Trade Deficits Make America Poorer Not Richer – Ep.226

  • I will be in Orlando tomorrow for the Money Show
  • I will be there Wednesday and Thursday returning Friday
  • I have several speaking events, a couple of workshops
  • If you’re in the Orlando area, come by, it’s free to register online
  • You can pick up your badge on site
  • We’ll have a booth in the exhibit all, you can come by and meet some EuroPac employees
  • We look forward to seeing clients and listeners
  • Last week I spoke about President Trump and his weak dollar policy
  • He thinks the dollar is too low, the euro is too low, the yen is too low, the Chinese yuan is too low
  •  Over the weekend Germany’s finance minister came out and agreed with President Trump
  • He agrees that the euro is too low
  • We know that the Bundesbank does not approve of the easy money policies, the QE, the negative interest rates that Draghi and the ECB have force upon them
  • I believe that rising German opposition as well as rising inflation both in Germany and throughout the European union will ultimately force the ECB to abandon their monetary policy
  • Maybe even at the same time that the Federal Reserve is finally admitting that they’re about to ease again
  • We got the jobs numbers on Friday, I did a video blog about it
  • To me, the numbers seem troubling for the Fed because even though we created better than 200,000 jobs the number of people who rejoined the workforce, who now want jobs jumped dramatically
  • So you have a lot of people looking for jobs; the jobs aren’t there
  • So the unemployment rate is going to come up
  • There will be wage pressures, and that is going to push the Fed in an easing direction
  • In fact, we got some numbers that came out today on Consumer Credit
  • Credit card debt grew by the smallest amount since 2013, which is a good thing
  • We don’t want consumers taking on credit, it’s bad economically to borrow money to consume
  • I really made that point in my book, “How an Economy Grows and Why it Crashes
  • If you haven’t read it, pick up a copy at schiffbooks.com
  • The point is, it’s good that consumers are taking on less debt
  • Of course, if you’re a retailer, and you’re depending on those indebted consumers to go deeper into debt to buy your stuff, that’s a bad sign