Peter's Blog

Canada’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 3.0% year over year in July 2026, accelerating from June’s 2.8% increase and raising questions about official assessments that inflation has been successfully contained. On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.5% before seasonal adjustment, or 0.3% after adjustment, with prices continuing to rise despite years of supposed monetary tightening. […]

Japan’s long experiment with near-zero rates and relentless deficit spending is hitting its limits, and the consequences are eventually going to hit U.S. markets. The yen’s slide toward levels not seen in decades forced Tokyo into repeated interventions, and for the first time since 1998, Washington joined in to save the U.S. and the world […]

Global investors added about US$3 billion to gold-backed exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in July, ending a two-month run of net outflows. The inflows lifted total assets under management 1 percent higher, to US$530 billion, and coincided with a 2 percent rise in spot prices, enough to end gold’s four-month decline. European and Asian buyers accounted for […]

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook delivered a familiar warning in a speech in Anchorage on August 5th: price pressures remain stubborn. Citing a 3.7 percent annual rise in the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index through June, Cook said flatly, “Inflation is too high.” Core PCE, which strips out food and energy, is running at […]

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed little movement across the major measures. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings were “little changed” at 7.4 million in June 2026, a 4.4 percent openings rate that has barely budged for months. Hiring held at 5.3 million, while total separations stayed near […]

The Bank of Japan’s Policy Board concluded its July 30-31, 2026 meeting with a fresh “Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices” that keeps inflation in focus. While the Bank raised its fiscal 2026 growth estimate slightly to a median 0.6 percent, it still expects consumer prices (all items less fresh food) to climb a median […]

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, […]

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 […]

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, […]

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 […]