Mike Shedlock – Debunking the Myth “Consumer Spending is 67% of GDP”

Consumer Spending Myth It is widely believed that consumer spending accounts for approximately two-thirds of the economy. A few of us dispute that claim. Reader Gary writes “You had made the comment more than once that manufacturing is really a much larger part of GDP than is frequently quoted. I could not find how you got there, but ZeroHedge has …

Peter Koenig – Are EU Country Central Banks “Illegally” Buying Government Bonds?

The following text is an English transcript (translation) of an RT Berlin Interview in German regarding an apparent secret agreement between the European Central Bank (ECB) and individual Euro countries’ central banks issuing large amounts of government bonds. The discovery flared up just before the FED raised its base interest rate by a quarter percent on 16 December 2015, signalling the …

Paul Craig Roberts – What Does Today’s “Rate Hike” Mean?

The Federal Reserve raised the interbank borrowing rate today by one quarter of one percent or 25 basis points. Readers are asking, “what does that mean?” It means that the Fed has had time to figure out that the effect of the small “rate hike” would essentially be zero. In other words, the small increase in the target rate from …