Is America booming or busting? Hard to tell as the numbers speak from both sides of their mouth

Barron’s/Randall W. Forsythe/4-15-2022

“What one encounters more often than not on financial television appears to be the inverse [of considering two opposing ideas at the same time] – simplistic analysis that leads to an apparently inevitable (and usually bullish) conclusion.”

USAGOLD note 1: Forsythe sifts through the thinking of a number of analysts without really answering the question posed in the headline. Toward the end of his column, he does provide a clue to where he thinks this all might be headed by passing along Zoltan Pozsar’s observation that central banks “cannot print oil to heat or wheat to eat or large tankers to transport oil.”

USAGOLD note 2: Stagflation does have a way of speaking out of both sides of its mouth – divergent signals from both inflation and stagnation at the same time. It confuses investors who think narrowly in terms of stocks, bonds and real estate as the only options. During the stagflationary 1970s, investors successfully resolved the cognitive dissonance Forsythe laments through ownership of gold and silver, both of which performed admirably during the period.