Category: Business & Economy

The Bureau of Economic Analysis released the Personal Income and Outlays data for March last week. Incomes and consumer spending were both up. The data had mainstream analysts crowing about a strong economy and good news for American consumers. But digging into the data reveals a very different picture.

Money printing may bring rising wages, but it also brings rising prices for goods and services. And those increases are outpacing the wage increases. The Federal Reserves response? “We have things under control, and inflation is really Putin’s fault.”

One of the core staples of the past 40 years, and an anchor propping up the dollar’s reserve status, was a global financial system based on the petrodollar – this was a world in which oil producers would sell their product to the US (and the rest of the world) for dollars, which they would then recycle the proceeds in dollar-denominated assets and while investing in dollar-denominated markets, explicitly prop up the USD as the world reserve currency, and in the process backstop the standing of the US as the world’s undisputed financial superpower. Those days are coming to an end.

For most of 2021 Federal Reserve economists and their PhD-wielding allies in academia and the media insisted inflations was “transitory” and would soon dissipate. By late 2021 economists began to admit they were “surprised” and had no explanation for the inflation. Now high-level economists have changed their tune again, with Janet Yellen admitting this week that “We’re likely to see another year in which 12-month inflation numbers remain very uncomfortably high.” And she was also careful to attempt the political damage control by insinuating that price inflation is a result of uncertainty over the Russia-Ukraine war. Sure. Sure it is.