Month: August 2021

Gimpy Gold On 8/15/71 President Nixon ended convertibility of the US dollar into gold. Since, gold has appreciated from $35/oz to $1,800/oz, an 8.2% annualized rate of return. Had you instead invested in the S&P 500 and reinvested dividends, your…

Reliable Rates With tapering of the Fed’s monthly purchases of $80 billion in Treasuries and $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities fast approaching, will this raise interest rates? Unlikely, and the primary reason is the federal budget deficit, which was $3.1…

The Friday File: The longest English word is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. It is a noun that refers to a lung disease resulting from inhaling very fine silica or quartz dust. Most importantly, it is 45 letters long. In second at 36 letters,…

Y-o-Y July CPI came in at 5.4%, the same as last month, it’s first non-rise since 11/20. Adding to the good news, M-o-Month price increases fell from 0.9% in June to 0.5% in July. Better yet, core CPI be it…

While there’s talk of substantial wage growth, some perspective please. Since monthly inflation, as measured by the CPI, began visibly rising in 2/21, it’s rise has exceeded the monthly rise in average hourly earnings every month! This means real wages…

The bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that recently passed in the Senate will boost GDP just marginally because it includes only $550 billion in new spending to be disbursed over five to eight years, much of which will be paid…

July payrolls rose a strong 943,000, and June’s number was revised up 88,000 to 938,000, pushing the unemployment rate down from 5.9% to 5.4%! This suggests that through mid-July the Delta variant had no negative impact. Moreover, the broadest measure…

The Friday File: Prior to this Olympics, only five athletes had won Olympic medals in both the summer and winter games, including two men and three women, two of which are Americans. With the USA men in the gold medal…

Earlier this week, the 165th million American was fully vaccinated, lifting the overall US vaccination rate to 50%, and the percentage of Americans over 18 to 70%. Prior to the very contagious Delta variant, herd immunity was thought to occur…

As government stimulus slowly fades, the personal savings rate has generally declined from a one-month peak of 33.8% in 4/20 to the current rate of 9.4%, slightly above the pre-covid rate of 7.5%. This suggests that the abnormal addition to…