From Peter Reagan for Birch Gold Group
One idea has become abundantly clear over the last four years: You can’t add 41% to the money supply and expect inflation to remain “transitory.”
But that’s exactly what the Fed did over two years, after which President Biden picked up the ball in January 2021 and ran with it.
The result has come to be known in the online media as “Bidenomics,” and it hasn’t worked out very well for most Americans. In fact, according to a Redfin survey, people are making major financial sacrifices just to live at a basic level. Economics Research Lead Chen Zhao said:
Housing has become so financially burdensome in America that some families can no longer afford other essentials, including food and medical care, and have been forced to make major sacrifices, work overtime and ask others for money so they can cover their monthly costs.
Even worse, some Americans have resorted to skipping meals just to afford their overly-inflated mortgage payments:
Nearly one in five homeowners and renters reported skipping meals to afford housing in Biden’s economy, according to a new survey conducted by Redfin. The median asking rental price increased from less than $1,700 when Biden took office in January 2021 to nearly $2,000 as of February, according to Redfin’s data.
But it’s not just housing prices and mortgage payments that have apparently inflated out of control under the Biden administration.
Food prices have gone crazy since 2019
Grocery prices have become a heavy financial burden for many families, with prices overall rising over 40%. Some items cost 50-80% more today than four years ago:
Image via Leading Source
Note: The headline of the story above is misleading. “Food inflation” would mean that food gets bigger. “Food price inflation” is what they’re really talking about. I doubt this article is trying to trick anyone with a New York Times-style inflation con, but words are important! The food did not inflate; food prices went up because the money supply inflated.
Think about this the next time you hear a talking head cheer because “Inflation is only 3.5% now!”
(Which by the way, is still hotter than any annual inflation rate since 2011, and heading in the wrong direction again.)
But what those same talking heads fail to acknowledge are the real-world impacts of rising costs of living on the average family, only some of which are revealed above.
That’s probably the main reason why people call inflation “the tax no one votes for.”
On top of that, to make ends meet under enormous inflationary pressure for the last three years, Americans continue racking up credit card debt. In fact, since Biden took office, we’ve been swiping plastic at a dangerous pace:
In response to what has become a persistently burdensome trend of inflation for most of the country, Biden’s administration has repeatedly focused on two data points:
- A “low” unemployment rate (3.7%).
- A “strong” trend of job growth.
But it doesn’t take a degree in economics to challenge them both…
Not all jobs are created equal
The White House and the corporate media are all over the strongest labor market in the last 60 years. So let’s take a peek under the hood…
Since August 2023, total part-time jobs grew 1.4 million. During the same period, full-time jobs fell by more than 1.3 million.
You can see this first point playing itself out on the bar graph below (gold bars are full-time jobs, and black bars are part-time jobs):
via Ryan McMaken at Mises Institute
Do you see a trend? It looks an awful lot like full-time jobs are being replaced by part-time jobs over the last 8-9 months.
No wonder people are skipping meals to make their mortgage payments!
Turns out that, historically speaking over the last 50 years, two (or more) consecutive months of declining full-time jobs means recession is either imminent or already underway.
Eight recessions, 100% accuracy…
See for yourself:
via Ryan McMaken at Mises Institute
The information on the graph above means that if history repeats itself like it has for the last 50 years, a recession is just around the corner. This is called the Sahm Rule, and it’s been a reliable recession indicator for the last five decades.
That also means if you’re feeling that “things aren’t quite right” with the current state of the economy, then you’re probably right to trust your gut.
How to recession-proof your savings
Inflation is one of the biggest threats to your standard of living – especially if you’ve invested in assets underperforming inflation (savings accounts, for example). Inflation-resistant assets are a good place to shelter your hard-earned savings. One of those assets is physical precious metals.
Gold and silver have historically provided protection against both the corrosive effects of inflation and economic crisis.
In fact, the price of gold has soared more than 25% since October of last year (as of April 10th, 2024). Take a look at the current interactive prices on most physical precious metals including gold right here.
With global instability increasing and election uncertainties on the horizon, protecting your retirement savings is more important than ever. And this is why you should consider diversifying into a physical gold IRA. Because they offer an easy and tax-deferred way to safeguard your savings using tangible assets. To learn more, click here to get your FREE info kit on Gold IRAs from Birch Gold Group.
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Keeping people stressed and on the edge of survival is akin to softening up the beaches with artillery before invasion.
You are already at war.
Act accordingly….
I get that they have gold to sell. And I’m a big fan of precious metals overall. But it is a little disingenuous to point out that gold has jumped 25% in the last six months without acknowledging that gold has done precious (see what I did there?) little in the past few years. If you were invested in the stock market for the same period of time, you would have made dramatically more money.
Indeed. It’s painful to think about the opportunity cost. If only I had known that the Fed would reinflate stock prices after the great recession.
All the gold in the world isn’t worth a thing without a large investment in lead.
When the coming storm inevitably arrives, my lead will be worth far more than my silver and gold.
A passage from “1984” on keeping society on the brink, though endless war preparation:
But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction — indeed, in some sense was the destruction — of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals.
Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
A bit more from the same section of the book:
10,000 people are turning 65 every damn day. So, from August 2023 to now, that’s over 5,000,000 people. Losing 1.3 million jobs doesn’t seem so bad.
Are an average of 10,000 people graduating high school/college every day?
Yeah, but Gen Z can’t replace someone like me with 35+ years experience in my expertise. So, my clients beg me not to quit.
Having lived through the ’70s I can tell you the inflation now is much worse than the inflation then. Especially when it comes to food. Shrinkflation makes the situation that much worse. It was not so long ago that ice cream came in a half gallon container, which has now shrunk to 1.5 qts. meaning you receive 25% less. Almost every packaged food has gone through that same shrinkage while they try desperately to hide that fact.
If this trend continues, it will not be long before hunger in America becomes a reality and that is something I never thought I would see.
Equity, poverty for all is the goal.
I was born in ’75, so I am too young to make a comparison between then and now, but my mother said the same thing, i.e. inflation now is worse than back then.
I measure inflation by my New Mexico chile recipe.
I learned to cook it 30 years ago in Taos.
The ingredients are always the same.
10 years ago, all the ingredients cost about $20 for 8 quarts of chile.
Pork, beans, chicken broth, onions, roasted Hatch’s jalapenos and the rest of it. (TBP really needs a recipe sharing day, just sayin.Tuesday….) That cost stayed realtively constant until 2008 when it went to about $30 bucks. Then at the end of The Kenyan’s regime, it hit $35+. It staye the same until President Pedo assumed office after the theft of 2020. 2 years ago my recipe was $75. Now it’s $85. Inflation is over 100% in 3 years.
Let that sink in.
My numbers are FAR more reliable than your lying government’s.
Because mine are real life.
The Black Swan Rears Its Head: The Fed Has Negative Capital Using GAAP Accounting
For the First Time in History, the Fed Is Reporting Billions in Losses Weekly; It’s Still Paying High Interest Income to the Mega Banks on Wall Street
The Banks: “Unrealized Losses” in Q4, Securities Held by Banks, Bank Failures, and the Dropping Bank Count
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/03/10/the-banks-unrealized-losses-securities-held-by-banks-
U.S. Money Supply Is Doing Something It Hasn’t Done in 90 Years, and It May Signal a Big Move for Stocks
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/04/30/money-supply-90-years-signal-big-move-for-stocks/
The Money Supply Fell for the Fifteenth Month in a Row as Full-Time Jobs Disappear
https://mises.org/mises-wire/money-supply-fell-fifteenth-month-row-full-time-jobs-disappear
Money Supply Huge Dropoff 1870 to 2021 [note 1933 and 2021 ]
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fqt8XuvWYAYC_c8?format=jpg&name=small
I’ve owned an environmental consulting company (petro tanks, mold, asbestos, lead paint et al) since March 1989. Lots of my competition has sold or shut down. Receiving no hindrance from increasing prices.
Sensing this is near the end of the cycle. Which is bad. Do more than a few Phase I’s, a basic CRE screening for banks. Did my 1st since October. Normally do 20/year.
Au/Ag are long term holds. Sorta like Exxon/Mobil.
What the fed is doing (did) is bad enough but FJB is contributing mightily with all the cash and freebees he’s handing to the illegal invaders. The fed seems to be tapping the brakes while that jackass is stomping on the gas. It’s us common folk Americans that are paying for all that free sheeet. That jackass FJB is stealing from us to give to the illegal invaders.
Come on, quit complaining. Just get some corrugated tin and cardboard and build a shanty on a steep hillside. Then you will have plenty of money for food. It works in other third world countries, it can work her too!