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During an interview with CNBC Thursday afternoon, Hayman Capital founder Kyle Bass joined Jeffrey Gundlach and other astute observers of the market by postulating that the Fed won’t be able to succeed with its planned 4 interest-rate hikes by the end of the year. “Gundlach said that the Fed could get to 1.5% on the Fed funds rate, which might happen in the next 12 to 18 months. But that would trigger a recession,” he said. But by the time the Fed gets to the second hike, markets will tank, forcing the central bank to backtrack. Kyle Bass agrees with...

Of the four restaurants Rick McQuaide owns across several counties in Western Pennsylvania, one is barely making a profit, two are losing money and the fourth has been “temporarily” closed for far longer than he ever anticipated. ... White House and much of the national media .. are wildly out of touch with the struggles of the average American and small business person,” McQuaide adds. “That isn’t political, that is ­reality.” ... there isn’t an aspect of his business that has not been upended by inflation. Fewer people are applying for jobs, driving up wages. Then there is the price...

Mortgage rates in the U.S. rose for a third straight week, reaching the highest point in almost two years. The average for a 30-year loan was 3.45%, up from 3.22% last week and the highest since March 2020, Freddie Mac said in a statement Thursday. That would increase the burden on homebuyers who are already stretching to afford a purchase. Rates for 30-year mortgages tumbled to a record low of 2.65% a little more than a year ago. Cheap loans have helped fuel a housing rally that’s still running hot even as home prices soar out of reach for many...

Wholesale prices rose at the fastest pace on record in December, the latest evidence that inflationary pressures are continuing to plague the U.S. economy. The Labor Department said Thursday that its producer price index, which measures inflation at the wholesale level before it reaches consumers, surged 9.7% in December from the year-ago period. It marked the highest figure on record since the government began tracking the data in 2010. Still, there are some signs that inflation could be decelerating: On a monthly basis, prices rose just 0.2% in December following a revised gain of 1% in November. Economists surveyed by...

Yesterday’s inflation report was the worst in 40 years. But at least today’s Producer Price Index Final Demand is down slightly from November. But PPI Final Demand YoY is still roaring at 9.7%. The producer price index for final demand increased 0.2% from the prior month and 9.7% from a year earlier, Labor Department data showed Thursday. The annual advance was the largest in figures back to 2010. Excluding the volatile food and energy components, the PPI climbed 0.5% in December and was up 8.3% from a year earlier. Too much Federal government spending, too much Fed monetary stimulus, Omicron...

Consumer price inflation in December, at 7%, was last this high in the summer of 1982. That’s about all the two periods have in common. Today, the inflation rate is on the rise. Back then, it was falling. It had peaked at 14.8% in 1980, while Jimmy Carter was still president and the Iranian revolution had pushed up oil prices. Core inflation that year reached 13.6%.

NBC Senior Business Correspondent Stephanie Ruhle is having a tough few days. She can no longer dismiss skyrocketing inflation as just a minor occurrence that Americans can afford. “KABOOM!” That’s the word Ruhle used to describe inflation spiking an eye-popping 7 percent year-over-year during the Jan. 12 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. Ruhle stated that the increase was the “biggest yearly increase we have seen since the 1980s” and said, “This is not a good number.” After trying to spin the news by saying that “we have a very good economy,” she then took a detour back to reality: “High...

Inflation in the US is at historically high levels.(Peter Schiff and Tucker Carlson Discuss the Worst Inflation in US History)So, why hasn’t gold taken off? We hear this question over and over again. In this video, Peter Schiff answers this question and explains why the markets will eventually wake up to their misperception. That’s the key word – misperception. Taper tantrums and fear of Fed rate hikes have distorted perception in the markets. People are selling gold when they should be buying gold on the dips. And at the root of this misperception is the market’s focus on nominal interest...

Today, I heard two local, small town radio DJs going on about rate hikes coming down the pike, and I thought wow here we are again with rate-hike-hysteria. Eight years ago I posted an article, Interest Rates Cannot Rise, Here’s Why In that article I depicted my model, forecasting that interest rates would not and could not rise. Now remember 2014 was the peak messaging period by the Fed and Wall Street gearing up for “rate normalization”. So to go on record stating that rate normalization was impossible, was a risky move. In fact, a friend, who is a friend...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation jumped in December at its fastest year-over-year pace in nearly four decades, surging 7% and raising costs for consumers, offsetting recent wage gains and heightening pressure on President Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve to address what is increasingly Americans’ central economic concern. Prices have spiked during the recovery from the pandemic recession as Americans have ramped up spending on goods such as cars, furniture and appliances. Those increased purchases have clogged ports and warehouses and exacerbated supply shortages of semiconductors and other parts. Gas prices, while declining a bit from November to December, have surged...

This is like the Samuel Beckett play “Waiting For Godot.” Except we are waiting for Jerome Powell and The Federal Reserve to do something. December’s consumer price index (CPI) is out and its a doozy, though expected. The CPI year-over-year (YoY) rose 7% in December. If we exclude food and energy, CPI rose by 5.5% YoY. Thanks to Biden’s assault on the energy sector, energy prices are up nearly 50% YoY. REAL average hourly earnings YoY? It has crashed to -2.32%. And with 7% inflation, the Taylor Rule model suggests a Fed Funds Target rate of … 17.84%. Bear in...

One of the main reasons Sen. Joe Manchin said he could not vote for President Joe Biden's "Build Back Better" bill is his concern about inflation. Manchin is worried the bill would increase deficits and debt and fuel even more inflation, which is now rising faster than it has in 40 years. Manchin's concerns about inflation are confirmed by two recent studies. They show inflation costs the average U.S. household an incredible $5,000 a year.

Only 1.4 percent when Biden took the presidential oath last January, year-over-year inflation has come in at 5 percent or more for 7 consecutive months. We know inflation is a growing problem because Biden has repeatedly gone out of his way to shift the blame away from his administration. Biden blames higher energy prices on oil and gas producers. The president's hostility to conventional energy was obvious on Inauguration Day. That was before he axed the Keystone XL pipeline and took no fewer than 24 other actions that raised energy prices. But Biden isn't just pointing the finger at energy...

The snowball effect of cumulative inflation is going to be on display tomorrow when the BLS inflation data from December is released. We have previously discussed the unavoidable price increases as noted within the November data Here, and within the producer price data Here. While the data being released tomorrow is backward looking, we are in the eye of the inflation storm right now. The consumer prices at end of January and through February are all reflecting new purchase order prices and contract prices to wholesalers, buyers and retailers. As a result, the December reports will be the precursor to...

As part of its ongoing efforts across many channels to expand Americans’ access to free testing, the Biden-Harris Administration is requiring insurance companies and group health plans to cover the cost of over-the-counter, at-home COVID-19 tests, so people with private health coverage can get them for free starting January 15th. The new coverage requirement means that most consumers with private health coverage can go online or to a pharmacy or store, buy a test, and either get it paid for up front by their health plan, or get reimbursed for the cost by submitting a claim to their plan. This...

The United States December jobs report shows that the labor market remains weak. The headline 3.9% unemployment rate looks positive, but job creation fell significantly below consensus, at 199,000 in December versus a consensus estimate of 450,000. The weak jobs figure should be viewed in the context of the largest stimulus plan in recent history. With massive monetary and fiscal support and a government deficit of $2.77 trillion, the second highest on record, job creation falls significantly short of previous recoveries and the employment situation is significantly worse than it was in 2019. The most alarming datapoint is that real...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Heading into a critical midterm election year, the top political concerns of Americans are shifting in ways that suggest Democrats face considerable challenges to maintaining their control of Congress. A poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that management of the coronavirus pandemic, once an issue that strongly favored President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats, is beginning to recede in the minds of Americans. COVID-19 is increasingly overshadowed by concerns about the economy and personal finances — particularly inflation — which are topics that could lift Republicans. Just 37% of Americans name...

Things to Look For…January 8, 2022 | Sundance | 602 CommentsThings that seem disconnected but aren’t. The thirteen bullet points below are the issues we will first notice as the general food supply chain begins show signs of vulnerability. This outline explains why it is happening and how long it can be expected.In the previous October, November and December warnings we emphasized preparation and counted down the 90-day window. Now, as we enter the final two weeks before mid/late January, the date of our original prediction, it appears that some media are starting to catch up and the larger public...

Recently, the White House claimed that the Biden Administration created more jobs (per month) than Trump, Obama, George W Bush, George HW Bush, Clinton and Reagan. It always helps to be elected President after a recession when the economy naturally snaps back from the economic doldrums (like Obama after the financial crisis, Clinton after the first Gulf War, Reagan after Carter). So let’s look at job totals under Trump, the COVID lockdowns, the ensuing economic damage, and the Biden “rebound.” In a brief two months in early 2020 thanks to COVID and lockdowns, the US economy lost 22.362 MILLION jobs....

Supply chain disruptions have not been resolved, and it’s not clear when they will be. You’re seeing the effects of these disruptions at the store in the forms of shortages and higher prices. Yet the supply chain is a subject that very few are familiar with beyond a superficial acquaintance. Most people think the supply chain is just part of the global economy. That’s not entirely true. The supply chain is the global economy. There isn’t a single good or service of any kind that does not arrive through a supply chain. Not one. If the global supply chain is...