“Where The Money’s At”

Inflation clocked in at 8.5% on the consumer price index (CPI) in March. Producer prices (PPI) rose at an 11.2% rate – the highest jump in prices since the government began publishing the number in 2010. “At that pace,” Bill Bonner commented blithely yesterday as his custom, “the real value of the government’s $30 trillion trash pile of debt will be reduced by $3 trillion this year. And the money shufflers in Washington get to keep on shuffling the cash to their friends, clients… and most important… to themselves.” As we have laboriously detailed, the Fed has one hand tied behind its back. The other is wedged between a rock and hard place of their own mechanition. “The usual guidance to fight a rising cost of living is to buy precious metals,” Dave Gonigam advises in the 5 Min. Forecast, “which the late John Pugsley thought was a fine idea… but he preferred to attack the problem at the source.”