Stagflation Warning: The 1970s Economy Is Back

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Oh, no, stagflation that dirty, dirty word, dirty word from the 1970s rearing its ugly head again, what it means to you, your finances, your portfolio, what you need to do. growth was much slower than expected in the last quarter, fourth quarter of 2025. No bueno.

GDP, GDP adjusted downward, that’s becoming a bit of a trend, whether it be jobs numbers being adjusted downward, and now the GDP numbers being adjusted downward point 7%, the previous estimate was point 4%. Chop that in half.

no good. Okay, what stagflation? Okay. stagflation is a an economy that is stagnating, not growing. And in the case 1970s, it was going backwards could be in a recessionary type of a situation. And you also have an inflationary environment. Well, the January core inflation was 3.1%. I want to remind everybody, okay, longtime listeners know what is the Fed’s target rate?

2%. What is the watchdog on Wall Street? Judy Shelton, old school sound money people’s target rate? Zero. That’s what the target rate should be for inflation is zero. When it’s not zero, guess what? It’s a tax on you. That’s right. The value of your money is your dollars are shrinking. Okay? Your dollars are shrinking. They’re not worth as much. Point out again.

30 years ago, the founding of Markowski Investments, the value of your dollar has dropped by 54%. 54%. Anyway, anyway, where we’re at right now? Well, Trump yesterday called out Jerome Powell once again. Jerome, what’s up, man? You got a lower rates. We need an emergency meeting now demanding that he cut rates.

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You know that old saying you caught between a rock and a hard place? Well, this is the problem with the Federal Reserve. We’ve explained this before as well. Rock and a hard place. Federal Reserve’s got two jobs. Two priorities. And I want to remind all of our new listeners, you cannot, the word priorities, again, it doesn’t make any sense. Doesn’t make any sense. Like one of those George Carlin.

words out there like military intelligence, it’s an oxymoron. It doesn’t make any sense because a priority you can have, Priorities, well, yet, you’ve got divided attention there. Therefore, it can’t be a priority. Anyway, there are priorities, again, fake word. Well, full employment and keeping inflation down. The full employment thing, again, quite frankly, none of the Fed’s business as far as I’m concerned.

None of the feds business whatsoever. That’s not their department going out there and create the only job jobs that the fed creates are egghead jobs at their banks around the country. I don’t know what I got a 500 economists working there. Yay. The only thing that should be concerned about is sound money. That’s it. Now with the inflation numbers as they’ve been put out there. How do you go about lower rates? And again, you get a lot of

You got lot of sycophants out there that want to basically they would love to goose the economy. They would love to goose the economy, lower rates and think that everything’s going to be moving and grooving again. And I’m not buying it one bit. Let’s just go through the numbers. Okay. As far as inflation is concerned, because people I’m sorry, people on the right inflation.

We’re not at the levels we were under Biden by any stretch the imagination that’s there’s no doubt about that but Are they where they need to be? I Don’t know. Let’s just let’s do year over year. We’ll do February to February Gas for your house Gas for your house up 11 % 11 % and it’s again take the whole war situation out of it that that’s not even in these numbers yet fuel oil for your house up

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6.2 % electricity up 4.8 % medical care up 4.1 % food away from home up 3.9 % shelter up 3 % food at home up 2.4 % transportation up 2.2 new cars 0.5 use cars down 3.2 gasoline down 5.6 but you can basically scrub that number and that was February we’re in March now

different scenario. Let’s do the past five years. And I want you to pay attention to these numbers and think about well, hmm. Hmm. If I got a raise over the past five years that just even allows me to keep up with the could these costs. I got a raise of my my salary going up by the levels just to keep up with these items. Again, and these are bare necessity items. These are things that we have to buy.

all the time. CPI gasoline, past five years, this is February to February, up 17.6%. Used cars up 19.3%. New cars up 19.4%. Food at home, 26%. Health insurance up 26%. Shelter up 28%. Food away from home up

30 % fuel oil up 34 % electricity up 36 % home prices up 40 % transportation up 45 % gas utilities up 48 % dozen eggs up 56 % auto insurance up 60 % ground beef 70 % coffee up 102 % if you have

congratulations. Congratulations. Okay, if your salary has kept up with these numbers, but I’m just here to tell you, that’s not the case for most of the country. And in my book, again, you don’t have to listen to me if you don’t believe this is the case. I think our biggest concerns should always be about how others are doing, not just ourselves. That’s, you know, we should care about our neighbors, right? We all belong.

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to one another as Mother Teresa once said, and these are things that should concern everyone. Okay, now what? Well, what do you need to do with your finances? The same thing we’ve been saying for the past 30 years, you need to be an owner. You need to be an owner because you know what that’s kept up with these numbers? And again, they’ve gone parabolic as of late, but like I said,

You lost 54, 55, 56 % of your buying power over the past 30 years, depending on the numbers. You better own assets. Yeah, you better have your money working for you. It’s just that simple. It’s the only way. It’s the only way. All the nonsensical portfolios that the big firms put out, 64, it was all nonsense, quite frankly. It didn’t keep up with these numbers.

So whereas you’ve seen your assets grow over that period of time, have they really kept up with everything else? That’s what you need to do. That’s how hard your money needs to work for you. What’s gonna happen moving forward? Again, I don’t know. Like I said, I don’t know where the off-ramp is on this war. I know. So the stagflation, get Carteresque. There’s no doubt about that. That could happen, my friends.

very much in the cards and you need to be prepared. How are you prepared for this? Well, you know what? You’ve got a well diversified portfolio that, yep, you might take your hits when the markets sell off to some degree, but where are you gonna come out on the other side? Thanks for tuning in. Hit the subscribe button. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.