by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
The entire the financial press has zero understanding of basic economics. The financial “journalists” just print press releases.
The US debt has never mattered, because the US dollar is the world reserve currency. That means US debt is the reserves of the world’s central banks. If US debt rises, so does the reserves of the world banking system. All central banks were delighted to accumulate more US Treasury debt as it meant the reserves of their banking system went up.
The Federal Reserve can always redeem US Treasury debt by creating money with which to buy it. The debt is always redeemable because it is denominated in dollars.
The problem arrives when the dollar is deserted as world reserve currency.
International Man: Almost every government worldwide is moving to increase taxes and regulations on its citizens while at the same time engaging in ever-increasing currency debasement.
For decades, all G7 nations and more besides have prevented the creative destruction upon which economic progress depends. Whole countries are now zombified.
Did you hear the cheering in the streets? The celebratory gunfire coming from the Federal Reserve? The champagne bottles across Wall Street being uncorked?
Powell reiterated this week that he does not see any short-term need to lower interest rates. The Fed remains delicate in its speech to the public. They knew that inflation would continue rising due to various factors but had to say they were awaiting incoming data. The data is in for Q1 and nothing indicates that inflation is easing, therefore, expect rates to hold.
I was packed from the get-go this morning with interviews and content so my scouting report got a little behind. Next thing I knew Paul Kiker and I were on deck to record our weekly Finance U podcast, and so I invited him to sit with me through this scouting report.
Foreign central banks and sovereign wealth funds are required under U.S. law to report their publicly-traded U.S. stock positions no later than 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter, if those stock holdings reach $100 million or more. This is done on Form 13F, which is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Did you know that U.S. households are 17,690,000,000,000 dollars in debt? Of course household debt is only one part of a much larger story. The federal government is 34 trillion dollars in debt, state and local governments are absolutely drowning in debt and unfunded liabilities, and corporate debt is at an all-time high. As a society, we are on the greatest debt binge in the history of the world, and it just gets worse every single year. Previous generations handed us an economy that provided us with an incredibly high standard of living, but we always had to have more. So we have been borrowing and spending with no end in sight, and now our day of reckoning is fast approaching.
Prices are threads stitching together the fabric of our economy. They guide countless producers, here and abroad, to meet the most urgent demands of countless consumers. Prices enable the economic coordination of millions of individuals—each with his or her own unique preferences, skills, and resources—with no need for a central planner. They direct entrepreneurs and innovators, signaling where opportunities lie and where resources are most needed.
Although inflation remains high,disinflation continued in April. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.3 percent last month, for a year-over-year change of 3.4 percent. The Core CPI, which excludes volatile food and energy prices, also rose 0.3 percent on the month and 3.6 percent year-over-year.
As a general rule of thumb, if the only reason you would identify somebody as a conservative is because they repeatedly insist they are a conservative, they likely are not a conservative. Readers should keep this general rule in mind if they read self-proclaimed conservative climate activist Benji Backer’s new book The Conservative Environmentalist: Common Sense Solutions for a Sustainable Future.
Seven pro-life activists were sentenced to years in federal prison on Tuesday and Wednesday for protesting at the Washington Surgi-Clinic in Washington, DC, in 2020, an abortion clinic infamous for late-term abortions.
On the heels of the price of silver surging above the key psychological level of $30, look at who said the silver bull market is just getting started.
The tremendous chaos that is gripping communities all over this country did not emerge out of a vacuum. For years, poverty and homelessness have been on the rise. According to a recent report from Harvard University, the number of homeless Americans has increased by almost 50 percent in less than a decade. Meanwhile, the ranks of the poor have been growing as the middle class has been eroding. Today, approximately 40 percent of the entire U.S. population is considered to be either living in poverty or among the “working poor”. According to Wikipedia, the bottom 50 percent of the U.S. population only has 2.6 percent of the wealth. And that number is from 2021, and so things are almost certainly even worse today. All of this economic suffering is helping to fuel a deeply alarming explosion of theft and violence in our major cities, and our leaders don’t seem to have any solutions.