Inflation

Why Interest Rates Are Rising Long-Term

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From GoldMoney

There are growing expectations that the current cycle of rising interest rates will result in a deflationary recession. While a credit crisis is increasingly likely to evolve in the coming months, it is a highly inflationary situation. A combination of higher interest rates and catastrophic falls in the purchasing power of fiat currencies will continue to plague welfare-driven states in the wake of a credit crunch. The standard post-crisis solution of monetary and fiscal reflation will not be available. This article examines the ultimate consequences of the West’s abandonment of sound money, free markets and wealth creation in favour of increasing state intervention and wealth destruction.

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Unthinkable!

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By Gary Christenson,- Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle 

Sometimes we must consider the unthinkable.

Official US national debt is $21.6 trillion. Unfunded liabilities are five to ten times higher. Global debt is about $250 trillion. US national debt has doubled every eight to nine years for decades.

  1. National debt in 2018 – $21.6 trillion
  2. National debt in 2026? – $40+ trillion
  3. National debt in 2040? – $100+ trillion
  4. How much will prices rise when the dollar is devalued by an additional $80 trillion in new US government debt plus more private debt?
  5. What interest rate will be needed to sell that debt? 5%, 10%, 15% or higher?
  6. Annual interest payments on current debt run about $500 billion. Both rates and debt are rising. One $ trillion per year in interest payments is coming soon. Six percent interest on $40 trillion requires $2.4 trillion per year, a large smoking hole in the federal budget!
  7. The government can never pay the debt with dollars of current value. Soon the interest will be difficult to pay.

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The Cost Of Government Debt Is Immediate

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By Steve Saville – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

Most warnings about large increases in government indebtedness revolve around future repayment obligations. For example, there is the concern that greatly increasing the government debt in the present will necessitate much higher taxes in the future. For another example, there is the concern that if the debt load is cumbersome at a time of very low interest rates, then as interest rates rise the interest expense will come to dominate the budget and lead to an upward debt spiral as more money is borrowed to pay the interest on earlier debt. Although these concerns are valid they miss two critical points, including the main problem with government borrowing.

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Greenspan Seeing ‘First Signs’ of Inflation

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Re-Blogged From Newsmax

Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan warned that he is “beginning to see the first signs” of inflation in the U.S. economy.

“We’re seeing it basically in the tightening of the labor markets first, which, as you know, have gotten very tight now. We’re beginning finally to see average wages rise, and clearly there’s no productivity behind it,” Greenspan told Bloomberg TV.

Greenspan said a lack of productivity growth meant “you’re getting into a system now which has no outcome that’s in equilibrium other than inflation and no productivity growth.”

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Yet Another Trillion-Dollar Unfunded Liability, California Wildfires Edition

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By John Rubino – Re-Blogged From Dollar Collapse

Yesterday an entire California town burned down. Paridise, CA has (had) 27,000 residents and over 1,000 buildings, and now it’s pretty .

That fire and several others are still expanding across the state, threatening tens of thousands of homes. The sets of the TV show WestWorld are gone. Malibu has been evacuated. And dry, windy conditions persist, so the story is nowhere near over.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because massive, sometimes uncontrollable California wildfires are now an annual occurrence, due in part to gradual warming and persistent drought which combine to suck the moisture out of vegetation and turn the landscape into a tinderbox. Here’s a chart showing the recent take-off in the number of fires reported in the state (2013 was most recent year I could find, but the trend is clear – and since then the number of fires has apparently soared).

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Wholesale Prices Rise Most in 6 Years as Gasoline, Food Jump

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By Associated Press – Re-Blogged From Newsmax

U.S. wholesale prices rose by the most in six years last month, led higher by more expensive gas, food, and chemicals.

The Labor Department said Friday that the producer price index — which measures price increases before they reach the consumer — leapt 0.6 percent in October, after a smaller 0.2 percent rise in September. Producer prices increased 2.9 percent from a year earlier.

The Credit Cycle Is On The Turn

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By Alasdair Macleod – Re-Blogged From Gold Eagle

We are on the verge of moving into an era of high interest rates, so markets will behave differently from any time since the early-1980s. There are enough similarities with the post-Bretton Woods era of the 1970s to give us some guidance as to how markets are likely to evolve in the foreseeable future.

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