Indian Oil Corp. used the local rupee to buy one million barrels of oil from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — not the U.S. dollar. First, the two giants agreed to settle trade in their local currencies — in an effort to cut transaction costs and eliminate dollar conversions. India and the UAE are […]
In the two months since then, the national debt — which measures what the U.S. owes its creditors — has surged to roughly $32.69 trillion as of Friday afternoon. The unrelenting increase is what prompted Fitch Ratings to issue a surprise downgrade of the nation’s long-term credit score in early August. “America’s fiscal outlook is more dangerous and daunting
US National Debt Tracker: See How Much the Government Obligations Cost Read More »
The number of people making “hardship” or emergency withdrawals from their 401(k) plans is soaring despite low unemployment and rising real wages… Withdrawals in the April-to-June second quarter leaped an astonishing 36% compared to the same three months a year earlier… Investment giant Vanguard, which recently revealed that hardship withdrawals among its clients “hit a new
Ominous News as 401(k) Hardship Withdrawals Rocket Read More »
Fitch Ratings’ decision to strip the U.S. of its triple-A credit rating last week was widely dismissed as meaningless This time, though, bond yields rose. That suggests Fitch’s action deserves our attention, not because it tells us anything new but because it joins the stack of evidence of how profoundly different, and risky, the nation’s fiscal situation
Why Fitch’s Downgrade Matters Read More »
De-dollarization could lead to a vicious cycle of economic destruction, according to an Australian economic think tank. That’s because waning use of the dollar could bring on hyperinflation, researcher Michael Roach said. Hyperinflation could lead to higher interest rates, which will weigh on asset prices, according to Roach. This outlook is furthered by speculation that
The unemployment rate peaked at 14.7 percent, the highest in the post-World War II period. Inflation reached its highest rate in 40 years, prompting the Fed to raise short-term interest rates to their highest levels since 2007. Federal Reserve banks opened for business in November of 1914. Historical CPI data from MeasuringWorth show that the
The Fed Hits 3,000 Percent Inflation Read More »
Ratings agency Fitch on Tuesday downgraded the U.S. government’s top credit rating to AA+ from AAA, citing an expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years as well as a high and growing general government debt burden. “In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years,
Fitch Cuts US Credit Rating a Notch From AAA to AA+ Read More »
“There is no chance we’re having a soft landing in the context of the most pernicious tightening by the Fed since the Paul Volcker years,” Rosenberg says. It’s equally interesting to hear Dimon talk about how great things are when the pace of bank lending, in the aggregate, is heading towards negative territory on a
The BRICS bloc of countries are working on the creation of a new gold-backed currency that could potentially shift the global economic landscape. They seek to establish a currency partially backed by gold, challenging the US dollar’s dominance. How long this takes remains uncertain, the implications for savers and retirees in the US could be
The Dollar Failure: Challenges of a Shifting Global Reserve Currency Read More »
But experts say the new system could lay the groundwork for the infrastructure needed for a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the U.S. “This is a payment system, not a digital token or a CBDC, but it is something that can be used to facilitate the creation of a CBDC,” said Jim Bianco,
Federal Reserve’s ‘FedNow’ Launch Triggers Fresh Speculation Over Digital Dollar Read More »
