Peter's Blog

The Mortgage Rate Myth: Why Cheap Money Won’t Fix Housing Affordability

President Trump’s insistence on lowering interest rates serves only the ever-growing spending state. Lower interest rates may relieve some price pressure in the housing market, but printing money is only going to make things worse in the long run.

13-Week Money Supply Slows into the Summer Months

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.

Fed Governor Waller Urges July Rate Cut

Christopher J. Waller says the central bank should not wait until autumn to ease policy. Speaking to the Money Marketeers of New York University on July 17th, he argued for a 25-basis-point trim to the federal-funds target range “in two weeks.” With growth fizzling, hiring sputtering, and tariffs muddying the inflation picture, Waller believes quick […]

June Inflation Higher Than Expected, Driven by Shelter

Spring’s brief lull in price pressure has faded. At 8:30 a.m. ET, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that headline CPI rose 0.3 percent in June and 2.7 percent year over year, up from May’s 2.4 percent pace and higher than the 2.6% consensus forecast. Core CPI—excluding food and energy—advanced 0.2 percent on the month […]

Central Bankers vs. The Dollar

If Donald Trump has his way and recent reports are accurate, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is considering stepping down from his position. While extremely rare, Fed Chairs resigning before the end of their term isn’t entirely unheard of. Powell’s obligations would ordinarily extend to May 2026.

Get Ready for Big, Beautiful Inflation

As is the case with many new regulations, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) had the opposite effect as what was implied by its name. President Trump campaigned on reducing inflation and bringing down prices.

Fed Governor Waller Defends $6.7 Trillion Balance Sheet

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher J. Waller used a Dallas Fed podium Thursday to peel back the curtain on the central bank’s swollen balance sheet—and to argue that a slim-down is overdue but shouldn’t be draconian. Since 2007, Fed assets have ballooned from $870 billion (about 6 percent of U.S. GDP) to roughly $6.7 trillion, even […]

New Insights from the Fed’s Meeting Minutes: Market Expects Rate Cuts

Minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee’s June 17–18 meeting show policymakers content to hold their fire—for now. The Fed kept its benchmark federal-funds range at 4¼–4½ percent and left both the interest rate on reserve balances (4.4 percent) and the primary-credit rate (4.5 percent) untouched. Officials insisted that “recent indicators suggest that economic activity […]

ADP Logs Surprise 33,000 Job Drop 

Hiring hit the brakes in June, with the ADP National Employment Report showing U.S. private-sector payrolls shrinking by 33,000 positions—the first monthly contraction of 2025. Goods makers managed to eke out modest gains, but service industries bled jobs, and small businesses took the biggest hit. Wages, meanwhile, kept climbing faster than the official inflation gauges, […]

Inflated Dreams: How the Fed Blew Up Housing Costs

Consumer confidence remains in the dumps, thanks in large part to rising prices in essential goods and services like housing. Contrary to the Trump administration’s preference for lower interest rates, the solution to the housing affordability crisis is to end the Fed, which created and still sustains the problem.