Peter's Blog

Americans, The Fed, and Bond Markets Agree on Inflation

American citizens, the Fed, and bond markets all know: Inflation isn’t under control. When the Fed prints, they write inflation on the wall. And even if they do everything “perfectly” to return inflation to the target of 2%, that’s just slowing down the pace of their stealing. Your purchasing power is still robbed from you, […]

Fed Holds at 3.50–3.75%, but Inflation Stays Stubborn

The Federal Open Market Committee left its target range for the federal-funds rate unchanged at 3.50 to 3.75 percent on July 29, opting for continuity even as price pressures refuse to cool. The 9-3 vote, only Chairman Kevin Warsh’s second FOMC meeting as chairman, preserves a policy mix that pairs flat rates with what officials […]

Comex: Delivery Volume Remains Elevated but Inventories are not Impacted

The CME Comex is the Exchange where futures are traded for gold, silver, and other commodities. The CME also allows futures buyers to turn their contracts into physical metal through delivery. You can find more detail on the CME here (e.g., vault types, major/minor months, delivery explanation, historical data, etc.). The data below looks at […]

Price Stability, Economic Instability: The Fed’s Contradiction

The Fed insists that a stable price level is the mark of a healthy economy, but stability in the headline number tells us nothing about the money supply distortions happening underneath it. Chasing a two percent target still requires manipulating interest rates and credit creation, and it is precisely that manipulation, not the price index, […]

13 Week Money Supply Grows at Fastest Rate for June since 2021

Money Supply is a very important indicator. It helps show how tight or loose current monetary conditions are regardless of what the Fed is doing with interest rates. Even if the Fed is tight, if Money Supply is increasing, it has an inflationary effect. One key metric shown below is the “Wenzel” 13-week annualized money […]

Tech and the Vote to Intent Ratio

The vote to intent ratio is the proportion of total intentional government action that is driven by any voter filling their proportionate share of total government action. If the government can be crassly compared to a corporation, each citizen within that government would be a shareholder with an equal share of equity in the state. […]

Price Controls Can’t Make World Cup Tickets Affordable

Governments consistently believe they can outlaw the law of supply and demand, and Ontario’s price caps on World Cup resale tickets are only the latest example. The predictable result is not fairer prices but a black market, proving once again that intervention does not eliminate scarcity, it just pushes the exchange underground. The following article […]

Microsoft and the Protection Racket: Rothbard Was Right

Austrian economist Murray Rothbard famously described government as a large and successful criminal gang, arguing that it relies on coercion and violence to achieve its ends. The Microsoft antitrust case of the late 1990s illustrates this concept, as the government used its power to target a successful private company for alleged anticompetitive practices. By threatening […]

Jefferson, Hamilton, and Main Street

Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton held fundamentally different beliefs about the relationship between Federal and local government. Jefferson held that the local government was the primary building block of the nation and that the federal government had the responsibility to protect rights and deal with administrative tasks such as defense and trade that would be […]

Stakes Higher Than Finance: Shylock and the Central Bank

The dramatic heart of the play, Merchant of Venice, centers around a deal that turns a bad financial decision into a matter much more serious than money. In a situation where the titular merchant, Antonio, seeks to help out a friend in a time of social need, Shylock the moneylender gives him a loan of […]