CrownThomas's blog

We all getting paid for this - it's like, $60 dollars per head

As I reminded you the other day, Ben Bernanke isn't worried about inflation. That's good to know, but what are some other facts that we can look at to determine where prices and / or purchasing power are headed. Two indicators that are relevant to this topic are core inflation (everyone's favorite to point to, since it excludes those pesky inflationary items food & energy), and income.

One of the few sane economists out there is Michael Pento of Pento Portfolio Strategies (formerly of Peter Schiff's Euro Pacific Capital).

Here is an interesting interview he did with Bloomberg back in December where he discusses his typical range of topics: Gold, Inflation, and Interest rates

Notable comments:

There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: as Government expands, liberty contracts - Reagan

If you listened to Ben Bernanke's testimony between last week and this week, you were told repeatedly that he is not worried about inflation.

Here are some charts that his analysts must have missed - Perhaps they're spending their time hanging out with the SEC boys surfing the web, but either way they should probably bring these to Ben's attention sooner rather than later.

Not Money's Reaction to Ben Today

And so we've come full circle. The WSJ is reporting that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will be seeking bids by the middle of this week for roughly $6 Billion dollars worth of residential mortgage backed securities currently held in Mainden Lane II. This would be on the heels of a $7 Billion dollar sale on January 19th to Credit Suisse.