from Beavis Wealth
Right On Cue, Gold Hits Another All Time High
by James Hickman
Schiff Sovereign
This is an anomaly we haven’t seen before.
Gold just hit yet another all-time high. But what’s strange is that, if you look at gold’s supply and demand fundamentals, the price should almost be falling. Not rising.
I’ll explain—
On the supply side, gold production is actually increasing slightly. The largest miner in the world, Newmont Mining, produced nearly 30% more gold in the first half of 2024 compared to 2023. And across the entire industry (according to the World Gold Council), global gold mining output is up slightly over 2023.
So much for shrinking supply.
But what about demand? Well, this is usually broken down into four main segments.
Inflation: Resurrection
by Robert Armstrong
FT
The case for worrying about inflation
People really detest inflation, as Alan S Blinder put it to Unhedged last week. A corollary of this is that people worry about it a lot. So last Thursday’s letter, “Inflation is still dead,” was not warmly received by all readers. Most of the disagreement took one of three forms: that services inflation is still too high; that CPI housing inflation is not set to fall; and that financial conditions are already loose and a big rate cut will invite inflation back in.
Inflation Subdued; A Slowing Economy: Will Fed Lower -25 Or -50?
by Robert Barone
Forbes
Equity markets were up smartly for the week ended September 13 with three of the four major averages up between 4% and 6% (see table). Only the Dow Jones lagged (+2.60%), mainly for wont of a high concentration of tech names. Normally, that 2.60% rise would make investors ecstatic.
[…] As usual, tech led the way. Nvidia (NVDA), closing at $119.08, advanced nearly 16% for the week, and has made up nearly all of September’s falloff. It is now within striking distance of its August 23rd peak closing price ($129.37). The rest of the Magnificent 7 advanced between 4% and 10%, except for Apple (AAPL) which is still suffering from disappointing investors at its recently held quarterly meeting.
Vance: When Trump Imposed Tariffs, There Was Low Inflation
by Pam Key
Breitbart.com
Republican vice-presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) said Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that when then-President Donald Trump imposed tariffs, it did not cause inflation.
Vance said, “So one of the classic examples that economists use to attack, or some economists, I should say, use to attack Donald Trump’s economic policies is the tariffs that he imposed on washing machines and other dishwashers — sorry, on dishwashers. So they show a chart that says, well, look, a few months after this tariff, the price of dishwashers went up a little bit. But if you look over two years, actually the price of dishwashers went down. You induced a lot of American factories to invest in American workers and American-made products. And the price of dishwashers has actually lagged behind the price of a lot of other home appliances. So sometimes when you induce investment and capital formation in the United States of America, it does lower prices on American workers.”
Fact-Checking Donald Trump On the Scale and Causes of Inflation Under Biden, Harris
Trump inaccurately claimed Harris cast a vote that ’caused the worst inflation in American history, costing a typical American family $28,000’
by Louis Jacobson
Poynter
In his bid to regain the White House, former President Donald Trump has hammered away at the Biden-Harris administration for its inflation record.
During a Sept. 7 rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, Trump said that as vice president, Kamala Harris — his Democratic opponent — “cast the tiebreaking votes that caused the worst inflation in American history, costing a typical American family $28,000.”
Republican National Committee spokesperson Anna Kelly told PolitiFact in an email that the spending initiated under the Biden-Harris administration was something that “even liberal economists warned would cause” prices to rise, linking to a few examples.
Gold and the Death of the Dollar
from King World News
Today one of the greats in the business that predicted at the beginning of 2024 that this would be a huge year for gold spoke with King World News about gold and the death of the dollar.
Gold And The Death Of The Dollar
September 14 (King World News) – Gerald Celente: “I said gold could reach $3,000 this year. And this is just the beginning by the way. You know you’re not seeing gold take these deep dives anymore. Central banks are buying up gold like no tomorrow because they know the whole thing is rigged. Look at the news coming out on the debt level in the United States and what it’s costing to service the debt. Who could get away with this kind of crap? Who could ramp up all of this debt and keep getting away with it? The interest payments on the national debt top one trillion dollars as the deficit keeps getting deeper and deeper. The only people that could get away with this is a crime syndicate! None of us could do this! This is the beginning of the death of the dollar.
Vast Majority of Texans Say Food Costs Rising Faster Than Income
by Olivia Rondeau
Breitbart.com
The vast majority of Texans said their food expenses have risen faster than their income, and nearly half have had to forego buying protein and fresh produce in a recent survey.
No Kid Hungry, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit group operated by the organization Share Our Strength, shared the difficult findings in their Texas Hunger Survey released last week.
A whopping 81 percent of the 1,133 respondents polled in late July said the cost of food is increasing faster than their income, and 76 percent said that affording groceries has become more difficult.
About half of the respondents (49 percent) said they have been buying less protein or no protein at all to remain within their budgets, and 43 percent said the same about fresh produce.
How the Economy Really Fared Under Biden/Harris and Trump – From Jobs to Inflation
The economy will be a hot-button topic in Tuesday’s presidential debate, with Vice President Kamala Harris likely to emphasize the Biden administration’s jobs record while former President Donald Trump hones in on inflation—but the truth lies somewhere in between Trump and Harris’ claims, as Trump and Joe Biden navigated the pandemic’s unprecedented effects.
by Derek Saul
Forbes
[…] The Tuesday evening debate, moderated by ABC News in Philadelphia, will pit Harris and Trump directly against each other for the first time this cycle, with the economy slated to be a major topic of discussion. The U.S. economy sits at a potential inflection point, with slowing job growth causing fears about the possibility of a recession, while the Federal Reserve is expected to lower interest rates later this month for the first time in almost four years, a growth-friendly move as lower borrowing costs stimulate consumer and corporate spending. Harris’ economic record is a bit of a mystery, though she has backed policies like taxes on unrealized capital gains for the wealthiest Americans and a ban on price gouging for grocers, both populist policies which have generated controversy for the potentially stifling second-order effect on growth. Trump’s policy ideas for a potential second term include big tariffs on Chinese goods, which economists believe could worsen inflation, and a promise to rein in government spending.
ECB Cuts Rates as Growth and Inflation Slow
by Reuters
Reuters.com
FRANKFURT, Sept 12 (Reuters) – The European Central Bank cut its interest rates on Thursday, saying lower inflation and economic growth were allowing it to take its foot off the brake slightly.
The second rate cut in three months marks a gradual normalisation in the ECB’s policy after the worst bout of inflation in a generation forced it to jack up borrowing costs to record highs last year.
“Based on the Governing Council’s updated assessment of the inflation outlook, the dynamics of underlying inflation and the strength of monetary policy transmission, it is now appropriate to take another step in moderating the degree of monetary policy restriction,” the ECB said.
Services PPI Bounces Back in August From July, Rises Year-Over-Year. Core Goods PPI Jumps.
by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
But a drop in energy prices had a soothing effect on overall PPI, which also accelerated, but by less.
The Core Producer Price Index bounced back sharply in August from the negative reading in July that had been heralded as yet another sign that inflation was dead. So inflation is not dead. The bounce-back was driven by the massive bounce-back of the Services PPI and, very interestingly, a spike in the Finished Goods PPI.
“Core” PPI jumped by 3.9% annualized in August from July, seasonally adjusted (blue in the chart below), driven by services (+4.6%), which dominate core PPI, and also by finished core goods (+4.1%), according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics today.