About this episode
* Recording this podcast on Monday afternoon; the stock market closed about an hour ago, and the stock market was up over 100 points today, but the more dramatic days happened on Thrusday and Friday * Despite the initial euphoric increase in the stock market that greeted the Fed's highly anticipated quarter-point rate hike on Wednesday the market tanked on Thursday and Friday, down over 600 points * The most significant part of the sell-offs is that on both days the markets closed on the lows for the day * The Fed is getting dangerously close to losing what remains of its credibility * The Credibility Bubble might be the first to deflate in this recession * The Fed has been saying that the economy would be strong enough for a rate hike by the end of the year, so if they did not raise rates in December it would have been an admission that they were wrong * The Fed raised rates even though the economic data showed that, based on their own criteria, they should not have done it * More and more people are questioning whether the Fed has made a policy mistake * Look at the data that came out since the rate hike: * On Friday we got the PMI Flash Services Index came out at 53.7 - last month it was 56.5 * The Kansas City Fed Manufacturing - last month was +1 and December was -8 * Today we got the Chicago Fed National Activity, expected to be +.15 for November, instead it came out at -.3 and they revised down the prior month to -.17 * With all the horrible economic data, horrible retail sales, horrible corporate earnings it is obvious that the U.S. economy is heading toward recession * As the economy slows and the Fed is forced to admit it was wrong, there goes it's credibility * This coming collapse is the culmination of decades of bad monetary policy * Where we really went off the rails was in the Greenspan era, which sent us off on this trajectory of loose money * Yellen admitted in her recent press conference that they will still roll over all the maturing bonds and re-investing all the interest on those bonds so the Fed's balance sheet will continue to grow * The bubble economy will blow up in her face, though, because the market will not be able to withstand a sustained correction and it will require unprecedented quantitative easing that will result in failure * I wanted to discuss on this podcast an Sunday eening article on CNBC, "The Peter Meter" that really took me to task on my gold predictions * They did not look at any of my many accurate predictions; they focused on the ones that haven't worked out * They singled me out for criticism on an 2012 interview I did with them when gold was at $1,700 and I said it could go to $5,000. I never put a time horizon on my prediction, but this was labled as one of the worst * Back in 2005 I did an interview with Mark Haynes when gold was still below 500 and it more than tripled from that price * You can see articles I wrote recommending gold back in 2003 when gold was even below 500. * It is true that I did not see the near 40% correction in the price of gold because I thought the market would see past the bubbles * CNBC claims my prediction to be among the least prescient ever made * Twice in the last 15 years the U.S. stock market lost more than half its value * Anybody who was on CNBC in 1999 and recommended the stock market, which was about every guest, made a worse prediction than that * Every guest on CNBC in 2007 and 2008 and recommended the stock market made a worse prediction * What about all the dot com stocks that went to zero? * Obviously, CNBC is singling my gold prediction out above these other significantly less prescient predictions * If you look at all the predictions on CNBC over the years, Our Sponsors: * Check out FRE and use my code LISTEN20 for a great deal: https://frepouch.com * Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD * Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.com Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy