- This is another big week for economic data; it is a holiday-shortened week
- On Friday we get the big Non-Farm Payroll report
- If it’s a good number, somehow Donald Trump will try to take credit for it, as he has for the rise in the stock market
- But I think that the job numbers, while maybe not bad just yet, but I think we will have a lot of problems with the non-farm payroll numbers in 2017 as the air starts coming 0ut of the part-time job bubble while Trump is in office
- But we did get some economic news today, most importantly, the minutes from the last Federal Open Market Committee Meeting and
- What do you know? The members of the FOMC are concerned that maybe, they’re not optimistic enough when it comes to growth
- Because of the stimulus packages that may be passed by Donald Trump, that they may be wrong, and that the economy could grow faster than they think
- They also were worried that they might overshoot on the downside on unemployment
- Unemployment could actually get even lower than what they thought
- And therefore that ultra-low unemployment may put some upward pressure on inflation
- Of course, this is all the Keynesian/Phillips Curve myth
- That low levels of unemployment are what cause inflation
- Ironically, it is the Federal Reserve that causes inflation and there is going to be
- Consumer price increases that are the consequences of the inflation that the Fed has already created and that the Fed is going to create
- In fact, if we do have a stimulus package that gets through Congress early in 2017
- That includes tax cuts and government spending increases which results in a larger deficit
- The inflationary forces are not going to be the debt itself, but the Fed’s willingness to accommodate those deficits with more aggressive monetary easing
- In fact, the complexion of the FOMC is actually going to get more dovish next year as some of the so-called hawks, and of course, none of them are actually hawks, it’s all degrees of dovishness
- Some of the less dovish members will be leaving and will probably be replaced by members that are just as dovish as everybody else
- So I think the Fed will be willing and able to accommodate these deficits
- That is what is going to cause inflation
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