Inflation is running hot right now. The May CPI data came in hotter than expected, a trend we’ve seen every month this year. But the Federal Reserve and the mainstream financial media continue to insist inflation “transitory.” Peter Schiff recently appeared with Tucker Carlson on Fox News to talk about skyrocketing prices.
Peter started by pointing out that the year-over-year increase in CPI is 5%, and if you annualized the last three months, it will hit somewhere in the neighborhood of 8% by the end of the year.
But I think the back half of the year is going to be a lot worse than the front half because businesses have been somewhat reluctant to pass on their exploding costs to their customers. I think they’ve been hoping the Fed was right. But I think they’re going to give up hope later in the year and they’re really going to start increasing prices at a much greater rate.”
We’re already seeing some companies raise prices to cover rising labor and material costs. Chipotle recently announced a 4% increase in menu prices.
Tucker asked if there is a way out of this. Peter said, “Unfortunately, no.”
The Fed is pretending that it’s transitory because they really have no ability to control it because it’s the Fed that’s creating it.”
Peter pointed out that every dollar of government spending has to be paid for. And despite the pandemic winding down, US government spending doesn’t appear to be winding down at all. The Biden administration continues to run massive deficits and has announced multi-trillion spending plans for the future.
Right now, they’re not taxing and spending. They’re printing and spending. So, every time you’re paying higher prices, you’re really paying higher taxes. And taxes, unfortunately, are going way up, especially on the middle class.”
In a nutshell, the government is causing inflation and it’s creating an illusion of a recovering economy.
That’s where all the stimulus money is coming from. The reason the economy looks like it’s growing is because the government has created inflation, which creates the illusion of economic growth. But the reality is the economy is not growing.”
And Peter said the CPI doesn’t even come close to capturing the real extent of rising prices.
A lot of people point to the 1970s and all the inflation we had back then. But we had a totally different CPI in the 1970s. If we were using the 1970s CPI today, we would already be experiencing double-digit inflation.”
