5 MINS AGO! "All Hell Breaks Loose in U.S. Banks on Monday – Here’s Why!" | Jim Rickards

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]The people ask me are we going to have a recession and my answer is we might be in a recession right now and not even know it.

[00:00:07]We could be facing a global recession including China but just focusing on the US cuz that's the Fed's sort of territory. So Powell saying you know the economy is great is nonsense. What he said, he said you know by the end of the year we could be looking at 4.2% unemployment, 3.5 to 4% interest rates and you know kind of 2.7% inflation.

[00:00:31]You know like wait a second, inflation is 8.6 today. How do you get to you know 2.7 number one and then what about rising unemployment and and and higher interest rates? How do you reconcile those things? He said all three of those things.

[00:00:48]But what state of the world could make those things [clears throat] come true?

[00:00:51]There's only one which is a recession. A recession would do it. The recession will raise unemployment, higher interest rates will cause the recession and the recession will cause inflation to go down. So in effect Powell is saying we're going to have a recession.

[00:01:05]Inflation, yeah prices go up so we understand that or maybe [music] put differently the value of your money goes down. You don't get as much for your money, same thing. But inflation broadly speaking has two causes. One is called not to get too technical but it's called cost push. This comes from the supply side. So there's a shortage of oil.

[00:01:23]There and we got a financial and economic war going on between Russia and the United States. US really started US, EU, Canada, Australia, Japan versus Russia.

[00:01:34]That's obviously disrupting supply chain, cutting down energy supply, causing the price of oil to go up etc. So that's coming from the supply side and you're exactly right. The Fed can't drill for oil. The Fed can't plant wheat. The Fed can't make semiconductors. So they can't do anything about this and the supply chains are breaking down. They were breaking down before the war in Ukraine but [music] Ukraine has made it worse.

[00:01:56]The other source of inflation is called um demand pull. And this is when an individuals, you mean all of our viewers and you know, everyday Canadians and Americans worry about inflation. We say, "Well, you know, I'm just thinking about buying a refrigerator. I better buy it now before the price goes up." With a car, house, or whatever it it might be.

[00:02:15]They're different, but they affect each other. When when the when the cost-push inflation from the supply side has enough effect, there's a tipping point or critical threshold in in psychology.

[00:02:25]We say, "You know, maybe it is out of control. I better go buy some stuff."

[00:02:29]Then the velocity of money goes up and then you get inflation. So, the Fed can't do anything about cost-push. They can't do anything about the price of oil. And you're right about that.

[00:02:37]But they're looking at the demand side.

[00:02:39]You know, saying, "Hey, if this supply thing goes on long enough, eventually the psychology will change and we'll get demand pull uh and behavioral." And that is really hard to to change. So, what they're trying to do, they know they can't change the supply side, but they're trying to squash the demand side before it gets out of control. Now, the question, of course, is can they do it?

[00:02:59]The answer is they can do it, but at what cost? So, a general rule of thumb is really simple. You have to get uh forget about nominal interest rates.

[00:03:08]Nominal interest rates are the rates you see on your screen, hear about in the headlines, and all that. Real interest rates are nominal interest rates minus inflation. Take the inflation out and see what's left. Well, right now, real interest rates are about 2%, actually 1 and 1 and 3/4 under the Fed policy rate.

[00:03:25]Inflation's 8.6%.

[00:03:28]So, you know, just round numbers, 1 and 1/2 minus uh 8 and 1/2, uh that's that makes the inflation rate -7. It's nowhere near It's got to be positive two.

[00:03:39]Real rates have to be +2 to to squash inflation. Right now, they're -7. So, that implies that the Fed has to raise interest rates to 10 and 1/2% to get to positive two real interest rates. That's never going to happen.

[00:03:54]They're never going to get there. They will destroy the economy long before they get there. So, the Fed has no hope of squashing inflation from the demand side as you described by raising rates unless inflation comes down for other reasons. So, what they're going to do, they're going to keep raising rates, you know, two, two and a half, three, three and a half, four, hope that inflation comes down from eight to maybe three, although I think that's a stretch. You could get into positive real rate territory, but they're really far away from it. So, I think by the way, I describe what they're trying to do, I should make it clear they're going to fail. They they The only way of The only way inflation comes down the way we're talking about is if they trash the economy, a severe recession. If that happens, yeah, you say, "Well, do you people still need to put gas in their cars?" Well, you're right, but not if they're unemployed cuz they're not going to work. There's a lot here that's just for show. It sounds good on TV, but um that there's a lot less here than we see. I bet the point is this is not over anytime soon. And [clears throat] even if it were, when you break supply chains, you can't just put them back together. It's like breaking a vase in a thousand pieces and you got to go buy a new vase. It's going to take years to undo this damage.

[00:05:04]So, I spoke to the individual who was probably the single individual most responsible for building the modern supply chain. It was 30 years from 1989 to 2019.

[00:05:15]Uh he was the head of one of the largest companies in the world and this is what they did among other things.

[00:05:19]Uh he said, "Jim, you don't understand.

[00:05:21]It took us 30 years to build it. It took us three years to blow it up. It's not going to come back in a year. This is going to take 5, 10, 15 years to build a new one." So, what it's what I call supply chain 2.0. Well, buying a refrigerator is a good idea. Buying a freezer might be a better idea. We're looking at food food shortages by the fall. Now, when I say food shortages in Africa, Middle East, this will mean mass starvation. You may see the greatest humanitarian crisis in history because they literally can't get the food.

[00:05:51]Everyone's like, "Well, gee, you can't get Ukrainian wheat. Uh wheat, what's the big deal? Buy from somewhere else."

[00:05:55]There is no There is nowhere else.

[00:05:56]Canada and the United States grow an enormous amount of wheat, but we use most of it internally, and we feed cuz it's not for humans, by the way. We feed our animals to save feed cows, pigs.

[00:06:06][music] This is how you get beef and pork. This is an example of the supply chain, how it filters all the way through. So, you would expect higher prices to persist. You would expect food shortages. Uh buying a freezer is not a bad idea.

[00:06:19]Um and um the future supply chain is going to be the It goes by different names. Uh Janet Yellen calls it friend shoring. Um Macron calls it constellation.

[00:06:30]Uh I call it a college of nations, but basically, we'll have supply chains and trade, but it'll be sort of members only. So, US, Canada, Australia, Europe, others, Japan, uh will be invited to join, but not China. You know, Russia's going to be in the waiting room for a while. We should We should be better allies with Russia, but the the the the Democrats in the United States have pretty much made that impossible, at least for the short run.

[00:06:54]Uh and then there'll be other countries that are kind of neutral in in that scheme, you know, Brazil, India, and others. But the point is you'll still have trade, and you'll have supply chains, but it'll be kind of friendly countries members only.

[00:07:07]Uh and exclude China. So, that decoupling's going to go ahead. The Chinese seem to be not only fine with it, but they're actually leading the way. Uh you know, semiconductor manufacturing is moving back to the United States.

[00:07:18]Um you know, the 20 billion of a new semiconductor plants of Intel. Why is Taiwan Semiconductor spending [music] over 5 billion dollars to build new semiconductor fabrication plants in the United States? Well, obviously, because they're worried about China.

[00:07:33]We're reshuffling the deck, but it None of this stuff is easy. I mean, semiconductor plants take 5 years to build. A new refinery, forget it. That's 6 7 to 10 years. We haven't had one in the United States since 1977. So, it's going to take a while to do all this.

[00:07:47]What we can do is So, if I said we're definitely going to have inflation, you would know what to do. You'd buy gold, hard assets, land, silver, treasury notes, government bonds, etc. If I said we're definitely going to have deflation, you would also know what to do. You would I would do sell leverage, you would have more cash, and there are other there are other assets you could went to. The problem is we could have both. There's no question we have inflation right now. It's it's it's front and center.

[00:08:13]>> [clears throat] >> But, if the Fed squashes it and causes a recession or worse, you could flip to deflation very quickly. So, this is going to sound like a an obvious statement, but you want is diversification. Sounds obvious, but most people don't know what diversification is. I see people I've got 50 stocks in 10 different sectors.

[00:08:29]I'm highly diversified. I'm like, no, you're not. You have one asset class called stocks. Real diversification, have a slice slice of stocks, gold, real estate, cash, um agriculture is good investment, energy, forget you know, the green new scam. That's a joke. Oil and natural gas are going to be around for a long time.