Today one of the top money managers in the world told King World News that there is no question Vladimir Putin has Russia booming but the West is in serious trouble. He also urged people not to get shaken out of the gold market, saying they will regret it. Meanwhile China is doing a major pivot.
Putin Has Russia Booming
July 25 (King World News) – Dr. Stephen Leeb: A more hawkish Fed and rising U.S. interest rates have been front page financial news. The E.U. recently has joined in with tougher monetary policy as it tries to choke off multi-decade highs in inflation. Meanwhile, a week ago Russia announced a large decline in its key lending rate to 8% from 9.5% as inflation in Russia dropped to pre-Ukraine war levels. And the ruble remains the world’s strongest currency.
Some economic statistics from Russia remain opaque, though, probably because detailing how the Russian economy is outperforming the still-dire forecasts would expose the futility of sanctions in preventing Russia from getting what it needs. In this regard, I would give a medal for journalistic valor to Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who in a July 1 front page WSJ article wrote:
“Bars are filled to the brim in Russia’s biggest cities. Film and jazz festivals are sold out. And while the police patrolling Moscow’s streets are now armed with assault rifles, they are busier handing out fines for public drinking than putting down dissent.”
Since then, most indications including the recent interest rate cut point to Russia’s continued resilience.
China Troubles
China is another outlier in terms of monetary and fiscal policy. It has announced massive infrastructure spending and an effective end to its policy of reining in speculation in the real estate market. At least judging by its bond market – where in contrast to Western countries, long-dated rates remain comfortably above shorter-term rates – the long-term prospects are for solid growth, despite the recent slowdown. I will have a more to say about China at a later date. For now, I’ll just note that the leading countries of the South Eastern (SE) part of the globe by and large don’t seem to be facing economic turmoil. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about the North West (NW), including the U.S. and Europe.
While The U.S. Has Lost Its Way
I’ve written a lot about how the U.S. lost its way after leaving the gold standard, to where this once-great vertically integrated country, which led the world in just about everything, is now flailing. In my last interview, I noted that the war in Ukraine is the latest in a string of failed military efforts. But more than that, in showcasing our inability today to wield sanctions as an effective weapon, it will likely mark a turning point in world history. We might be able to surmount the current contrast between economic conditions in the NW and SE if we had a coherent economic policy for turning things around. But that’s nowhere to be seen…
To find out which gold & copper explorer just hit significant mineralization click here or on the image below
No doubt Fed Chair Powell will get the blame. That would be unfair, as he’s simply the messenger for a more than half-century U.S. decline that will lead to the fall of King Dollar and the rise of a new multipolar monetary system that – let’s hope – the U.S. will be willing to join.
In his Humphrey-Hawkins testimony last month, Powell was asked by a member of the Senate’s banking committee if the higher interest rates would lead to lower oil and food prices. He said no. He could have added that higher rates also wouldn’t solve the shortage of skilled labor, since skilled labor requires a working knowledge of high school math – a skill that once would have been taken for granted but that now is about as common as knowledge about multidimensional factor analysis.
Those Days Are Gone
With respect to the Fed’s control over oil and food prices, Powell, while not lying, wasn’t telling the whole story. If the Fed raised rates high enough to totally crater the economy, it might slash demand enough to bring prices down. Indeed, in prior times, a hawkish Fed could reverse uptrends in virtually anything. But those days are gone. And it’s not only because the SW has become the dominant supplier of natural resources. It’s also because we have spent so much money and piled up so much debt in nonproductive spending and efforts to control the effects of printing presses running 24/7 that we have reached the point where any attempt to really hold back on money printing backfires.
The year began with 10-year yields at 1.5% and inflation high and rising and the Fed indicating that steady increases in Fed funds were in the cards. The Fed also indicated that it would soon stop buying Treasury and mortgage securities, which add money directly into the banking system. A tighter Fed became an aggressively hawkish Fed by the end of April. That’s when Powell told Congress the Fed was considering a series of half-point hike in interest rates and that not only would the Fed stop buying bonds, it would begin selling its massive hoard, removing money from the economy. Half-point hikes became a series of 75-basis-point hikes, while the Fed continued to assert it was selling bonds.
But despite all this, bond yields appeared to have peaked in mid-June at 3.5%. Keep in mind that 10-year yields were once considered a proxy for nominal growth (inflation plus real growth). While we can’t say exactly what real growth is, inflation at the last reading was over 9%. Yet yields after reaching 3.5% appear to have topped and today stand at about 2.75%. On the face of it, it makes no sense. It seems to suggest that regardless of how high inflation goes, longer-term rates have a cap. Indeed 3.5% is about the same level that 10-year yields reached in 2018, when the Fed was in the process of gradually raising rates. Then the Fed’s gradual approach was more or less consistent with an inflation rate that topped out at 3%, one-third of today’s rate…
Billionaire Eric Sprott is a big investor in this remarkable silver company click here or on the image below
A Modern Day Volcker Is Not Coming To The Rescue
That is extraordinary and suggests the Fed has very limited control over long-term interest rates. Before 2008, that would have made some sense in that the Fed then could only set the level of the very short-term Fed funds rates and had no tool for directly affecting longer-term rates. But today it has such a tool – quantitative easing and tightening, i.e., the direct purchase or selling of longer-term bonds.
So the vexing question is how to rationalize a very hawkish Fed, which is sharply raising short-term rates and switching from being a major buyer of longer-term bonds to a seller, with a bond yield top of 3.5%. Recall that when Volcker slayed inflation, he let short rates rise as high as 20%, and long-term rates soared well into double-digits. And even preceding the Great Recession, longer-term rates reached 5% in the context of inflation that on a yearly basis was always less than 4.5%.
I’m far from being an expert in monetary policy. To explain this kind of top seems to demand something akin to Einstein’s insight that nothing can exceed the speed of light and that, however fast you’re traveling, the speed of light stays constant. In other words, if you’re traveling at half the speed of light, you would still measure the speed of light as the same value as someone who was standing still. But that’s physics, and it took a genius like Einstein to rationalize the paradox that the faster you are moving, the slower time flows.
It is one thing for physics to have constants or relative tops. It’s another thing for interest rates to not rise beyond a certain level regardless of inflation. Hopefully, it won’t require an Einstein to figure it out, or I’m in big trouble. My point is that an anomaly like a peak in interest rates can suggest what is so out of kilter – in this case, spotlighting why the current monetary system doesn’t cut it.
The U.S. Has Massive Debt
The U.S. has massive debt across the board. Government debt far exceeds GDP, while household debt is more than three times GDP, by a significant margin the highest of any major economy. Not only has consumer debt been rising for about 50 years, it has done so with consumers increasingly unable to service that debt. One reason is lack of productivity, which has led to lower wage growth. Another is that consumers end up funding a lot of the unnecessary bureaucracy that accompanies virtually every major industry. The unneeded bureaucracy will always get its cut. Ironically, this could mean that higher inflation, rather than increasing the level of peak interest rates, actually makes those rates lower than if inflation were lower.
The bottom line is that high debt ratios in the context of today’s economy, where consumer consumption accounts for about 70%, will be especially sensitive to rising interest rates. The more debt you have, the more you’re affected by rising rates. Inflation makes the situation worse, because even as you’re paying more in interest, you’re also paying more for goods. It means you need to keep borrowing more simply to maintain some semblance of your standard of living…
Look At Who Is A Big Investor In This Soon-To-Be Self Funding Gold Exploration Company! To learn more click here or on the image below.
In the economy of yore, wages and productivity were closely linked. This helped keep inflation in check and led to wage increases that more than matched inflation. Spending more didn’t mean borrowing a lot more. But today, borrowing feeds on borrowing, and that means nothing matters to consumers, who, again, account for the lion’s share of the economy, except what they can afford to spend. At a certain level of debt – and here is where an Einstein of monetary policy would come in handy – relatively low interest rate levels will slow things down. Today that level appears to be about 3.5%.
Indeed, recent economic statistics such as the PMI surveys suggest the economy is showing signs of fatigue and may even be contracting. High debt levels mean a slowing economy will always be prone to a vicious circle in which lower spending leads to less employment and further economic decline.
A Trapped Fed And The Vicious Inflation Cycle
If the economy starts slowing while inflation is high, the Fed will have to resume quantitative easing despite that high inflation, portending a vicious circle in which inflation keeps rising. If we could control inflation by increasing oil and food production, we’d avoid a lot of this mess. But we can’t, as shown by how our sanctions have backfired in our attempt to control resource-rich Russia.
To get out of this mess will mean capping the amount of spending power economies have, and that means instituting some form of new monetary system based on gold. A new monetary system will have to allow for the rationalization of all the debt that has been created. I certainly don’t have the exact recipe, but I expect we’ll end up with a currency basket backed by gold. Weightings of currencies will likely rise and fall depending on any number of factors including a country’s debt.
If the U.S. is unwilling to join in, the only hope for investors is gold, which will be the only shelter in a truly turbulent economic storm. And if the U.S. does join in, gold still will be a ticket to riches. The one thing you have to keep telling yourself is to think long term. The pieces appear to be in place for the transition to start, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be tremendous volatility along the way – there will be. Don’t get shaken out, because I am certain you will regret it bitterly if you are.
ALSO RELEASED: Central Planners Can’t Hold Down The Price Of Gold Much Longer CLICK HERE.
ALSO RELEASED: Bullion Banks Massive Short Covering In Gold & Silver Markets CLICK HERE.
***To listen to Gerald Celente discuss why the price of gold today should be $2,500 and silver $70-$100 as well as what surprises to expect in the back half of this year CLICK HERE OR ON THE IMAGE BELOW.
© 2022 by King World News®. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. However, linking directly to the articles is permitted and encouraged.
