The Fed Hiked Itself into Insolvency – Ep. 423

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Mainstream Forecasts Incorporating Recession
We are in the early stages of this bubble popping.  That's why, if you look now at a lot of the mainstream forecasts, all of a sudden, they're all incorporating recession. The probability of recession is now very high over the next couple of years.  I read J.P. Morgan now is saying that there is a 70% probability that the U.S. is in recession by the end of 2020. In fact, most of the forecasts I'm looking at now predict that the U.S. will either enter recession next year or in the following year. This is a huge change from where people were just a few months ago, where there were no recessions as far as the eye can see. Now we're staring them in the face.
Third Consecutive Drop in Small Business Confidence
One thing that really hasn't changed so much is that you have all this optimism that still abounds. It doesn't make sense to me that people could be so optimistic about an economy that they concede is so close to recession. Now, I think on Tuesday we did get a drop in small business confidence, it's the third consecutive monthly drop, and three months ago, small business confidence hit an all-time record high. But if you have more of these small business owners thinking that we are a year away from recession, in fact less than a year if you think recession is going to start in 2019 - we're going to be in 2019 in a few weeks. So, if you think recession is so close, how much longer can you remain so confident?

The Fed Doesn't Have Recession in its Forecast
Now, of course, the Fed doesn't have recession in its forecast; not even close.  The National debt is careening toward $22 trillion and these guys are putting out their rosy estimates for economic growth.  They're not starting to factor in these recession forecasts that are becoming more and more mainstream.

Fed Funds Rate in Negative Territory in Real Terms
The problem for the Federal Reserve is that they are trying to keep this bubble from imploding, but the task is impossible because enough air has already come out of it. Interest rates have already risen to the point where the camel's back has been broken. The Fed has now backtracked into admitting that we're just slightly below "neutral". We're one more rate hike away from "neutral" even though one more rate hike will still leave the Fed Funds Rate in negative territory in real terms, not in nominal terms. If you accept the government's inflation numbers and we got CPI and PPI numbers that came out yesterday and today - if you look at the core, we've got the hottest core in 7 years.