By Robert Romano The unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics was down slightly to 3.5 percent, according to the latest data by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as peak employment persists in the U.S. ahead of an expected recession. By 2024, the Federal Reserve expects unemployment will be up to 4.6 percent. […]

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By Robert Romano “[W]e would not proceed with this without support from Congress, and I think that would ideally come in the form of an authorizing law, rather than us trying to interpret our law to enable this.” That was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in March 2021 , noting the fact that when it […]

By Robert Romano The Federal Reserve Board of Governors after its March 22 meeting once again hike the Federal Funds Rate, this time to a range of 4.75 percent to 5 percent , in a bid to calm consumer inflation that remains elevated at 6 percent, with at least one more interest rate hike expected at the next meeting from May 2 to May 3 . That is, assuming the wheels don’t fall off the U.S. […]

By Robert Romano Since the beginning of 2020, marketable U.S. treasuries have increased by $7.5 trillion as the total national debt ballooned to $31.4 trillion, and mortgage debt has increased by $2.4 trillion to $11.92 trillion, according to the latest data compiled by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the New York Federal Reserve . Of the $7.5 trillion, $3 trillion was […]

  By Robert Romano Despite taking action to put Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank into receivership under provisions of federal law in the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial legislation by the U.S. Treasury, Federal Reserve and FDIC on March 12— as much as $230 billion of uninsured deposits in these two banks are now being guaranteed —regional bank stocks have continued tanking amid a […]

By Robert Romano If anything has a knack of making presidents in otherwise commanding positions into one-term presidents, it is recessions of the U.S. economy. Just ask Herbert Hoover, who lost in a landslide in 1932 during the Great Depression as unemployment reached 25 percent . That had been preceded by outright […]

By Robert Romano Consumer inflation the past 12 months has increased 6.0 percent, down from 6.4 percent a month ago— a 0.8 percent increase from Feb. 2022 just fell off the 12-month chart reading —according to the latest data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the Federal Reserve continues to eye further rate hikes in order to tame what has been persistent inflation. A 2 percent decrease in […]

By Robert Romano Amid a spectacular banking crash over the weekend, the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury have intervened to guarantee $230.6 billion of uninsured deposits at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) totaling $151.6 billion in California and Signature Bank in New York totaling $79 billion. It goes without saying this is a terrible precedent. There are $20.8 trillion of  checkable and time and savings deposits of which $1 trillion is said to be uninsured —that is, those in […]

By Robert Romano The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the now-released President’s Budget is projecting just 0.6 percent in inflation-adjusted real growth of the U.S. economy in 2023 as the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2023 and peak at 4.6 percent in 2024 […]