The Great Recession Blog

When asked about where inflation is now and how it relates to how high the Fed thought inflation would reach and what the Fed’s targets for inflation really are, Powell made it clear that inflation is running much hotter than the Fed thought it would be and for longer: This is not moderately above 2% […]

I’ve said inflation will rise much higher than the Fed believes and will persist much longer and that it will eventually kill the latest stock market bull and the economy. If these inflation predictions prove wrong, I’ll stop writing my blog. Simple as that. That is how firmly I believe what I am saying and […]

The bond market is crazy weird right now. Inflation is soaring, and bond yields, which are supposed to price in inflation, are falling through the floor, causing many experts to scratch their heads as they try to figure out what on earth to make of it all:

While the Fed’s current tightening is not exactly a well-kept secret, stock and bond markets seem willing to ignore what the Fed’s left hand is taking away as the right hand is giving. Reverse repurchase agreements, which I have been tracking here, have exploded to a trillion dollars in money that the Fed is sucking […]

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

The Fed candidly admitted today’s soaring inflation is not what it had in mind, though it certainly is exactly what I’ve had in mind: At a news conference after the Fed’s statment [sic.] was released, Chairman Jerome Powell said he expects that inflation will be short-lived but acknowledged that it has run hotter than the […]

Economists — including those at the Fed — were surprised by inflation again. With their consensus view being that inflation for June would print at about a 4.7% increase year-on-year, inflation barreled in at 5%. That took us back to the kind of inflation we saw in 2009 when the economy and stocks were falling […]

Let’s look at what has continued to develop with inflation in the short time since my May articles on the subject because inflation is going to cause the Fed’s “Great Recovery” but burn up in its own incendiary blast. A rapid spread of fiery inflationary data lit up the landscape last week:

The S&P 500 failed a breakthrough on Thursday and tucked its head back below its 4200 ceiling again, where it has remained rangebound for weeks. Job news on the economic front that many analysts toasted as great could not lift sentiment out of the doldrums on Thursday, nor could it stop Netflix from making its […]

The most interesting thing about what the Fed is now doing is that it is illegal. The Fed’s argument that it is not monetizing the US debt fails now on its own terms. The Fed is buying treasuries for no purpose other than to directly finance the government’s escalating debt. Here’s the deal: 

All those economists who went along with the Fed’s inflation-is-temporary-and-going-per-plan narrative are stunned by the data they now see coming in. They shouldn’t be, as it was predicable. However, they will need to get bigger charts to make room for it. Notice where the last ten data points for the increase in inflationary surprises are […]

Stock markets got a jolt of the wrong kind on Wednesday when release of Fed minutes showed a little more talk of the Federal Reserve tapering its stimuli took place than what Fed Chair Jerome Powell let on earlier in the month after the FOMC meeting, which sets monetary policy. While the news was as […]

I’m not saying nothing else can do the job before inflation fully gets here, just that the kind of inflation I’ve been writing about certainly will do it if nothing else does. That’s what terrifies the market and for a very good reason that may not be the first one that comes to some investors’ […]