A wonderfully fraudulent confrontation is setting up…

On one side is Donald J Trump, pretending that he has ‘already made America great again’ and blaming the Fed for ruining his beautiful work. He wants the Fed to lower interest rates, not raise them.

On the other is the Fed, pretending that it is the architect and creator of such an amazing economy, and that it’s now guiding it to perfection. It believes it is ‘normalising’ the economy by gradually raising rates.

So who’s right?

 

Dangerous mess

Oh, Dear Reader…You guessed it, didn’t you? They’re both wrong.

First, because the US economy is not ‘beautiful’…It’s a nasty, dishonest, and dangerous mess.

Second, because both Trump and the Fed are to blame for making it that way.

Third, because there’s no need for The Donald to get on the Fed’s case anyway. They’re both on the same team — actively manipulating the economy for their own benefit and making an even bigger mess of things.

If the two could be brought before an honest judge and properly charged with some combination of chicanery, fraud, and negligence, both would do time…with the Fed getting the heavier sentence.

America’s central bank has been conniving to falsify the markets — and shift wealth to the financial elite — for the last three decades.

Mr Trump had it right when he was running for office. The Fed, he charged, had created a ‘big, fat, ugly bubble.’ Once in office, he should’ve replaced Janet Yellen immediately with an honest, Paul Volcker-type banker.

Instead, he left the miscreants in place and took credit for the bubble.

Then, as the stock market went up and unemployment went down, he doubled his bets…calling it ‘his’ economy, and saying that he had ‘already made America great again’ with his tax cut, spending increases, and other initiatives.

Of course, the tax cut and spending increases did flatter The Donald’s numbers (‘his’ numbers).

You can almost always get a little boost by spending money you don’t have. But unless you’re investing in something that will make a profit, you’re just wasting time and money…and making the situation worse.

 

Brass rathole

We got a report last week that half of the extra growth in the Trump years (so far) has come from more government spending — mostly military spending.

Needless to say, there’s no way this is going to pay off. America could defend itself with a fraction of what it now spends on ‘defence.’ Extra money to the Pentagon is just throwing money down a brass rathole.

Another temporary boost seems to have come as an unintended consequence from Mr Trump’s trade war, as our head of research, Joe Withrow, reported.

In anticipation of more tariffs, importers moved orders forward to avoid the additional taxes. This caused a bigger trade deficit with China, but it increased spending…for a while.

Next year, we should see the opposite effect, as orders fall off and inventories decline.

And tax cuts, without offsetting spending cuts, merely shift the burden of government waste to the credit market and future taxpayers.

Without the support of the Fed (which has stopped buying government debt), the government will have to source the credit from the private marketplace, which will push up interest rates.

That’s part of the reason mortgage rates are already over 5%. By our calculation, households lose as much (from higher rates) as they gain from lower taxes.

Higher rates also slow down the whole economy. CNN reports:

‘Rate hikes are already squeezing these businesses…

‘Auto and home sales have sputtered in recent months despite high consumer confidence and low unemployment.

‘The slowdowns have been driven at least in part by the Federal Reserve’s efforts to wean the economy off near-zero rates. Higher borrowing costs are squeezing the auto and real estate industries that benefited from a decade of cheap money.

‘“It’s very clear that higher interest rates are having an effect on the economy,” said Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research. “The two most expensive purchases a consumer makes are a house and a car. Both are credit-sensitive.”

‘Now that the economy has recovered from the Great Recession, the Fed is trying to take the training wheels off. That delicate task is even trickier now because of how low rates got — and how long they stayed there.

‘The auto and real estate industries are at the frontlines of this shift in borrowing costs. Mortgage rates recently topped 5% for the first time since 2011. Even though mortgage rates are still low historically, homebuyers are taking notice.

‘New home sales tumbled 5.5% in September to the lowest level in nearly two years, the Commerce Department said last week. Sales plunged nearly 41% in the Northeast and dropped 12% in the West, though they rose modestly in the Midwest. New home sales are now 22% below their recent peak in November 2017, according to Barclays.’

 

Nothing to fear

All of these things — not to mention the largely fraudulent employment numbers — point to a recession coming soon to a neighbourhood near you.

Then, Mr Trump will attack the Fed with even more vigour, claiming that it destroyed his beautiful economy.

He needn’t bother. He has nothing to fear from the Fed.

As we’ve maintained in this space, the Fed was never going to ‘normalise’…not with $250 trillion of debt worldwide dependent on abnormally low rates.

At the first sign of crisis, the Fed is sure to panic, with or without encouragement from the president.

And the panic is bound to lead to the worst possible response on the parts of both key players.

The Fed will cut rates to negative levels. It will buy stocks as well as bonds. And like Japan’s central bank, it will become the banker of first and last resort for the federal government.

Yes, the Trump Team will go all-in for more government spending — infrastructure…‘defence’…tax credits…you name it! And it will all be funded with funny money from the Fed.

Both on the same team…

…working together to bankrupt the nation.

 

Regards,
Bill Bonner