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Michael Pento: First Disinflation, Then Deflation, Then Big-Time Inflation

July 29, 2021

Michael Pento: First Disinflation, Then Deflation, Then Big-Time Inflation

Suddenly investors are panicked that (hyper)inflation is taking over.

But what if they’re mistaken? That could be a costly mistake if they’re betting their portfolio’s future on it. Because there’s a strong case to be made that we’re now actually entering a period of dis-inflation, one that has a high risk of tipping into outright deflation by next year.

To argue this, investment manager Michael Pento, who pulls no punches, joins Wealthion for this video explaining why the Fed and Congress don’t currently have sufficient air cover to continue the same magnitude of stimulus the market is now addicted to — and thus won’t be able to resume it until after the next painful market correction arrives.

Michael then proceeds to explain why the bond market is such a ticking time bomb right now for investors.

And, of course, he shares his views on his favored asset classes for each stage of the upcoming progression he sees:

1. first disinflation, then…

2. outright deflation, and then…

3. a hugely inflationary response from our central planners

Watch the full interview below:

Election Chaos Means Market Chaos – Michael Pento

September 13, 2020

Election Chaos Means Market Chaos – Michael Pento

Money manager and economist Michael Pento predicts, “We are going to have an election in this country that is the most contested vote this country has ever seen.  Whichever party that loses is not going to accept the results.  That’s mad chaos for the stock market, and that is one of the things I am thinking about when I am managing money.”

Another thing Pento is thinking about is massive Fed money printing in response to CV19.  They have printed a massive amount in a very short amount of time.  Pento explains, “They borrowed $3.3 trillion in fiscal 2020.  All of it was monetized by the Federal Reserve.  We switched to an inflationary hedge, and that worked out wonderfully for us.  Then a funny thing happened at the end of July, the PPP loans, the paycheck protection loans, they were exhausted.  The money that was spent and sent by helicopter, $1,000 per adult, $500 per child and $600 in enhanced unemployment, that was all spent too.  So, you have this massive fiscal cliff I warned about is here and here now.  Last week, I got much more defensive. . . . We borrowed $3.3 trillion, and that was monetized by the Fed, and that is all going away.  The amount of new borrowing is done.”

Pento points out one huge lingering problem, and that is unemployment and people still collecting a check.  Pento says, “There are many programs that people have access to get unemployment insurance.  One of the major ones is called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).  That number is 29.6 million people when you include continuing claims and pandemic claims for unemployment.  The PUA portion was up one million people last week.  The number of claims might be going down under the traditional channels, but they are all filing claims under the PUA.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Market Update: Overstimulated!

August 15, 2020

The melt-up discussed last week remains in full force, with the S&P 500 hitting a new intraday all-time high on Wednesday.

Just to make sure we’re all clear on this: stocks are back to their highest prices BEFORE the coronavirus pandemic exploded. Before Q2 GDP plummeted -33% in the US. Before 50+ million Americans lost their jobs.

Thanks to the $trillions shoved into the system by both central banks and national legislatures since April, “investors” now believe the markets are a 1-way ride to forever-increasing wealth.

As the chart below from the National Association of Active Investment Managers shows, financial advisory firms that manage client capital are more fully-invested in the markets than at any other time in the past several years:

NAAIM chart

So everyone in “all-in” on the belief that the markets are both fully backstopped and rising higher from here.

How realistic is this belief?

Michael Pento, this week’s Market Update video expert guest, thinks it’s willful delusion. History is crystal clear that disconnects like we have today between (over-inflated) asset prices and the underlying (contracting) economic reality always result in crisis — either a deflationary repricing, or a destruction of the purchasing power of the currency.

Michael shares the 20 financial and economic metrics on the dashboard of indicators he tracks to determine where we are in this story, and which outcome is looking most likely to happen when. This week’s interview is worth listening to for that list alone.

Not one to mince words, Pento believes this is the most treacherous time ever for investors — which means those blindly long the current melt-up will get slaughtered if indeed the risks he predicts play out. As always, we recommend working in partnership with an independent financial advisor who appreciates these risks, prioritizes preservation of your investment capital, and can help you chart the turbulent waters ahead when the reckoning arrives:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

The Free Money Bubble Is About To Burst

November 16, 2019

The Free Money Bubble Is About To Burst

Free Money Bubble

Recently, there has been a parade of central bankers along with their lackeys on Wall Street coming on the financial news networks and desperately trying to convince investors that there are no bubbles extant in the world today. Indeed, the Fed sees no economic or market imbalances anywhere that should give perma-bulls cause for concern. You can listen to Jerome Powell’s upbeat assessment of the situation in his own words during the latest FOMC press conference here. The Fed Chair did, however, manage to acknowledge that corporate debt levels are in fact a bit on the high side. But he added that “we have been monitoring it carefully and taken appropriate steps.” By taking appropriate steps to reduce debt levels Powell must mean slashing interest rates and going back into QE. The problem with that strategy being that is exactly what caused the debt binge and overleveraged condition of corporations in the first place.

Global central banks have abrogated the free market and are in the practice of repealing the business cycle and ensuring stocks are in a permanent bull market. Massive and unrelenting money printing is the “tool” that they use. The good old USA had its central bank cut rates to 0 percent by the end of 2008 to combat the Great Recession; and that paved the way for the EU to join the free-money parade by 2016. In fact, the Band of Japan had already been at the zero-bound range years before. This means much of the developed world has been giving money away gratis for the better part of a decade.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fed Panics & Starts Massive Money Printing – Michael Pento

October 28, 2019

Fed Panics & Starts Massive Money Printing – Michael Pento

Economist and money manager Michael Pento says the recent Federal Reserve about face in policy with cutting rates and new QE (money printing) means only one thing. Pento explains, “So, the Fed changed their mind, panicked, the Fed panicked. They not only stopped raising rates, they now cut rates twice, and they are going to cut rates again at the end of this month. They are also fully back in a massive QE. They have a $130 billion revolving repo facility shoving $130 billion every night, rolling it over, trying to re-liquefy the banking system and back into QE–$60 billion per month. At the peak, it was $85 billion. So, they are almost back to the peak of QE (during the Great Recession). They did not scale in, the Fed went to $60 billion right away.”

Why the sudden burst of money printing when we are being told the economy is fine? Pento says the Fed is panicking to stop a “depression.” That’s right, a depression. Pento contends, “I am on record saying given the extent of the asset bubbles that we have today . . . household debt is at a record high. Corporate debt is at a record high, up 60%. The national debt was $9 trillion prior to the Great Recession and is now $23 trillion. Total non-financial debt is now $53 trillion, and it was $33 trillion prior to the Great Recession. . . . Given all these imbalances and deformations, the Fed knows we are not going to have some mild recession. If they don’t re-liquefy the money markets, the same thing that happened back in 2008 would happen today, only the stock market was only a 100% of GDP and today it is 150% or one and a half times the economy.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Intractable Inflation Very Dangerous New Paradigm – Michael Pento

February 27, 2019

Intractable Inflation Very Dangerous New Paradigm – Michael Pento

Money manager Michael Pento says get ready for big inflation. Pento explains, “When the emergency ended (from the 2008-2009 financial meltdown), they were going to reverse course, sell those assets back to the public and take those dollars out of the economy. . . . A funny thing happened on the way to doing that, the global economy imploded. So, here’s the point . . . the central banks have admitted, tacitly at least, they can never take away those assets. They can never drain their balance sheet, meaning they have permanently monetized this debt. Interest rates can never be allowed to rise above 0% in nominal terms and, in real terms, will grow more and more profoundly negative. That should shock investors. That is a moment of enlightenment, a watershed moment, an epiphany throughout the world. Hello investors, central banks are putting you on notice that nominal interest rates are going to be at 0% or below, and real interest rates will grow more and more negative throughout time. . . . If China cannot re-leverage its economy for explosive growth, and central banks are extremely fettered with their ability and means for which to stimulate economic growth immediately, I would be cautious about buying this rally, which I am. I think we are going to have one more sharp downturn in the equity market . . . and then, here’s the sad truth, you have to go massively long inflation hedges.”

This brings up top gold and silver for protection against the coming money printing and inflation. Pento explains, “These currencies will collapse against precious metals as they did in Rome. Prices will go a lot higher as they did in Rome. . . . When people lose faith in a currency’s purchasing power . . . this is why gold has had spectacular three month rally, and I expect it to continue after a little consolidation here. . . .

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Mike Pento Warns Global Central Banks Are Entering The Danger Zone

October 1, 2018

Mike Pento Warns Global Central Banks Are Entering The Danger Zone

Authored by Michael Pento via PentoPort.com,

Investors are experiencing huge moves in commodities, currencies, equities and in sovereign debt across the globe. And now the fall has arrived. Expect the volatility currently witnessed in markets to only surge.

This is because global central banks have overwhelmingly turned hawkish in a vain attempt to gradually let the air out of the massive bubbles they have spent the last decade recreating. Unfortunately, that is not the nature of asset bubbles—they don’t end with a whimper–and they are about to burst in violent fashion.

First off, our central bank hiked rates for the 8th time since December 2015 at the September FOMC meeting. While the Fed did remove the word accommodative from its policy statement, it also raised the neutral rate to 3%, from 2.9% on the Fed Funds Rate. And, most importantly, predicted it would stay above that neutral rate for two years—keeping it at the 3.4% level. It also indicated that December would be the next rate hike and that three more hikes are on the agenda for 2019.

Nevertheless, the Fed is now caught in a hydraulic press of its own making; and is completely unaware of the predicament it is in. An inflation rate of 2% has been its goal for the past decade. And now inflation, when measured by core CPI, is up 2.2% y/y and is up 2.7% y/y on the headline rate. Even though the Fed emphasizes the Personal Consumption Expenditure inflation rate rather than Consumer Price Inflation, it is still aware that inflation is rising above its target.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Michael Pento: When The Yield Curve Inverts Soon, The Next Recession Will Start

June 28, 2018

Michael Pento: When The Yield Curve Inverts Soon, The Next Recession Will Start

Expected timing: this Fall

Collectively, the world’s major central banks have pumped $1.1 trillion into the markets over the past year.

The result of all this money printing is now well known: massively inflated real estate, stock and bond asset price bubbles, as well as extraordinary wealth and income gaps across society.

Some day all of this insanity will end. But how? Will it unwind in an orderly and polite way, as the world’s central planners hope? Or will be disorderly, resulting in painful portfolio losses and mass layoffs?

Michael Pento, fund manager and author of The Coming Bond Bubble Collapse returns to the podcast this week to offer his prediction that events will most likely take the latter route. In fact, he sees the developing inversion of the yield curve as a dependable precursor to the US economy entering recession as soon as this Fall:

The Fed is now raising rates. They raised rates from 0% up to 2%. They’re supposed to do it again in September/October. And again in December. That will be four hikes this year.

They are also selling assets, aka ‘draining their balance sheet’. I say ‘selling’ because that’s exactly what they have to do. Let’s say the Fed is holding a 10-year note that’s due: if they want to destroy that money, they say “OK, Treasury, give me the principal”. The Treasury doesn’t have any money so it has to go the public and raise money. Well, the Treasury will have to do that to the tune of $50 billion per month come October. Right now it’s $30, it has to go in July to $40 billion a month then it goes to $50 billion. That’s $600 billion a year added to the public supply of Treasurys they have to actually finance at a market rate. That’s on top of the $1.2 trillion debt we’re going to have in fiscal 2019.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Money Manager: ‘The Chaos Coming To The Markets Is Here’

February 21, 2018

Money Manager: ‘The Chaos Coming To The Markets Is Here’

Money manager Michael Pento says that profound chaos surrounding the economy is coming. The insolvency is becoming clear, and soon, we will no longer be able to sweep the problem under the rug.

Sitting down with USA Watchdog’s Greg Hunter, Pento discussed the chaos people predicting in the markets and says that it’s already here. Pento is the author of the book titled The Coming Bond Market Collapse, as well as a financial expert and he says the media is lying when they say the economy is doing well.

“There are so many things that can go wrong with rising interest rates.  First of all, you have to understand that the permabulls that you hear on CNBC will tell you there is nothing wrong with rising interest rates.  It is a symbol of growth.  If you look at industrial production and retail sales for January, they were negative.  So, rising rates are occurring, not because of growth, they are caused by insolvency concerns.  That is the key metric here, and they are credit risks and insolvency concerns.”

“For the first time in 40 years, you are going to have bond prices and equity prices in free-fall. That happened in the 1970’s, but it’s going to be worse because in the 1970’s, you didn’t have an insolvency concern. . . The chaos coming to markets is here. It’s not going away, and it’s not going to be brushed under the rug. It’s not going to stay on the sidelines for another few years. The years from 2007 to 2017 were the years central banks were buying everything. There was no volatility, and stocks just went up. Those days have ended, and the volatility is only going to become much more profound.”

Hunter then asks Pento to explain who is insolvent.  The answer isn’t calming in the least.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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