Foreign born employment in the US has grown by just 2.4 million on average from 2019 to 2023, and we're supposed to believe with Jay Powell that 10 million illegals flooding into the country are working

 Who appointed this joker anyhow?

Fed Chair Jerome Powell Comedy Hour: All those hordes of illegals coming across the border the last two years have been filling the jobs employers couldn't fill, making the economy grow 3%

 The laughs are here:

Fed Chair Jerome Powell: Immigration The Reason Why The Economy Grew 3% In A Year, "We've Needed More People":

Our economy has been short labor and probably still is if you talk to and we do talk to a lot of business people, it is still difficult to hire for many, many companies. So we've needed more people. But what happened over the course of last year is to a much greater extent than had been thought. Immigration moved up quite a bit over the last two years.     

 Meanwhile, full time as a percentage of civilian population DROPPED year over year in the first quarter, according to the employment numbers out today, from 49.7% in 1Q2023 to 49.2% in 1Q2024.

Just a reminder that the Fed said all these purchases it made in 2008 and again in 2020 were just temporary

Now Fed Chair Powell has just said it's time for the pace of the roll-off to slow.

That's the curved line slowly trending down from it's peak near $9 trillion to $7.5 trillion now.

Just as the National Debt will never be paid down, the Fed will never stop intervening in the Treasury market to limit supply and support prices, which suppresses market driven interest rates. 

Powell isn't serious about fighting inflation.

 

 

Jerome "Arthur Burns" Powell ignites gold fever

The London PM gold fix soared 437% between 1970 and 1978 using average prices.

Gold is up about 60% since Powell became Fed Chair in February 2018. Gold has risen from about $1333 to $2142 on an average basis.

Gold hits fifth record high in March on Fed rate-cut view :

Gold prices on Thursday hit record highs for the fifth time this month after the U.S. Federal Reserve signaled it would press ahead with three rate cuts in 2024 despite elevated inflation.

Spot gold was up 1.1% at $2,209.65 per ounce at after hitting an all-time high of $2,222.39 earlier in the session. U.S. gold futures soared 2.4% to $2,212.40. ...

Despite recent high inflation readings, Fed chair Jerome Powell said the U.S. central bank is still likely to reduce interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point by the end of 2024, but that it also depends on further economic data. ...

Lower interest rates decrease the opportunity cost of holding non-yielding bullion . . ..

 

Core pce inflation is out and shows itself running ahead of the 10-year US Treasury yield for four consecutive years 2020-2023, which is unprecedented

Jerome Powell is the biggest phony inflation fighter the country has ever seen.

He was appointed by Trump! So much winning!

Core pce inflation previously exceeded the ten year yield in 1974-75 and in 2012 (barely).

The Fed's primary inflation-fighting tool has been the Federal Funds Rate, but it let inflation run wildly out of control before even lifting a finger to stop it in March 2022 when the Fed finally acted and started raising the rate.

It is a shameful episode which has benefited businesses which hiked prices higher than inflation to goose profits, and the federal government which desperately needed to devalue its mounting debts, all at the expense of the average American.

The lack of outrage over this is a study in the depth of American servitude. Slavery didn't end in 1865 for African Americans. It became the common lot of us all.

 

 

Jay Powell's inflation has been bery bery good for corporate profits and a federal government drunk on debt

 

Jay Powell's wimpy response to inflation let core CPI inflation run ahead of the US 10-year for an unprecedented five consecutive years 2019-2023 on an average annual basis

 Jay Powell is much worse than Burns.

Jay is the money men's best friend ever.

 

3Q2023 core inflation at 2% vindicates Powell's March 2021 prediction that inflation would be transitory

 

The three year and five month embarrassment of core inflation higher than the 10-year Treasury yield finally ended in August

 Yield for the 10-year US Treasury rose to an average 4.17% in August 2023 while core inflation year over year fell to 3.87% in August 2023.

This ends the 3-year 5-month run where core inflation exceeded the 10-year yield, something which has never happened in the data.

The only time core inflation outran the 10-year previously for a comparable period was in 1974 and 1975 when core inflation averaged 7.91% and 8.35% vs. the 10-year yield which averaged 7.56% and 7.99% respectively.

That lackadaisical response to inflation by the Federal Reserve under Arthur F. Burns (1970-1978) prefigured the 1980 resurgence of core inflation to 9.19%. Under his successor Paul Volcker, interest rates were hiked to unprecedented levels to curb inflation. The 10-year yield rose to an average of 13.92% in 1981 as a result.

The current fear is that the Powell Fed has set up the economy for a repeat of this awful period of inflation.

Whatever is said about it, there is no question that inflation is a benefit to the Federal government because it depends on borrowing to finance deficit spending and consequently the debt, now at an unprecedented $33 trillion. Inflation simply reduces that cost to the government over time by making the dollars previously borrowed worth less.

It is true that new borrowing costs much more, but the debt mountain mammoth in the living room is the more pressing problem. This is why the cognoscenti teach that inflation is a good thing.

Extending the duration of inflation at the currently relatively low level has been in the government's interest. The costs born by the public in the form of higher prices for goods, services, and borrowing are becoming routinized so that the voters are becoming inured to the deleterious effects for them while clueless of the benefits for the debt mongers. 

This is particularly the case for voters who have no memory of that horrible inflation which gave rise to the backlash represented by Ronald Reagan's election in 1980, and who now vastly outnumber those who still remember.

It should not be forgotten that Jimmy Carter got elected in 1976 anyway, after the Burns' inflation. The voters then took it all in stride, too, until they didn't.

Same as it ever was.

 

We've had an unprecedented three consecutive years now where inflation has remained higher than the 10-year UST yield on an average annual basis, and our hapless FOMC looks set to make it four

 There were just two years of this in the 1970s inflation, and they too were consecutive.

Anyone who calls Jerome Powell an inflation fighter is an idiot, or a stooge for the status quo of inflation profiteers.

This is all on the backs of the people, but where is the angry mob?

So medicated, so drugged, and so otherwise anesthetized by bread and circuses that the elites don't even bother to hide the truth.

 

Core inflation higher than DGS10 yield in 2020, 2021, 2022 (annual average)

Core inflation higher than DGS10 yield January through July 2023 (monthly view)

Chris Christie credits Fed interest rate policy for denting government-spending-induced inflation but misses the role of collapsing energy prices

 Chris Christie is a smart guy with many of the right ideas about government spending, taxes, inflation, energy, and the environment.

But it's a real stretch to think that the timid interest rate increases of the Fed are responsible for this year's so-far moderating inflation indicators when it's falling energy prices since the winter which deserve the real credit. Christie himself admits that outrageous government spending hasn't been curbed at all.

His is a simple binary view which, while conventional and correct as far as it goes, doesn't get to the heart of the current matter. 

Low energy prices have always been and remain key to a successful economy, and it was the spike in natural gas cost inputs because of the Russia-Ukraine war which accelerated inflation globally, not just in the US.

Fed chair Jerome Powell was correct in June of 2021 to believe that inflation would be transitory for "weak supply" reasons, but the Fed rate increases didn't actually commence until the start of the war in Ukraine, which compounded those reasons with the cutoff of European natural gas supplies.

But since the winter the natural gas price is down 73% from peak, coal is down 70%, and gasoline is down too, but a comparatively modest 24%. 

Americans consumed in 2022 the energy equivalent of 26.9 billion kWh/day of natural gas, 13 billion kWh/day of gasoline, and 7.9 billion kWh/day of coal.

Natural gas is twice as important as gasoline in the overall American energy picture, primarily for heating, and as a substitute for coal in electricity generation.

Natural gas produced 4.6 billion kWh/day of electricity in 2022, the top source of electricity, vs. coal at 2.3 billion kWh/day and nuclear at 2.1 billion kWh/day.

Chris Christie is right though. We must "uncap" US oil and gas production and be energy independent.

Europe's natural gas storage, by the way, is presently 93% full as the war in Ukraine drags on. They are ready.

The US used 88.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day in 2022. We presently have about 35 days in storage.

Crude oil consumption in 2022 was about 20.3 million barrels per day. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is down to about 17 days of supply, from about 35 in 2011.

 

Watch CNBC’s full interview with GOP Presidential Candidate Chris Christie

Christie lets Fed off the hook for inflation, blames Trump and Biden for overspending

 

 

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis saying the quiet part out loud lol: Inflation benefits the federal government

 

The money men have the best Fed and the best Fed chair that money can buy

 The 10-year US Treasury note has averaged BELOW average inflation for three consecutive years, and is set to make it four.

This is unprecedented, and shows that the authorities have not been serious about fighting inflation. Inflation is actually what they want when the country is $32 trillion in debt, aka a devaluation of the liability.

Notice that they actually tried this for a couple of years in the mid-1970s, after which all hell broke loose with the highest inflation on record and the people revolted. We got Ronald Reagan as a result.

Inflation is the same thing in the world of money as immigration is in the world of labor. Inflation devalues what you owe, and immigration devalues what you make.

You are just collateral damage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Powell, a Republican, was elevated to the Fed by Obama, appointed to the Fed chair by Trump, and reappointed by Biden.

The Uniparty.

Jay Powell is a bitter disappointment, pledging today to moderate rate hikes when he's hardly begun to fight inflation after waiting a year to start

 Jay Powell is such a clown:

  ". . . it makes sense to moderate the pace of our rate increases as we approach the level of restraint that will be sufficient to bring inflation down,” he added. “The time for moderating the pace of rate increases may come as soon as the December meeting.”

Story.

Making sure his pals profit under the umbrella of inflationary pressures is worse than insider trading, because we all pay.

We're the marks!

I haven't been this disappointed in a federal official since Donald Trump betrayed his immigration promises in 2017-2018.

And how did stocks respond?

The investment cheerleaders in the US are arrayed against the Fed's rising interest rate regime and lie when they say interest rates are coming down

The yield curve recovered 98 basis points in the last week to close at 5488 on Nov 18.

Despite all the alarming volatility in US Treasuries, the curve is little changed from Oct 28 at 5487 or Oct 19 at 5486, one month ago.

The upward trend remains intact. Raising the Fed Funds rate to 3.83% has produced an overall yield curve at 4.22%.

There's plenty more to be done.

The lying rhetoric is designed to persuade the Fed to halt ("You've done enough!"), enlisting as many dupes along the way as it can to join the chorus, since easy money is the industry's goose that laid the golden egg.

But easy money is why this country is $31 trillion in debt, and why inflation is raging at an average of 8.3% in the first half of 2022.

Since March foreigners have held $300 billion less of the stuff on net through September, which is not a good sign.

But consider that there's about $2.9 trillion in US Treasury notes issued in 2020 alone paying just 0.6% on average and maybe you can understand why.

Meanwhile investors holding bonds are down 30.95% year to date (TLT) at the same time the S&P 500 is down 17.33%. A total bond index like VTSAX is down less, 16.92% year to date, which is cold comfort.

But that's not the Fed's biggest problem.

The Fed's biggest problem remains the so-called "dual mandate", to maintain stable prices AND full employment at the same time.

Our disgusting Congress foisted the latter on the Fed in 1978, which was nothing but a damned if you do, damned if you don't abdication of its own political responsibility dumped onto the appointee of the executive.

But the disgusting Congress represents the disgusting people, who want tax cuts AND infrastructure spending at the same time.

The dual mandate didn't stop Paul Volcker from doing what needed to be done to subdue inflation from 1979, but those were different times when the political tables were the reverse. Volcker was a Democrat appointee saddling a new Republican president with an unemployment rate of 9.7% by jacking up the cost of money. 

Jay Powell is a Republican appointee who will have to do the same to a Democrat president to end the current madness.

The pressure on him to relent comes from every quarter. 

We'll see if the new Republican House has the cojones to back him, which it should if it gives a fig about the future of the country.

But Jay Powell will have to prove that he has the cojones first, because the Congress is full of girly men.

He has hardly begun to fight.

The Fed chair was looking for evidence of transitory inflation for twelve months while actual, raging inflation was staring him in the face the whole time and he did nothing about it

 In his testimony yesterday, Jerome Powell said he uses a table of the last twelve months of 12-month readings of inflation.  In other words, year-over-year readings.

It showed him no evidence of inflation coming down, in other words, of inflation being "transitory".

"We're exactly where we were a year ago." In other words, yep, inflation is raging. It's not transitory.

If you aren't appalled by that, I don't know what to say.

In April 2021 inflation year over year was already at the 2008-level of bad, and the Fed chair decided to wait and see if it became a "problem".

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He waited a year, until Mar 2022, to begin raising the main interest rate.

I'm sure the reason is that in April 2021 he was focused on the pandemic as the number one problem. Vaccine uptake reached its crescendo that month, and Jay was praising the COVID stimulus orgy to restart the economy.

But the pandemic wasn't his job. Stable prices is his job, and he let it slide because of the extraordinary circumstances.

Now we're in a whole other big mess. Gutting the bond market is going to be life-changing for far longer than the pandemic will be.

Here's the video from yesterday with the key interchange.

This is Trump's boy, by the way.

 

Fed Chair Ben Bernanke once famously said on 60 Minutes that if inflation ever got out of control they could raise interest rates in 15 minutes

 The first Fed rate hike under Powell came in March when inflation was already way out of control, and Americans began loading up their charge cards at 18-28% interest to cope.

That's even more insane to me than the inflation.

The main Fed interest rate is still at 3.08% today, the rate available only to the banks, the same guys who pay you 0% interest, with inflation just cruising along up there above 8%.

It took the Fed over a year to move. A year. And then by just 0.75 points at a time, which the stock market parasites screamed bloody murder about.

Pretty amazing to me that ordinary folks aren't screaming, aren't mad as hell, and seem to be prepared to just swallow and take it some more.

I guess the fight has been bred out of the American people.

Sad!

 

Jay Powell is only appearing to be serious about battling inflation

 The only thing Jay is doing about inflation is making sure everyone thinks he's doing something about it, while making sure there remains plenty of spread for his pals to trade off it.

Currently the spread is 5.12: Inflation at 8.2 minus an effective funds rate of 3.08. This is a golden opportunity for the banksters and everyone down the food chain until it reaches you. The banks are getting rich off it. Wall Street is getting rich off it. Corporations are getting rich off it. And, of course, the stock market investor parasites are getting rich off it.

You get left holding the bag of all the price increases jacked up under the guise of the general condition.

 

 

 

Three years ago there was no spread: -0.03. Nothing there to exploit.

The banksters LOVE LOVE LOVE this inflation:

Bank of America said Monday that quarterly profit . . . topped expectations on better-than-expected fixed income trading and gains in interest income . . . third-quarter profit fell 8% to $7.1 billion.

The bond market is not happy.

In Rama a voice is heard, lamentation, weeping, and great mourning . . ..

Seeing this headline html first thing Saturday morning is disorienting

 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stock-futures-slip-as-investors-await-fed-chairman-powells-jackson-hole-address-11661508928

Investors await Powell's address?

That was published 24 hours ago, before the Powell speech, and the contents were updated last evening just before 5:00 PM.

But the pain surely ain't in the Fed.

The only pain described in the story is in households, businesses, families, not in the Fed.

Those Fed guys are rich, and get paid very handsomely.

The top 100 employees each made $274k or more in 2020. They are all named, here.

That puts them in the top 2% of all wage earners in the US.

They're the elites.

They experience no pain.

The Federal Reserve System had 23,517 employees in 2021, with a total system operating expense of $5.7353 billion, or about $244k per employee.

They live in a bubble. 

Everybody's just phonin' it in and getting the hell out of Dodge for the weekend. 

Especially Drudge.

 

The Fed is all talk and no action fighting inflation

 The effective federal funds rate stands at 2.33% and $8.85 trillion remains on the balance sheet while Powell makes speeches.

Borrowing is still very cheap for the big boys and the Fed's finger on the scale makes it impossible to know the true value of its mortgage backed securities and US Treasuries.

Meanwhile inflation rages at 8.5% in July.

The market "rout" is merely another yawn as Americans get punished at the grocery store and the gas station.

Current GDP of $24.883 trillion, reported 8/25, implies a fairly valued market level of around 1,600 not 4,057. The S&P 500 remains 153% above that.

They remain rich, and you remain . . . the reason why.