Gallup polling this week showed that the credibility of the Federal Reserve is down to 36% (those that have a “great deal” or “fair amount” of confidence)–the lowest level since Gallup begin tracking. To be sure, as Gallop notes, this tends to track overall economic performance. And most people are particularly pessimistic about the economy, […]
Archives
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Federal Reserve credibility cratering. And where, oh where, are they taking the economy and your bank?
10 May 2023
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Book Review: Money and The Rule of Law
01 May 2023
Recently, I finished my coursework in my graduate program. This means I spent the last two years reading a lot of books and articles. In light of world events over the past few years, one stood out as worth recommending to a broader group of people due to its timely message and solid fundamentals. Money […]
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F.A. Hayek’s famous quote is: The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. While Hayek’s quote is most appropriately placed against government central economic planning of socialism, it applies against any government action that tries to manage the economy by going […]
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Brief Beef With The Fed
12 Dec 2022
For several months, we’ve witnessed the Fed discuss the need to orchestrate a, “soft landing,” for the economy. Attempting to orchestrate an easy descent from this inflationary high; however, I believe the entire goal displays a flawed understanding of economics. Despite that, Mr. Powell still possesses a rational reason to attempt the impossible. To start […]
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The Federal Reserve has to be pleased with the way their tightening cycle has gone, not that they ever wanted to be here. The Fed has engineered meaningful tightening, markets have had nasty reactions in the downward direction, and yet we haven’t had a true financial panic. Further, job opportunities are still relatively plentiful, and […]
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Where is the market and economy going?
28 Aug 2022
I’ll continue to provide updates on the market and economy from my perspective here at BATG, but the purpose of this post is to point out why the uncertainty of prognostications about the future are much larger than normal times. In short, we have no history to draw on for the Federal Reserve dropping $5T […]
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How far will the stock market fall?
21 May 2022
We’re in a bear market now, even if the S&P500 managed to claw above the oft-quoted 20% down definition on Friday. Importantly, the standard 20% off the highs is only the symptom of the bear market that rages. Bear markets emerge to bring reality to false expectations of the future. Low interest rates beget speculation […]
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Here at BATG, we took a long look at inflation in a series of posts back in the fall, and it’s still front and center in the public discussion. Yes, I blamed the Fed, but I’ve always blamed the Fed–price fixing never works, and the Fed is the ultimate price fixer. Yet there is now […]
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As I related in the last blog post in this series, its seems likely we’re going to have inflation rates greater than the Fed’s goal in the near term (say the next couple of years)–if we don’t have some sort of economic collapse. I say the latter because when you have systematic debasement of the […]
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Never Mention The D Word
22 Nov 2021
In a period of shortages and inflation, I have been thinking a lot about deflation (maybe I have been dreaming about it). As I watch prices increase, it occurred to me that we only every discuss getting inflation back under control, but we never discuss prices falling back to a certain level. Why are we […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach