As if inflation wasn't "mysterious" enough to the Fed already, today the New York Fed joined the Atlanta Fed first in releasing its own measure to track underlying inflation called, simply, the Underlying Inflation Gauge. What is notable is that this latest inflation tracker shows prices behaving quite differently from traditional indexes this year.
Submitted by Ronan Manly, BullionStar.com
On August 10, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) published an article about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY) custody gold and the NY Fed’s gold vault. This vault is located under the New York Fed’s headquarters at 33 Liberty in Manhattan, New York City.
Total debt held by US household reached $12.73 trillion in the first quarter of 2017, finally surpassing its $12.68 trillion peak reached during the recession in 2008 according to the NY Fed's latest quarterly report on household debt. This marked a$479 billion increase from a year ago, and up $149 billion from Q4 2016 after 11 consecutive quarters of growth since the deleveraging period immediately following the Great Recession.
the quick and durty breakdown:
In general, most people would agree that the housing collapse of 2008/2009 was a negative event in U.S. history. A combination of misinformed regulations from Washington D.C., low interest rates, poor underwriting standards that allowed for, among other things, the idiotic "cash out" mortgage, and an insatiable demand for securitizations drove one of the biggest asset bubbles in history which almost brought down the entire global financial system.
The New York Fed's 'decidedly-more-optimistic-than-Atlanta-Fed's-GDPNow-model' NowCast model for GDP growth just tumbled back to reality after a week of dismal data finally forced its hand. Treasury bond yields are extending their tumble as NYFed slashes Q1 growth to just 0.8% (from 1.5% in Feb) and collapsed Q2 growth to 1.2% from 1.9% last week. This cuts the entire H1 estimate from 1.5% to 1.0%... shamed down to GDPNow's reality.
Q1 cut...
And Q2 slashed...
And what drove the drastic cut...