the impeachment circus, Facebook posts, stock prices, and money worries distracted them.

It was a normal day. I took a random walk down Wall Street, checked my phone for useless news and accidentally stepped into a cosmic wormhole or time-warp.

Perhaps it was only a deep hole in the sidewalk. Like Alice, I fell head over heels, and dropped my precious phone. My New York financial world faded, and blackness enveloped me.

To my surprise, I landed softly on my feet in a huge underground cavern with marble floors and dim glowing lights. Stunned by the silence instead of New York street noise and pollution, I stared in awe at the blemished walls of the cavern. It smelled like ancient mold and burnt toast.

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Irrational Fears Of Deflation

usissuescom GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , , ,
By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Silver Phoenix

The benefits of a deflation of prices brought about by a combination of sound money and markets free from government intervention have been demonstrated to be the best economic environment, the denial of which in favour of inflationary financing has led to repeated monetary and systemic failures.

This article explains how this has come about and puts the record on deflation straight. The development of macroeconomic theory had to deny the benefits of a deflation of prices, unbelievably telling us we need higher prices to stimulate our consumption.

Deflation and investment funded by savings is a far better, natural economic environment than the false gods of easy debt and money printing. There can be no return to the stability of gentle price deflation without seismic shifts in economic thinking and government responsibilities.

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A Textbook Case of Inflation for College Students

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By Megan Zogby – Re-Blogged From Headline Wealth

As college textbook prices have increased 88 percent since 2006, education reformers wonder how universities can make books more affordable. One simple thing they could do is to stop selling textbooks with absurdly high mark-ups, the difference between the cost incurred by the bookstore for textbooks and the price at which they’re sold. While some progress has been made within the UNC system, much room for improvement remains.

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, for example, signed a contract with Barnes and Noble in 2009 to merge its university bookstore with Barnes and Noble. That conjunction promised students lower book prices, bringing down the mark-up from 23 percent to 18 percent. However, merging the bookstore has meant that students still pay higher prices than they would if they bought books from an online competitor or the book publisher. The rationale for the merger may have been affordability, but textbooks remain expensive for students who trust UNC-Charlotte’s bookstore to offer the best price.

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Margaret Thatcher: The Woman Who Saved Great Britain

usissuescom Foreign Policy, GDP & Employment , , , , , ,
Niall Ferguson

You’ve heard her name. You might even have seen a film about her. Bhttps://www.prageru.com/video/margaret-thatcher-the-woman-who-saved-great-britain/ut do you know the whole story of Margaret Thatcher – where she came from, what she stood for, and the impact she had on Great Britain and the world? Renowned historian Niall Ferguson explains how the Iron Lady earned her status as one of the most important and influential women of the 20th century.

Please watch the VIDEO.

CONTINUE READING –>https://www.prageru.com/video/margaret-thatcher-the-woman-who-saved-great-britain/

Inflation: Dead Or Alive?

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By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Breaking news: Silver briefly reached $18.00 and closed at $17.85. The DOW rose again to 28,645.

Inflation, Deflation, Stagflation, and Hyperinflation? So What?

Inflation: The banking cartel demands inflation of the currency supply. The cartel encourages massive debt and collects the interest and fees. They want inflation because it increases debt and repayment is easier. With global debt at $250 trillion, the cartel is successful.

Governments account for a large percentage of global debt. They spend more, buy votes, feed currency units to cronies, and borrow to cover the revenue shortfall. Inflation makes the debt load easier to tolerate.

Corporations want mild inflation to boost revenues, profits and stock prices.

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The Naughty List and Grizzly Bears

usissuescom Monetary Policy , , ,
By GE Christenson – Re-Blogged From The Deviant Investor

The official US national debt in 1913 was $2.91 billion. In 1971, when President Nixon lied about temporarily disconnecting gold from the dollar, the official national debt was $398 billion.

By 2019 the official national debt has grown to $23,000 billion.

Politicians borrow and spend to reward cronies and buy votes. They also increase their personal wealth. Human nature changes slowly.

From 1913 to 2019 the national debt increased at a compounded rate of 8.8% per year. From 1971 to 2019 the debt also increased at 8.8% per year. This 106-year trend appears stable and likely to continue.

Can you name three congressmen or one lobbyist who advocate spending fewer currency units next year? Nope! Debt will grow exponentially.

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Statistical Misdirection

usissuescom GDP & Employment, Monetary Policy , , , , , ,
By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Economists who understand credit cycles expect the current cycle to enter its crisis stage at any moment. Furthermore, it combines with increasing trade tariffs between the two largest economies to echo the conditions that led to the 1929-32 Wall Street crash and the subsequent depression.

With the dollar tied to gold, there was no doubt about how the collapse in demand affected asset, commodity and consumer prices ninety years ago. If the turn of the current cycle leads to a similar outcome, it is unlikely to be properly reflected in official statistics for GDP.

This article explains why GDP is a statistical fallacy, and the use of an inflation deflator is not only inappropriate but has been manipulated to produce an outcome that wrongly attributes success to monetary policies. Therefore, if an economic slump follows the coming credit crisis, it is unlikely to be reflected in these key government statistics.

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Last Hawk Flew To Heaven

usissuescom Monetary Policy , , ,
By Arkadiusz Sieroń – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Tall Paul Has Gone

A great man passed away. Literally. Paul Volcker – who died on Monday, probably due to prostate cancer complications, at 92 – stood 6 feet and 7 inches high, or more than 2 meters. But Volcker’s impressive height wasn’t the only thing he could boast of. Our Readers are aware that we are not fans of central bankers, but we have to admit that Volcker not only literally but also figuratively cast a long shadow across the Fed, standing out by both past and current standards.

First of all, Volcker was probably the last Fed Chair that we could even remotely describe as the monetary hawk ready to fight inflation. As David Stockman wrote

Volcker accomplished this true anti-inflation objective with alacrity. By curtailing the Fed’s balance sheet growth rate to less than 5 percent by 1982, Volcker convinced the markets that the Fed would not continue to passively validate inflation, as Burns and Miller had done, and that speculating on rising prices was no longer a one-way bet. Volcker thus cracked the inflation spiral through a display of central bank resolve, not through a single-variable focus on a rubbery monetary statistic called M1.

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End Of An Epoch

usissuescom Monetary Policy , , ,
By Keith Weiner – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

“There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.”

What the heck did John Maynard Keynes mean by saying this? Overturning the existing basis of society?! Let’s begin by stating something that is both obvious and unpopular. We are living in days that could be called the end of an epoch. The signs are everywhere, and becoming more blatant.

Wealth Inequality

The Left focuses on wealth inequality, because they see one of the signs. The falling interest rate seemingly benefits those who own assets (it does not actually benefit anyone), particularly those who finance assets with dirt-cheap credit. And it harms wage-earners, by incentivizing businesses to borrow cheap to buy capital goods to replace labor.

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