The Fed Throws Gasoline on the Inflation Fire

Honestly just given up on financial news, nothing about it makes any sense anymore.

Might as well go to Baton rouge and get the tea leaves and chicken bones read.

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The Federal Reserve never goes bankrupt, they just buy the bad debt and place it in some fiction that assumes the full market value and never sells, and it disappears. Poof.

The U.S. government can go bankrupt, sure - but then who will protect the Federal Reserve boards from people like you and me?

The money flooding in from Too Big To Make Sense banks handing out loans for stupid things like leveraged buyouts that decommission American companies - that floods the system with not only money, but removes productive work from the economy. It is the asset bubble lending that is crushing us. That practice needs to be heavily sanctioned, by the aforementioned government. Additionally, Wall Street is awash in laundered drug money. Drug money only has to make it to a bank in a secrecy jurisdiction before it is used to buy guns, cars, laundry soap, clothes, electronics from U.S. corporations (Hey, look, our market cap. to earnings now looks undervalued! Better buy this rising stock!). Or the money is used to buy stock, then sell it and walk away (Hey, we have a pump and dump machine now! Cool!). Or, the money is loaned to Wall Street to consolidate and acquire more earnings to look undervalued and send stock prices soaring.

And, my, would you look at our stock market!

Additionally, Wall Street and many states are addicted to war.

Now, Trump is dealing with eliminating this idiotic bank practice of huge loans to nonproductive uses by using sanctions and tariffs to keep money flowing into developing domestic industry and the like. Additionally, he is trying to swap out the war machine budget for the AI and illegal immigrant raid budget. The Federal Reserve and its member banks can try and collapse the U.S. government and businesses by stopping their credit lines, but the government ultimately has the manpower to replace the personnel running most of these institutions before the government runs out of food, fuel, and gunpowder.

Personally, I am quite hopeful. I hope the stock market takes a dump, and real estate prices too. The banks ought to stop this lending to infalte asset bubbles. If the Federal reserve dollar is exchanged for US bank notes, or a certain amount of Bitcoin or gold in the future, or US Treasuries payable in those commodities, I think we will have achieved, for a time, as much as any generation before us.

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For reference, does anyone know China august budget and spending? China is biggest economy after US, to have some comparison.

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I realized that this is why the wealthier people in the market are demanding higher and higher returns. They know these numbers and want financial returns that exceed real inflation.

It’s a death spiral

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Calculating ā€œunemploymentā€ is complicated. Is part-time work = unemployed? How about ā€œhasn’t looked for a job in 4 weeksā€ - unemployed?

Here’s UNRATE and U6RATE. Read the definitions (above) and maybe I can come up with a chart using the various series: CNP16OV, CE16OV, CLF16OV,

Ultimately, its not the absolute number I’m focused on, it is the current number relative to past times. The current number doesn’t look horrible relative to (say) 2009, even if its grossly understated.

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Luke Gromen is a real life-line of sanity for me (I hope Chris can interview him again some time).

In this recent interview he once again, goes over all the reasons that they are gonna torch the currency to defend the bond market and (eventually) to attempt to bring back a real economy for the working classes.

He also covers why war is no longer an option (most here already know why but he has a nice summary).

If you havent listened to Luke give this a whirl. Its bitcoin centric but there’s a ton of non-bitcoin content if you’re not into crypto.

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I’ve been working fences and have just seen the PM run up on a Friday what figures?

Maybe ā€œsomething interestingā€ might happen this weekend?
Euro lost all its gains from the pre-Fed rally.
Miners are back to new highs, so is SPX.

Fed meeting vibe felt like a bit of a non-event. Lots of fuss the day of, which then faded.

But there are still some sour notes.

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Check the interview I posted just above your comment for an explanation :>

If you are looking for an immediate reason maybe traders like Vince Lanci can help?

Outstanding share. I really liked his last comments about being in a low-trust society now and so the fourth turning is probably gonna be bumpy.

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I agree, and these premises won’t be addressed until after the crash. Fold in decades of idiotic energy policies and declining domestic oil production and we’re in for a lulu of a Fourth Turning.

As Paul is fond of saying, we didn’t make the rules but we still have to play by them, which is a sound strategy so long as the rules persist. After that, I think most everyone here is avidly working on their personal plan B, part of which will be addressing the premises underlying the Federal Reserve, FOMC, etc.

Oh come on, I believe in Santa Claus! Just… not that version, this one:


ā€œAnd on Christmas morning of 325, Arius found nothing in his stocking.ā€

But yeah, deficit reduction? I’d sooner believe in the tooth fairy.

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yeah Im pumped to read the book ā€œEnd Timesā€ by Peter Turchin that Luke mentions around 14:15 in the interview. Normally I wouldn’t care but a recommendation from Luke carries some weight.

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Very informative conversation as usual.
I want to pass along a little information about Data Centers popping up. I live in semi-rural Georgia and a county near mine has recently begun to initial stages of approving a 5 billion dollar data center to be built there. Keep in mind that the county doing this would be considered one of the poorest in Georgia. I’ve also heard of a data center proposal near Augusta Ga. This would be similar in scope as the rural one. Both proposals promise to lower property taxes and not harm the environment… There are other data centers being proposed in other areas of the state. I just can’t fathom the need for so much data when the internet is running just fine now. Am I missing something? Why so much so fast? Did I mention the billions of dollars involved? Since one of the main concerns is cooling water, there must be a massive amount of electricity needed. I’m sure that demand won’t drive electricity prices down either. All I see are rising costs, rising taxes, and rising inflation in my not wealthy state. Say a prayer for us.

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Unemployment has for decades been politicized in all western countries. Thus there is heavy interest to skew numbers and defitions just like with inflation. It would be best to leave that apolitical but due to fundamental nature of it in democracy, it is unlikely to become so.
In corporate life work is calculated in mandays, eg 8 hours or 7 or 7.5 is defined from regulation as daily work. Then total work is how many mandays something is to take. Budget is easy to calculate from that, accountant/HR can do details.
However in political stats, anyone not claiming unemployment benefits is often not counted as out of job. Thus here bureacracy has heavy tendency to push people to any school (which like in US is heavily personal debt driven, thus out of public budget problem, just moved to personal debt problem). School isnt productivity in society, but it is suboptimized o9ut of unemployment statistis. Win! (for bureacracy and party in rule to claim they ā€œsolvedā€ unemployment by x amount)
Im sure in US similar dynamics happen.

Any signs euro is in trouble? Things dont look good, manufacturing outsourced, millions of immigrants came to burden economy.
I would expect that to show up in currency at some point. Some signs even strongest euro countries are facing credit rating weakenings (AAA to AA) and state is often most resilient in debt market getting cheaper loans than citizens or companies. ECB rate is around 2% now but as US faces pressures, I dont think how EU could avoid that, as commodity markets are pushing that(in other words fears of raw material shortages coming).
Were some talks EU tries to push hundreds of billions more spending… same M2 problem as in US, no liquidity, nothing will happen in economy. Consumers are weakened by covid lockdowns and job market is bad with overcompetition.

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Agree. Similar in VA. What is going on?

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BTW what does that datacenter do to landprice, commercial estate(various forms, eg warehouse,office,…) and residential rates?
Landprice may go up too, implicitly raising all other spaces rate too. That’s bad in low income county. DCs dont create jobs so it wont help people to raise income. Thus maybe more people have to move out to trailer park when rents go up…

With regard to banking shenanigans… something to keep an eye on in all countries - changes to banking regs that squeeze out the smaller players.

https://x.com/scientificecon/status/1969383276650393828

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FYI
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If you want a sneak peek at Peter Turchin, here’s an interview with him that you might enjoy.

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