Peter's Blog

As the United States prepares to commemorate its 250th anniversary, Americans will celebrate the nation’s founding with pageantry, parades, pomp and patriotism. Loving one’s country of birth and taking pride in its independence-inspired origins, praiseworthy accomplishments, and laudable legacy is a natural inclination and respectable trait. Similar celebration and reverence shouldn’t apply to the dollar, […]

Mainstream economists often argue that increasing the money supply is necessary to stimulate economic growth. However, Austrian economists have long recognized that monetary expansion merely creates the illusion of prosperity while sowing the seeds of future crises. Printing money cannot create real wealth or productive resources, but instead distorts economic calculation and leads to malinvestment. […]

Alan Greenspan served as Federal Reserve Chairman for nearly two decades, presiding over the US economy during a period of significant growth and turmoil. While often portrayed as a stalwart defender of free markets, a closer examination of his career reveals a more complex picture. Greenspan’s ability to adapt his views and rhetoric to suit […]

June’s Employment Situation report offered little comfort to households or policymakers. Headline non-farm payrolls grew by a scant 57,000, a figure that arrived alongside a combined 74,000 downward revision to April and May. The official unemployment rate edged down to 4.2 percent, yet that improvement came only because 720,000 Americans exited the labor force. As […]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on Tuesday, and the report offered little new for markets to digest. Total openings in May held at 7.6 million, hires came in at 5.2 million, and separations totaled 5.1 million. The underlying rates (openings at 4.6%, hiring at 3.3%, […]

The analysis below covers the Employment picture released on the first Friday of every month. While most of the attention goes to the Headline Report, it can be helpful to look at the details, revisions, and other reports to get a better gauge of what is really going on. Current Trends The jobs report showed […]

New York Federal Reserve President John Williams didn’t show up to Tuesday’s Crane’s Money Fund Symposium in person, but his prepared remarks got out anyway. Gold didn’t care either way. Williams described the U.S. economy as “resilient amid the uncertainty” from the Middle East conflict, pointing to steady consumer spending and “robust” artificial-intelligence investment. In […]

Please note: the CoTs report was published 06/26/2026 for the period ending 06/23/2026. “Managed Money” and “Hedge Funds” are used interchangeably. The Commitment of Traders report is a weekly publication that shows the breakdown of ownership in the Futures market. For every contract, there is a long and a short, so the net positioning will […]

The following analysis breaks down the Fed balance sheet in detail. It shows different parts of the balance sheet and how those amounts have changed. It also shows historical interest rate trends. Breaking Down the Balance Sheet As soon as the Fed ended Quantitative Tightening they launched a new round of Quantitative Easing. As shown […]

May’s economic data tells a story that sounds good on the surface but gets more complicated the closer you look. The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its report Friday showing personal income climbed 0.7 percent last month, adding $181.6 billion, with disposable income rising by that same margin. Americans didn’t sit on that extra […]