Peter's Blog

Beth Hammack, President and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, warned on October 12th that inflation pressures across the economy are broadening rather than fading, and that policy rates may need to move “toward an even higher latitude” if price pressures persist. Speaking at the National Association of Business Economics’ annual meeting in […]

Introductory economics courses teach students that money serves three functions, a medium of exchange, a unit of account, and a store of value, but they rarely explain why money came to serve those roles in the first place. Following the Austrian School of economics, the medium of exchange function is primary and logically prior, while […]

Federal Reserve Vice Chair Philip Jefferson delivered remarks titled “The U.S. Economy and Monetary Policy” on October 1st at the Darden School of Business in Charlottesville, Virginia, offering the latest in a string of recent admissions from Fed officials that inflation has run hot for years without a clear resolution in sight. Jefferson acknowledged that […]

On Tuesday, Peter appeared on Kiko News to warn that markets and the public are underestimating how costly the United States’ borrowing binge will become. He walks through bond market complacency, rising consumer inflation expectations, the danger that foreign creditors may stop funding the deficit, and how politics has dulled fiscal accountability. He also points […]

With another hot PPI report in the news and a shaky AI trade on Wall Street, the potential for a recession and continued inflation calls to mind the stagflation of the 1970s. As Milton Friedman demonstrated, this dreaded combination is the result of central bankers attempting to pull the wool over Americans’ eyes. The following […]

Consumers may be breathing a small sigh of relief, but they’re hardly celebrating. The University of Michigan’s latest “Current versus Pre-Pandemic Long-Run Inflation Expectations” update, released Friday, shows the median expectation for inflation over the next 5 years dipping to 4.0 % in June after topping out at 4.4 % in April. While that is […]

U.S. consumers are bracing for higher prices over the next 12 months, according to the University of Michigan’s latest survey. One-year inflation expectations jumped to 3.3% in January, up significantly from 2.8% in December. This is the steepest increase since May and pushes the short-term outlook above the 2.3%-3.0% range seen in the two years […]