The core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) deflator numbers for November were released this morning and the print was a whopping 4.7% YoY, the highest rate since 1989.
Meanwhile, U.S. consumer spending, adjusted for inflation (aka, REAL personal spending), stagnated in November as the fastest price gains in nearly four decades eroded purchasing power. Stagnated to 0.
Purchases of goods and services, after adjusting for higher prices, were little changed following a 0.7% gain in October, Commerce Department figures showed Thursday.
And as Paul Harvey would say, here is the rest of the story.
Core PCE growth YoY of 4.68% implies a Fed Funds target rate of 11.84%. Powell and the gang have the target rate at 0.25%. But the Taylor Rule doesn’t take into account the latest FEAR raging in Washington DC … the Omicron variant. Just another excuse for The Fed to do nothing and let asset bubbles blow out of control.
With just three days until Christmas, we are seeing gold (gold line) rise, the US Dollar (green line) fall and the major Crytos Bitcoin and Ethereum remain quiet.
And the US Treasury 10Y-2Y slope is back to where is started when Biden was elected.
The University of Michigan consumer survey numbers are out tomorrow. Let’s see how they look. Or will they simply be anticipating Michigan playing Georgia in the Orange Bowl??
(Bloomberg) — The amount of money that investors are parking at a major central bank facility climbed to yet another all-time high as supply-demand imbalances continue to dog U.S. dollar funding markets.
Eighty-one participants on Monday placed a total of $1.758 trillion at the Federal Reserve’s overnight reverse repurchase agreement facility, in which counterparties like money-market funds can place cash with the central bank. That surpassed the previous record volume of $1.705 trillion from Dec. 17, New York Fed data show.
Demand for the so-called RRP has climbed further as principal and interest payments from government-sponsored enterprises has entered short-end funding markets. However, that cash is expected to exit the overnight space by the end of the week as the Treasury ramps up its issuance of Treasury bills now that Congress has increased the debt limit.
Overall volume has been rising this year as a flood of cash continues to overwhelm the U.S. dollar funding markets due to central-bank asset purchases and the drawdown of the Treasury’s cash account, which is pushing reserves into the system. The larger takeup looks set to persist even as the Fed tapers its asset-purchase program — something it began this month — because the supply-demand imbalances in short-end securities are likely to persist.
Then we have the Turkish Lira volatility hitting an all-time high.
And finally we have the US Current Account Balance rising to levels last seen in 2006 just after the peak of the US housing bubble.
While the Chinese Wuhan virus (aka, the Fauci Flu) has plagued the world, another Chinese “export” is also suffering what is known as contagion: China’s real estate sector.
Real estate companies Evergrande, Kaisa, Shimao and Chinese Estates are falling like a rock today.
But it has been a steady decline since Q1 2021 except for Chinese Estates. But they have resumed their death dive.
On the debt side, Evergrande is down to 18.856 while Kaisa has lost less (but still quite a bit) and Shimao’s bond look almost like a good investment, relative to Kaisa and Evergrande. But they are all sucking wind. Maybe they all have the Fauci Flu?
Let’s see if this latest Chinese “export” washes ashore in the USA.
I love listening to Fed talking heads (or Fear The Talking Fed). They mostly seem to acknowledge that inflation is a problem and that the excessive monetary stimulus should be reduced.
But then I see the chart of The Fed’s balance sheet and The Fed’s reverse repo operations.
Then we have Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller saying that Th Fed could start raising interest rates as early as its March 15-16 meeting, after deciding to end asset purchases sooner than planned. My question is … why wait until the March meeting?
Is it fear of the Omincron Variant (which sounds like a Frederick Forsyth thriller)? Does The Fed not want to rock the boat prior to the Christmas season? The US is at or near full employment, so what is the real reason for delaying a rate increase until March or June? Or the fear that Congress won’t pass Biden’s Build Back Better Act?
Fed Funds Futures infer that one rate hike will occur at the June Fed Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting and one at the November meeting.
The Fed’s new theme song is “Hold That Tiger” meaning that despite soaring inflation rates, The Fed kept their target rate at 0.25%. Way to really pull a Volcker and raise rates to choke off inflation. … NOT!
However, The Fed doubled the pace of tapering to $30 billion a month. Median forecast shows three rate hikes in 2022, three in 2023.
The reaction? The Dow rose 363 points as of 3:36pm EST and the 10-year Treasury yield rose a measly 1.9 bps as markets celebrate The Fed DOING NOTHING TO CURB INFLATION.
If price stability is squandered, financial stability is put at risk. If financial stability is lost, the economy is imperiled and the social contract is threatened.
During the past several quarters, U.S. inflation has surged—now running about triple the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. The surge in prices is unlikely to reverse on its own. The longer that prices are unstable, the greater the challenge to the conduct of macroeconomic policy. The last thing the country needs is its third major economic upheaval in a decade and a half.
The consequences of inflation—and the attendant risks—have long been understood. In 1898 economist Knut Wicksell explained: “Changes in the general level of prices have always excited great interest. Obscure in origin, they exert a profound and far-reaching influence on the whole economic and social life of a country.”
I agree with the op-ed, but as Paul Harvey liked to say, “And now for the rest of the story.”
The Federal Reserve is only half of The Federal government “Stimulypto.” Starting in late 2008, The Fed crashed their target rate to 25 basis points and began their quantitative easing (QE) program where The Fed purchased Treasuries and Agency Mortgage-backed Securities (MBS) amongst other assets. Notice in the chart below that QE was adjusted, but never went away and The Fed’s target rate only was increased once before Trump’s election as President, then raised eight times then decreased five times. And no rate increases under Biden. So The Fed scorecard is Obama/Biden: 1 rate increase. Trump: 13 rate changes. And The Fed’s balance sheet has gone bananas since the COVID outbreak.
Inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) didn’t really take-off until March 2021 as a result of STIMULYPTO (excessive monetary stimulus + Federal government spending).
Here is the Federal government spending surge that helped generate the highest inflation in a generation.
So while the op-ed author blames inflation solely on The Federal Reserve, The Fed was unable to achieve its inflation goal for much of the post-financial crisis period. It was the double whammy of Fed monetary stimulus + Federal government stimulus (spending) that pushed inflation to 6.8%.
Following Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story,” I choose baseball player Whammy Douglas to represent the double whammy of Fed + Fed government stimulus to produce inflation. THAT is the rest of the story.
Throw in the Biden Administration’s war on fossil fuels (driving up energy costs by over 50%) and we have a TRIPLE WHAMMY!!
The WSJ op-ed author was focused only blaming The Fed. Sorry, it was a Double Whammy.
Prices paid to U.S. producers posted a record annual increase of almost 10% in November, a surge that will sustain a pipeline of inflationary pressures well into 2022.
The producer price index for final demand increased 9.6% from a year earlier and 0.8% from the prior month, Labor Department data showed Tuesday. Both advances topped economists’ forecasts.
Even more interesting (or frightening) is that PPI Final Demand YoY is soaring faster than CPI YoY. If CPI catches up to PPI, then we have serious trouble.
With inflation seemingly growing out of control, Powell and Biden should sing “76 Trillion Dollars” which will be the US national debt after Biden and Congress get done with their spending splurge.
Inflation-adjusted return of Treasuries fell to lowest since the 1980s. For bond investors, this is their version of Kevin’s Famous Chili from The Office! Or The Fed’s Famous Chili!
(Bloomberg) — Treasury investors are losing more money than they have in four decades, once inflation is taken into account. And if markets are right, they’re unlikely to come out ahead for years.
The federal government’s debt has already lost about 2% outright over the past year as the Federal Reserve started removing pandemic-era stimulus from the economy and inched closer toward raising interest rates. But on top of that, the consumer price index has surged 6.8%, putting investors even deeper in the hole.
Taken together, that’s resulting in the worst real returns — or those adjusted for inflation — since the early 1980s, when then Fed Chair Paul Volcker was in the midst of fighting a wage-price spiral. What’s more, the dynamic isn’t expected to change: The bond market is projecting that 10-year Treasury yields will hold below the inflation rate for the next decade, meaning any investment income will be more than wiped out by the rising cost of living.
If we look at the REAL 10-year Treasury yield and REAL Fed Funds Target Rate, they are both negative.
Let’s see if Powell spills his famous chili on Wednesday at 2:00PM EST. The Fed keeps saying they are serious about controlling inflation, just like Kevin Malone.
The U.S. is poised to enter Year Three of the pandemic with both a booming economy and a still-mutating virus. But for Washington and Wall Street, one Covid aftershock is starting to eclipse almost everything else.
Already-hot inflation is forecast to climb even further when November data comes out on Friday, to 6.8%. That would be the highest rate since Jimmy Carter was president in the early 1980s — and in the lifetimes of most Americans.
And the CPI change since last year, according to the Federal Reserve of St Louis FRED is a staggering 16.262%.
And with U.S. Jobless Claims plunge to 52-year low, its about time that The Fed begins removing the humongous monetary stimulus.
After all, largely thanks to Federal Reserve policies, we have seen the greatest wealth redistribution in US history … to the top 1%.
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