Janet Yellen

In this exclusive interview with Birch Gold Group, former Congressman Ron Paul shares his opinions on a number of topics, including investing in physical gold and silver, the future of the U.S. dollar and the role of the Federal Reserve.

“The longer [Quantitative Easing] lasts, the worse the correction will be when eventually people give up on our dollar and give up on our debt.”

The Fed has painted itself into an almighty corner with QE, and it looks as though we are finally getting to the point in the process where that fact begins to (a) occur to people and (b) matter. Bill Fleckenstein has often spoken about the Fed's reaching the point where it "loses control of the bond market", and it is quite possible that we are rapidly approaching that point (the signs have certainly been strong in Japan). We may be there already. But, as Grant Williams notes in his most recent note, we won't know until we can look in the rearview mirror; but the nonvirtuous circle the Fed has created is extremely clear...

In one sense, the past couple of weeks’ debt ceiling debate was just one more in a long line of annoying-but-otherwise-pointless pieces of bad political theater. But in another sense it was a turning point, one that may have put the democrats completely in charge. Once the civil war costs the republicans control of the House of Representatives (November 4, 2014), the democrats will be relieved of the need to fool the middle about their commitment to fiscal sanity. The incoming Clinton administration and its congressional majorities will ramp up domestic spending and finance it with higher taxes, more borrowing and way more money printing. Janet Yellen (the perfect Fed chair for this transition) will expand QE and make it permanent. The Fed’s balance sheet will grow in trillion-dollar chunks as it buys up all the bonds issued by the government and the mortgage packagers and pretty much anybody else with paper to sell. Could there be a better environment for gold?

When President Obama nominated Janet Yellen to be the next Chair of the Federal Reserve Board the praise he offered was similar to what had already poured in from around the country. In their assessments of Ms. Yellen's long career, Congressman, editors, and academics have underscored how her prescience and caution distinguish her from the reckless overconfidence that have plagued her male colleagues at the Federal Reserve. As proof of her wisdom supporters have pointed to speeches she delivered in 2005 and 2006 in which she supposedly issued clear warnings about the dangers then building in the frothy real estate markets.  Without any attempt at reasonable fact checking, these claims have been parroted by the media.  However, a brief review of the speeches in question reveals that she issued no such warnings at that time.

Yellen is yet another academic with no banking or business experience what-so-ever. This makes three in a row (Greenspan, Bernanke, and now Yellen). The results speak for themselves.

The future of the US economy with Chairman Yellen at the helm is grim indeed, which provides all the more reason to end our system of central economic planning by getting rid of the Federal Reserve entirely. Ripping off the bandage may hurt some in the short run, but in the long term everyone will be better off. Anyway, most of this pain will be borne by the politicians, big banks, and other special interests who profit from the current system. Ending this current system of crony capitalism and moving to sound money and free markets is the only way to return to economic prosperity and a vibrant middle class.

While they often say it is not the size (stock) of the wave (of liquidity) but the motion (flow) of the ocean, as the following chart forewarns, the diminutive Janet Yellen faces a correlation crisis before she even enters office...

There are two characteristics of a currency that make it useful in international trade: one, it is issued by a large trading nation itself, and, two, the currency holds its value vis-à-vis other commodities over time. These two factors create a demand for holding a currency in reserve. Of course, psychological factors entered the demand for dollars, too, since the US was seen as the military protector of all the Western nations against the communist countries for much of the post-war period. Today we are seeing the beginnings of a change. The Fed has been inflating the dollar massively, reducing its purchasing power in relation to other commodities, causing many of the world’s great trading nations to use other monies upon occasion. President Obama’s imminent appointment of career bureaucrat Janet Yellen as Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board is evidence that the US policy of continuing to cheapen the dollar via Quantitative Easing will continue.  As we noted before, nothing lasts forever...  (especially in light of China's earlier comments)

Hong Kong's richest are busy offloading local assets which institutions are happy to buy. It's exhibit A why institutional money often represents dumb money. 

It may seem counter-intuitive but the US dollar appreciated last week, despite the partial closure of the Federal government, the heightened risk of default and the nomination of Yellen.  The dollar can move higher next week too.  

“There is precedent for a government shutdown,” Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs, remarked last week. “There’s no precedent for default.” How wrong he is.

Pulling from an extensive record of public speeches and FOMC meeting transcripts, Goldman Sachs reviews Fed Chair-nominee Janet Yellen's views on a number of policy-relevant issues.

Stock market now held up by its one and final prop, a jerry-rigged, haphazard device with destructive side effects.

The dangerous habit of politicians and governments continually ‘kicking the can down the road’ cannot go on indefinitely. Eventually, the ramifications of this profligacy will be clear to all.

Yet another increase in the debt ceiling and the increasingly parabolic nature of the rise in U.S. government debt will be very supportive of gold in the medium and long term.

With Janet Yellen now confirmed as Bernanke Mark 2, it is time to recall that in addition to a new Chairman, four of the Fed's voting members will also rotate. And while below is the latest preview of the voting FOMC members (previously 2011 and 2012) ranked by Reuters in terms of their dovishness and hawiskness, the reality is that the peripheral Fed presidents (here we focus on the Hawks obviously) are nothing but figureheads whose only function is to be roundly ignored if and when they dissent with the new Chairman.