Precious Metals Analysis

Markets are now pricing in a 1.5% cut in Fed funds rates in the next 15 months. It’s an interesting forecast on the markets’ part. Can the Fed really hold off so long? And when the Fed throws in the towel on the inflation fight and cuts rates, will the U.S. dollar have anything left in the tank anymore?

After almost 15 years of Fed-fueled cheap money offered at near-zero rates that was leveraged into overinflated speculative bubbles, the lights are on, the crowd is dispersing – and the party might finally be over.

A stable gold price over $2,000/oz means that something has gone wrong. Either the greenback crumbled further, or there is some kind of issue that isn’t going away and that is driving haven demand. So often investors see asset prices rising and, fearful of missing out on a new bull market, buy in and drive prices even higher.

Over 95% of Silicon Valley Bank’s deposits are not insured by the FDIC (due to being over the $250,000 limit) That is over $160 billion in uninsured customer deposits. About half of all venture capital-funded startups in the U.S. are customers of SVB. That’s 65,000 startups.

The magazine recently published a story about how the wealthy invest in gold that offered no real surprises but plenty of confirmation that the super-wealthy share the same economic concerns as most of us.

Here’s the thing: the money you contribute to Social Security doesn’t go into an account in your name. Rather, it goes into a giant pool of money that’s used to pay benefits to those who’ve already retired. In fact, the Social Security trust that funds your benefit has been running a deficit for a while now.

Despite the Fed’s best efforts thus far to raise rates and cool off inflation, I don’t expect relief any time soon. With that in mind, let’s look into the past to see what a longer period of inflation looks like. The best place to start in the U.S. is to take a brief look at an extraordinarily long period of inflation that took place from the 1970s

I think about Gresham’s law a lot. Back in the day of the first Queen Elizabeth (1533-1603), her banker, Sir Thomas Gresham, made an observation about currency debasement: Bad money drives out the good. You see, back in the 16th century, money was still “sound”…

The same people who told us inflation was “transitory” two years ago are still capable of being surprised when reality fails to meet their expectations. Even returning inflation to 2 percent won’t make absurd prices any lower – rather, prices will still rise, but at a slower pace.