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2022-01-10 16:01:00 First months of 2022 crucial for Biden agenda as November midterms loom

U.S. President Joe Biden has three years left in office, but some of his domestic agenda may have a much shorter clock.

The White House has a small window of time to pass any meaningful laws in 2022, including the ‘Build Back Better’ plan, Biden allies tell Reuters, before Congress shifts its attention to the November midterm elections. If Democrats in swing districts get cold feet about passing sweeping legislation as voting gets closer, the $2 trillion landmark bill that funds universal preschool and climate initiatives could be derailed entirely.

Democrats believe chances are slim they will retain a narrow majority in both houses of Congress, which allowed them to pass the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill in 2021.

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2022-01-09 15:10:42 Real Estate in the Metaverse is booming. Is it really such a Crazy Idea?

The idea of spending thousands or even millions of dollars to buy fictitious “land” in a virtual world sounds, to be frank, absurd.

But in recent months, we’ve seen significant investments in virtual land within the metaverse. PwC is among the latest to dive in, having purchased real estate in The Sandbox, a virtual gaming world, for an undisclosed amount.

Meanwhile, the Metaverse Group, a real estate company focused on the metaverse economy, reportedly bought a piece of land in Decentraland, another virtual platform, for USD 2.43m.

Importantly, as in the real world, it is and increasingly will be possible to buy things in the metaverse – including real estate.

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2022-01-08 19:35:07 Why New Year’s chaos may signal a more balanced - but volatile - stock market in 2022 as investors grapple with a hawkish Fed

The past week saw big market swings as investors rung in the first week of trading in 2022, and market watchers pointed to the prospect of more volatility as they grapple with the Federal Reserve’s ability to fight inflation without tipping the economy into recession.

“We think markets are trying to figure out how aggressive the Fed will be in removing accommodation and tightening and if it possibly will make a policy mistake.”

The release of the minutes of the Fed’s Dec. 14-15 policy meeting stoked the uncertainty. They revealed that policy makers had discussed being more aggressive in raising rates than previously anticipated and had talked about the possibility of beginning to shrink the size of the Fed’s balance sheet more quickly than they had done when they ended an earlier round of quantitative easing spurred by the financial crisis.

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2022-01-07 18:24:13 Transparency Means Different Things to Different People

Recently Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that “transitory has different meanings to different people.” I believe that their pledge to have “full transparency” has the same ambiguity with a lack of full clarity.

It is true that many of the monetary policy components the Fed is deciding upon are discussed. But it is what is not said leaves much to be desired in terms of completely conveying upcoming monetary policy changes. There are also subtleties in words used to describe forthcoming adjustments, such as tapering their asset balance sheet, and the beginning of interest rate normalization. It is widely known that the Federal Reserve’s actions are data-driven and as that data changes so does the outlook of the Federal Reserve. However, there was no mention either in the statement or the press conference about winding down their assets accumulated on their balance sheet.

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2022-01-06 19:13:45 Analysis-Investors brace for quantitative tightening as Fed sends hawkish message

Another barometer of Federal Reserve hawkishness is making a bigger appearance on investors’ dashboards: quantitative tightening.

Minutes from the Fed’s December meeting released on Wednesday showed that officials had discussed shrinking the U.S. central bank’s overall asset holdings as well as raising interest rates sooner than expected to fight inflation, with “many” judging the appropriate pace of the Fed’s balance sheet reduction would be faster this time.

Investors said the hawkish signal bolsters the case for those who believe the central bank will need to act more decisively in order to contain inflation, and could fuel further bets on higher yields while continuing to shake up the growth and technology shares that powered last year’s dynamic stock rally.

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2022-01-05 16:00:02 New auto sales improved in 2021, but still a long way before full recovery

U.S. new vehicle sales rebounded slightly last year from 2020′s dismal numbers, but were still about 2 million below the years before the coronavirus pandemic.

The reason? Although there are plenty of customers who want to buy new vehicles at hefty prices, there still aren’t enough computer chips for the industry to fully crank up its factories. So supplies are short, prices are high, and many customers can’t get what they want.

Sales hit just over 15 million vehicles in 2021, up 3.4% from 2020, the year the pandemic took hold in the U.S.

"Demand is not off at all," analyst says. "What is off is sales, because the inventory doesn’t exist."

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2022-01-05 15:27:03 Global Central Bank Gold Holdings Rose to 36,000 Tons in 2021, Increase Attributed to Dollar's Decline

The amount of gold held in reserves by central banks as of September 2021 grew to a new high of 36,000 tons for the first time since 1990. According to the World Gold Council (WGC), this increase in central banks’ gold holdings to a 31-year-high came after the institutions successfully added 4,500 tons of the precious metal over the past decade.

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2022-01-04 17:40:12 Gold Bull Market To Resume In 2022

Gold’s decline in 2021 occurred in spite of the fastest pace of inflation in almost 40 years, which has led many investors to write off the metal as a poor hedge against inflation. In my view, this is exactly the wrong conclusion to draw.

The widespread scepticism towards gold among the investment community likely provides an excellent opportunity to buy the metal as the fundamental backdrop continues to improve. The metal has registered a series of higher lows and appears to be consolidating ahead of a resumption of its multi-year bull market.

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2022-01-04 17:15:36 The First Trading Day of 2022 Results in Strong Declines in Both Gold and Silver

The first trading day contained strong bullish market sentiment for U.S. equities and dollar strength.

The dollar gained 0.632 points or a percentage gain of 0.66%. Concurrently U.S. equities all traded to higher ground, with all three major indices closing near their record highs. The Dow Jones industrial average gained 246.76 points, a percentage gain of 0.68%. The NASDAQ composite gained 1.2% or 187.83 points, and the Standard & Poor’s 500 gained 30.38 points taking the index to a record high close at 4796.49.

The combination of a strong performance in U.S. equities, U.S. dollar strength and rising interest rates vis-à-vis U.S. debt instruments pressured the precious metals lower across the board.

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2022-01-03 22:24:37 As US Inflation Skyrockets White House Blames Monopolies, Economist Calls for Price Controls

U.S. inflation is red hot and a number of analysts and economists are predicting America will face further economic issues as politicians and the Biden administration blame corporations. This perspective on rising inflation has led finance experts to believe that price controls could ease America’s economic burdens.

America is dealing with the worst inflation in over four decades and the White House thinks that tougher anti-monopoly policy could fix the situation. Furthermore, a few congressional leaders want to stifle online ecommerce giants like Amazon with proposals like Senator Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) American Innovation and Online Competition Act. Senator Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) Platform Competition and Opportunity Act (PCOA) is also aimed at reforming anti-trust laws. The White House is blaming the loss of purchasing power in America on monopolistic behavior.

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