from Kerry Lutz's Financial Survival Network
Russell Stone is back. On the slate in this installment… The consumer resilience that is reflected in some of the data that is meaningful doesn’t line up with what I see in person with conversations while traveling to main street America. The consumer is just starting to feel the reality as the cost of inflation and higher interest rates is hitting home. The dwindling savings of both the consumer and commercial savings accounts is seen in the data but is just starting to be felt. The Fed can’t be the buyer of last resort of al unsold treasuries very much longer. January/ February of 2024 should be interesting for all involved. Expect the consumer confidence to begin a sharp reversal beginning in late December and accelerating through the first quarter as the data lines up with the markets and reality.
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They amount to 32% of Tier 1 capital and don’t matter, until they suddenly do.
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Maybe you thought our public health agencies would undergo some contrite introspection after blowing it on basically every major COVID-19 policy (masks, lockdowns, school closings, vaccine safety, and efficacy, therapeutics, etc.). Yeah, sure. They did it all on purpose, their only regret being they didn’t do it to us gooder and harder. (Shortly before stepping down, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said she regretted the messaging, not getting the policies wrong. Masks forever, boosters galore, follow the teachers’ union science, as long as the messaging is clear and forceful.) And they’re still at it.
It’s fashionable to claim that the free market ideas of Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman have failed the country, and that it’s time for new policies. Campaigning in 2020, Joe Biden declared that “Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.” More recently, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt noted that people like Friedman promised that the free market “would bring prosperity for all. It has not.”
The Office of Financial Research (OFR) is a unit of the U.S. Treasury Department. OFR was created as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation of 2010 to keep the Financial Stability Oversight Council (F-SOC) informed about emerging threats that have the potential to spread contagion throughout the U.S. financial system — as occurred in 2008 in the worst financial crash since the Great Depression.
Via ZeroHedge
Many economists believe that inflationary expectations cause general increases in prices. For instance, if there is a sharp increase in oil prices, people will form higher inflationary expectations that set in motion general increases in the prices of other goods and services. According to the former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, “Undoubtedly, the state of inflation expectations greatly influences actual inflation and thus the central bank’s ability to achieve price stability.”
International Man: Javier Milei made history by becoming the world’s first anarcho-capitalist president.
There is no topic more important than today’s. Everything hinges on “us” getting it right. And by us I mean the entire global population.
Yale School of Public Health dean Dr. Megan Ranney (pictured) gave congressional testimony Tuesday in which she responded to questions about Chicago gun violence by pointing to studies suggesting that repairing urban buildings could reduce shootings.
Those of us who were around for the Vietnam War remember the photo of Phan Thi Kim Phuc– “the napalm girl”– the naked, badly burned 9 year old girl fleeing the advancing bombing.