A reading of a new piece from the Wall Street Journal that NLW argues shows a shifting mainstream narrative. NLW argues the piece reflects a changing conversation in mainstream financial circles about the possibility of inflation on the other side of new Federal Reserve policy. Source link
Inflation
19 posts
Accredited investors worried about out-of-control inflation have poured millions into Bitwise’s bitcoin fund as a means to preserve the value of their portfolios. An amended filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week showed the asset manager had raised, in total, just under $8.9 million for its Bitcoin Fund, which provides accredited U.S. investors with exposure to bitcoin through a traditional product. This marks the single-largest increase in assets raised in the fund’s two-year history. A filing from 2019 shows the Bitcoin Fund had attracted $4.1 million in investment, meaning the fund has more than doubled in size in […]
Federal Reserve officials said Wednesday that they would hold U.S. interest rates close to zero and work to push inflation above 2% “for some time.” Source link
One of the interesting things about cryptocurrency investors is that they really do look at the world very differently from many of their counterparts in traditional finance. The thinking goes something like this: The efforts of governments and central banks to repair the economy are doomed to fail, and likely to make the situation worse. There is no point in moving to a defensive investment strategy, because prices for digital assets are going to the moon. Every time the stock market goes up, it just validates the reality that the dollar is being debased by trillions of dollars of central-bank money printing. […]
The Hedge Fund legend says in a new interview the Federal Reserve’s policies have created a massive asset bubble while making both inflation and deflation more likely. Today on the Brief: Markets recover slightly but vaccine trade falters as AstraZeneca pauses trials Bitcoin and gold correlation increases sharply around dollar instability Mastercard launches simulation tools to help develop central bank digital currencies Our main discussion: Stan Druckenmiller speaks! NLW breaks down the famed investor’s interview with CNBC today, including: The merging of the Fed and the Treasury Mania in financial assets A growing fear of future inflation Why the next three to […]
Alexander Lipton is the CTO of Sila, a visiting professor and Dean’s Fellow at the Jerusalem Business School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and a Connection Science Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. On Aug. 27, the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave a widely watched speech entitled “New Economic Challenges and the Fed’s Monetary Policy Review” at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium. In his remarks, Powell announced the Fed would allow inflation to run above its long-term 2% level. More immediately, the Fed will continue with its policy of keeping the Fed funds rate at (almost) zero and buying […]
Frances Coppola, a CoinDesk columnist, is a freelance writer and speaker on banking, finance and economics. Her book “The Case for People’s Quantitative Easing” explains how modern money creation and quantitative easing work, and advocates “helicopter money” to help economies out of recession. The Federal Reserve has just announced a change to its inflation targeting regime. Instead of shooting to hit 2% every year, it will aim to achieve 2% “on average” over an unspecified period of time. So, if inflation runs below target in 2020 and 2021 because of a pandemic-induced recession, the Fed might allow inflation to rise above […]
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell did not raise many eyebrows Thursday morning when he announced the U.S. central bank would encourage some periods of inflation above its 2% target in certain circumstances to boost the long-term economy. In remarks before a virtual version of the annual Jackson Hole symposium, Powell said the Fed was looking to bolster the labor market, though this is largely an issue Congress would have to deal with amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The current recession differs from most previous financial downturns because of its underlying cause; namely, lockdowns rather than the after-effects of an overheated economy, […]
“Bitcoin is … the only known commodity in the universe that has a deterministic and fixed supply,” the Winklevoss brothers wrote in a blog post saying the cryptocurrency may one day hit $500,000. Source link
An economic historian and one of Foreign Policy’s “Top Global Thinkers of the Decade” discusses post-COVID-19 global economics and politics. Our guest today is Adam Tooze. Adam holds the Shelby Cullom Davis Chair of History at Columbia University and serves as director of its European Institute. He is known for his books “The Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global Order” and “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World.” In this conversation, Adam Tooze and NLW discuss: Source link
The numbers are all over the place and the narratives are even more complicated, so what’s the real story with inflation? There is perhaps nothing more important or contentious in macroeconomics right now than the question of inflation. On the one hand, there is a growing concern that rapidly growing money supply and increasing central bank balance sheets will inevitably lead to inflationary pressures. On the other, critics of that point of view point to significant countervailing forces such as the 10% unemployment rate and growing savings rate among consumers. So who is right?What are the specific narratives trying to say? What […]
Publicly traded business intelligence company MicroStrategy said it will invest $250 million of its excess cash in bitcoin, gold and other “alternative assets” over the next 12 months as a hedge against U.S. dollar (USD) inflation. Disclosure The leader in blockchain news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the highest journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups. Source link
The Federal Reserve appears ready to pursue yet another untested strategy that could ultimately boost inflation – and possibly prices for bitcoin. The Fed is “preparing to effectively abandon its strategy of pre-emptively lifting interest rates to head off higher inflation,” according to a new report in the Wall Street Journal. The shift signals an explicit willingness by the central bank to tolerate higher inflation, at a time when the spreading coronavirus continues to ravage the economy. The U.S. unemployment rate stands at 11%, a level not witnessed since the early 1940s until this year. The Fed’s extra loosening of monetary policy could help support prices for bitcoin, which many cryptocurrency investors speculate […]
One of the things crypto traders like about bitcoin is that it’s resistant to inflation, potentially serving as a hedge against the trillions of dollars of money that central banks have printed this year to address the coronavirus-inflicted economic collapse. But what if a cryptocurrency were designed to produce its own inflation – as a good thing? You’re reading First Mover, CoinDesk’s daily markets newsletter. Assembled by the CoinDesk Markets Team, First Mover starts your day with the most up-to-date sentiment around crypto markets, which of course never close, putting in context every wild swing in bitcoin and more. We follow the money so […]
Why the Fed’s strategy on inflation is changing and why the definition used by America’s central bank may be hurting regular people. Source link
While fears of a “great monetary inflation” have driven the recent bitcoin narrative, other aspects like censorship resistance and peaceful protest matter just as much. Today’s main topic: Why inflation isn’t the only bitcoin narrative that matters. When bitcoin’s halving coincided with the most aggressive central bank policy of all time, it set a clear narrative framework for bitcoin as an inflationary hedge. This was captured by people like legendary hedge fund investor Paul Tudor Jones, who warned of a “great monetary inflation.” In this episode, NLW argues 1) that inflation could be a dangerous narrative to focus on too closely due to […]
Federal Reserve officials see U.S. inflation as likely to stay below 2% over the next three years, based on a new summary of economic predictions released Wednesday by the central bank. Prices for personal consumption expenditures are expected to climb just 1% this year, down from a December projection of 1.9%, according to the document. Inflation will average 1.5% next year and 1.7% in 2022, the officials projected. “Weaker demand and significantly lower oil prices are holding down consumer price inflation,” the Fed’s monetary-policy committee said Wednesday at the conclusion of a two-day, closed-door meeting. The Fed made no change to its […]
Mining reward halvings are a hot topic in the crypto markets, as they alter a cryptocurrency’s supply and often have a significant impact on prices. Bitcoin, the biggest cryptocurrency by market value, underwent its third halving on May 11, which reduced the reward per block mined to 6.25 bitcoin from 12.5. Bitcoin offshoots bitcoin cash and bitcoin SV also witnessed halvings in April. Next in line is zcash (ZEC), a privacy-focused cryptocurrency first created in 2016 that uses a proof-of-work (or mining) algorithm and encrypts user information within shielded transactions. Currently, it is the 26th largest cryptocurrency by market value, as per […]
Paul Tudor Jones, a pioneer of the modern hedge fund industry, is ready to bet on bitcoin’s price as an inflation hedge. Jones’ Tudor BVI Global Fund, managed by Tudor Investment Corp., has been authorized to hold as much as “a low single-digit percentage exposure percentage” of its assets in bitcoin futures, according to a note sent to investors this month. The firm manages $38 billion, of which $22 billion is in the flagship BVI fund. Bloomberg News reported the disclosure earlier Thursday. It is not clear from the letter whether Tudor’s fund has begun buying futures, what kind (physically delivered or […]