Wolf Street Report: How Amazon Gains Control and Domination

Amazon takes over the last mile and everything else.

- Source, Wolf St Report

Dennis Meadows: The Limits To Growth

Fifty years ago, an international team of researchers was commissioned by the Club of Rome to build a computer simulation of exponential economic and population growth on a finite planet. 

In 1971, its findings were first released in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro, and later published in 1972 under the title The Limits To Growth. Few reports have generated as much debate, discussion and disagreement. 

Though it’s hard to argue that its forecasts made back in the early 1970s have proved eerily accurate over the ensuing decades. But most of its warnings have been largely ignored by policymakers hoping (blindly?) for a rosier future. 

One of the original seventeen researchers involved in The Limits To Growth study, Dennis Meadows, joins us for the podcast this week. Fifty years later, what does he foresee ahead?

- Source, Peak Prosperity

Keith Weiner: Euthanasia of Capitalism by the Federal Reserve Bank

Keith Weiner, CEO & Founder of Monetary Metals, talks about our unsustainable economy and how both political parties are diagnosing and prescribing unworkable remedies.

- Source, Jay Taylor Media

The Decade of the Central Bank is Coming to An End

On Nov. 25, 2008, the Federal Reserve launched the shot heard around the financial world.

The central bank announced it would start using digitally created money to buy mortgage debt in an effort to drive down interest rates and resuscitate a dead housing market.


Along with a series of cuts that ultimately would take short-term interest rates close to zero, the move was part of an ambitious gambit to take the country out of its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. It quickly expanded to the purchase of government bonds in a total of three rounds that spanned six years.

Flash forward 11 years.

The Fed’s campaign of “quantitative easing,” along with keeping rates historically low, coincided with the longest expansion and most robust Wall Street bull market in U.S. history. Coming at a time of prolonged gridlock in Washington, the Fed’s monetary policy moves thrust it front and center as the sole provider of stimulus.

“It was the decade of the central bank,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial. “Stimulus was wanting, and the burden fell on the central banks to normalize the environment.”

Economists can and will debate the effectiveness and the long-term consequences of all the extraordinary moves, but there can be little doubt that in the past decade, the epicenter of economic management was at the Fed, along with its sister central banks around the globe.

No collective entity had greater influence for the past 10 years over the economy and financial markets.

‘The extraordinary has become ordinary’

While the desire may have been a normalization of a global economy that had been crushed by a speculative real estate bubble, the measures taken to achieve that goal were anything but normal.

Central banks cut borrowing rates more than 50 times over the past decade and instituted “money printing” QE programs to the tune of nearly $11 trillion just between the Fed, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. Never before had these institutions been called upon by so many to do so much. But lacking other fiscal measures — government spending on capital projects and the like — there was little alternative.

Former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke even half-joked once that such programs don’t work in theory but do in practice, part of the general reluctance central bankers had to such aggressive intervention. His successor, Janet Yellen, put a halt to the money printing and began the process of gingerly rolling off the bond portfolio acquired through the three rounds. Now, she continues to defend the Fed’s stimulus actions during and after the financial crisis.

“After all, the economic consequences of what we had were really quite terrible,” Yellen said recently at a World Business Forum conference in New York. “This was a very serious thing, but it could have been the Great Depression. My colleagues and I knew that it was on us to figure out what we needed to do to make this the Great Recession rather than the Great Depression.”

- Source, CNBC

Alan Greenspan: Inflation is Inevitably Going to Rise

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Tuesday that inflation is going to pose a larger threat to the U.S. economy as budget deficits continue to rise.

“Right now, there’s no real inflation at play. But if we go further than we are currently, inflation is inevitably going to rise,” the ex-central bank chief said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.”

As things stand, the U.S. inflation rate for years has held below the 2% level that the Fed considers healthy for a growing economy, at least gauged by the central bank’s preferred measure.

That has come even though the 3.5% unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in 50 years. Fed economists closely watch what is known as the Phillips Curve, which traditionally has indicated that lower inflation will drive higher wages and push inflation gauges up simultaneously.

The U.S. ran a fiscal deficit in 2019 that just missed $1 trillion. As those excess dollars float through the system, that historically has driven inflation higher.

“That, on top of the stagnation we are seeing in many areas, is not very beneficent for the world economy and certainly not for the United States and China,” Greenspan said.

The deficit has continued to swell under President Donald Trump, going from $665 billion during his first year in office in 2017 to this past year’s $984 billion, a jump of nearly 50%.

- Source, CNBC

Gold Confiscation? Is Jewelry a Good Backup Plan?

If the survival of the dollar is threatened, you cannot rule out the government trying to make gold and silver illegal again.” 

That’s how Mike Maloney begins his new video, a discussion with Jeff Berwick of Dollar Vigilante, on the possibility of gold confiscation. 

While Mike says confiscation “probably won’t happen, you’re screwed if all you own is coins and bars.” In other words, the risk isn’t zero. 

As many investors know, gold was illegal to own in the US for 50 years. Is there a way for an investor to hedge against such an event? Gold Bullion Jewelry might be a solution. 

As Mike says, “gold bullion jewelry is meant to give mobility and safety, and is the least likely form of precious metals to be nationalized.” It’s ideal for travel, because, as Mike points out, “it doesn’t have to be declared on a landing card.” 

Customs forms specifically ask about currency and cash equivalents—but jewelry is not classified as a financial instrument. As a result, he owns some gold jewelry as a tail risk.

- Source, Gold Silver

G Edward Griffin: Is Your Community Prepared for What's Coming?

Ron Paul: The Fed's Inflation is Coming, Get Ready for It

It looks like the Fed's throwing in the towel and is willing to accept higher consumer prices. Aren't we lucky? The damage has been done. 

The Fed has inflated the money supply to astronomical levels, and they keep creating hundreds of billions more out-of-thin-air. When it shows up in higher prices, it shouldn't surprise anyone.

- Source, Ron Paul

John Williams: Fed Lost Control of the Financial System

The Fed is pumping out tens of billions of dollars every month, and yet, the economy keeps sinking. What does this tell economist John Williams? “The system is not operating properly. These are stopgap measures, stopgap liquidity that the Fed is putting into the system. 

If they understood what was going on, they would not be doing that. They wouldn’t have to do it. They have lost control of the system effectively,” says Williams. Williams goes on to say, “It tells you the underlying system is unstable. I can see where the economy is based on the hard numbers even though they do funny things with the numbers. 

We are seeing a very weak economy here. Again, the Fed tightened and they eased to help the banks, but they did not do much to help the economy.

The banks are not as healthy as they appear and as they have been promoted. The Fed may well be on the brink of the type of crisis they had back in 2007.”

- Source, USA Watchdog

Frank Holmes: Are You Horribly Under-invested in Gold?

Frank Holmes CEO and Chief Investment Officer of U.S. Global Funds, talks about owning gold and provides some advice in efficient portfolio construction.

- Source, Jay Taylor Media

Enormous Amounts of US Corporate Bond Maturities Coming Due In The Next Few Years

U.S. corporate speculative and investment grade debt maturing in five years has now risen to over $2 trillion. 

The amount of corporate debt issued is growing over hundreds of billions of dollars per year thanks to over $700 billion dollars worth of share buybacks with debt, leveraged loan and collateralized loan obligation (CLO) growth and ratings agencies refusing to downgrade an absolutely enormous amount of corporate debt rated as BBB that should not be rated that high.

- Source, Wall St for Main St