Whether Trump or Biden is elected in November, they will have to decide whether or not to appoint Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to another term.
And if he is appointed again, the way he continues to handle the continuing ripple effects of the COVID-19 “shutdown” economy will be critical.
So let’s examine why the decision to reappoint him is important, then take a quick tour of some of Powell’s recent performance.
A piece from Paul R. La Monica provides a take on the importance of Powell’s re-appointment, beginning with the response to the market’s plummet earlier this year:
LONDON — The organs of members of marginalized groups detained in Chinese prison camps are being forcefully harvested — sometimes when patients are still alive, an international tribunal sitting in London has concluded.
Some of the more than 1.5 million detainees in Chinese prison camps are being killed for their organs to serve a booming transplant trade that is worth some $1 billion a year, concluded the China Tribunal, an independent body tasked with investigating organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in the authoritarian state.
Doug Casey’s Note: I consider Shan’s article—as radical sounding as some may think it is—to actually be conservative. For one thing, gold at $35 in 1971 was artificially low, suppressed in price for years by the government. And in addition to M-1 and M-2, there are tens of trillions of dollars held outside the US that will come home to roost if we have the Misesian “Crack-Up Boom” that he discusses. It’s an important point that’s not mentioned very often. But it will be a real factor in the not-so-distant future.
—
By Shanmuganathan Nagasundaram
As spot gold prices zipped past $2,000 per ounce recently, it portended a historical moment that implies a lot more than a nice round number on the price of a commodity.
As I will explain, what lies ahead is a disorderly change in the world’s monetary system and one that will eventually bring back gold as the lynchpin around which world commerce functions. For more than 100 years, gold was viewed as a barbaric relic—but we will see gold rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the US dollar and other fiat currencies.
We have known about, and have had abundant evidence of, the Obama regime’s criminality ever since a FISA Court judge resigned on the grounds that the Obama regime had intentionally misled the court and the court had not taken sufficient action against the regime for purposely deceiving the court.Little doubt, the rest of the court thought it more important to defend “America’s First Black President” than to defend the law and civil liberty. The politics of social engineering took precedence over justice. They could not allow the First Black President to be perceived as a criminal and a failure.
Are you ready for this week’s absurdity? Here’s our Friday roll-up of the most ridiculous stories from around the world that are threats to your liberty, risks to your prosperity… and on occasion, inspiring poetic justice.
Former Twitter CEO says capitalists will be the first to be shot in the revolution
The CEO of the digital currency exchange Coinbase recently banned politics at work, and he offered generous severance packages to anyone who didn’t like that decision.
But the former CEO of Twitter from 2010-2015, Dick Costelo, thinks staying out of politics deserves a death sentence.
Let’s hope that Keith Olbermann gets the medical care, and the medication, he needs to get better. And one of those white jackets where the sleeves lock together in the back. https://t.co/OJw3sbgyJ2
Earlier this week The Great Barrington Declaration went live garnering over 100,000 signatures at the time of this writing. The declaration, which has now been highlighted by celebrities and intellectuals across the world, called for a “Focused Protection” approach to combating Covid-19. The declaration explains
“The most compassionate approach that balances the risks and benefits of reaching herd immunity, is to allow those who are at minimal risk of death to live their lives normally to build up immunity to the virus through natural infection, while better protecting those who are at highest risk. We call this Focused Protection.”
If this is what is deemed “Nice” in Minnesota then you can add this to the long list of reasons I have no desire to venture to the North Star State!
Here is what we want: your captions! Let us hear what you got. Winner receives something cool…like a used Sandlot 2 DVD or something.
I see we’ve got some hot spuds there. Oh, and don’t think I didn’t notice you picking out some butter to put on top. Now go grab the sour cream and let’s have a party.
Kevin McCullough, the man who correctly predicted the winning election maps since 2006 (when no one else did) just posted his prediction map for 2020 election: @realDonaldTrump what are your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/77ChFyDrYM
At a time when the constant narrative from Washington is one of ‘inequality‘ (of outcomes, not opportunities) and just how much redistribution is required to “fix” that, the following words from JFK seem worth a re-listen:
“…there is always inequity in life.
Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco.
It’s very hard in the military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.”
Of course, when your life is predicated on raging against the machine (and projecting that rage on various social media feeds), no amount of facts or common sense will change one’s mind about self-responsibility…
Disney is laying off 28,000 workers. American Airlines and United Airlines plan to cut 31,000 workers. Last week’s disappointing unemployment report shows that we have a long way to go. Perhaps a lot longer than we think.
I’m going to quote at length from my friend David Rosenberg, who I believe is absolutely spot on:
“You tally up these sectors and before the crisis, they supported 32 million jobs, or about a third of the private sector workforce, and it looks to me as though half of them are not going back to their old jobs.
“And I’m not sure many people understand that amusement parks, airlines, hoteliers and restaurants cannot stay in business at 50% capacity (or even 75% in the case of restaurants).
“… As it stands, the US Chamber of Commerce said that 25% of small businesses have already shut down. Another survey by Ipsos concluded that two-thirds are still nervous about leaving their homes; 59% say they intend to remain locked down on their own until signs emerge that the virus is ‘fully contained.’ A YouGov/CBS poll concludes that 85% of American households say they wouldn’t get on an airplane even if they could. That’s why the industry needs a bailout!
“A Washington Post/University of Maryland poll shows that only 56% of consumers across the nation intend to shop at the supermarket, which I suppose is a continuous bullish data point for delivery services but that’s about it. Just 33% say they are comfortable entering a retail store. And a mere 22% say they are willing to dine in a sit-in restaurant.
“All these polls say basically the same thing – it will not be ‘business as usual,’ as the bulls will try and convince you, and the best we can hope for is a partial recovery. I mean, at best. What we had on our hands was a vertical down economic decline with job losses an order of magnitude higher than anything we have witnessed since the Great Depression. So, even as the stock market is telling you it has it all figured out, I can assure you that what we face at this very moment is a very uncertain economic future. And unfortunately, most of the longer-term risks are to the downside.
“We are in a depression – not a recession, but a depression. And I think the dynamics of a depression are different than they are in a recession because depressions invoke a secular change in behavior. Classic business cycle recessions are forgotten about within a year after they end – the scars from this one will take years to heal.”
NOTE – If anyone would like an electronic copy of the complete book, I should be pleased to email a free PDF on request to: [email protected]. Also a hardcopy of the book, “The Financial Jigsaw” is available priced at £25 GBP plus P&P in A4, workbook format, bound with clear plastic covers, printed locally on demand.
Today I am thinking about America, the great nation that leads the world. For all its critics, the truth is that America is leading the world in so many arenas. I found this article that gladdened my heart to know that my friends across the pond are not lost after all:
“America cannot be the literal Top Nation forever, nor should it be, nor does it matter. Being smart and hardworking and fulfilled are what matter, not tiny percentage differences of income between rich countries, 10 percent plus or minus. America is not declining. In the modern world, no income per head actually declines in absolute terms, unless through war or socialism.
The world is converging. No one is going to be Top Nation in that happy era when the whole world has an American suburban standard of living and more. America will go on growing, as it has slowly for two centuries, and the latecomers will join the parade. That’s good news, enriching us all. Give thanks: The sky is not falling.”
On October 10, 1987, the song “Here I Go Again” by English hard-rock group Whitesnake tops the Billboard pop singles chart in the United States. Today, what most people remember about the song is its saucy video: The actress Tawny Kitaen spends a great deal of it in a white negligee, writhing and cartwheeling across the hoods of two Jaguars parked next to one another. It is one of the most iconic music videos of the 1980s, and it features two of the most famous cars in pop-culture history.
