Hello my friends, today is May 25th and this is Markets Weekly. So this past week was a choppy week in markets. The S&P 500 basically unchanged for the week. The Nasdaq though didn't make a new all time high. Gold also made a new all time high although it gave a lot of that back heading into the end of the week. So today I want to talk about three things. First. The Fed released its annual survey on the economic well-being of US households. In that the Fed surveys 11,000 US households on a range of topics on the economy. So let's take a look at some of the more interesting results.
Secondly, I think the most exciting week in markets in the past week was in crypto where we saw crypto prices, Bitcoin, Ether absolutely surged relating to the approval of a spot Ether ETF as well as what appears to be changing political winds in Washington towards crypto. And lastly, it seems like the Fed is becoming more and more aware that monetary policy is not as restrictive as the Fed thought. That is to say that our star is higher today than it was in the past.
So let's talk a little bit about that focusing on Waller's latest speech on the subject. OK, starting with the Fed survey on the economic well-being of US households. So overall, the results show that the that US households are feeling OK with about 72% of US households reporting that they are at least doing OK financially. Now over a longer time series, you can see that 72% is actually historically OK. Now there's been a notable deterioration where 78% of households in 2021 reported that they were at least doing OK. And that number is just 72% this past year.
So things are deteriorating. But overall, things are basically in line with how they've been over the past decade. Now, when you dig deeper into this, it seems like what bothers households the most is inflation, where 35% of households are reporting inflation as their main financial challenge. Now, this shouldn't be surprising after all, prices have gone up a lot. Now, I think people on TV will tell you that inflation as a rate of change has gone down to, let's say, 3%. But it seems like households think of inflation more as the level of prices and prices just haven't gone down. They're just increasing at a slower rate. So if you're looking at housing, for example, house prices still say 40% higher than they were just a few years ago. And that, along with other commodities, is definitely causing hardship for households.
Now, I think the most interesting thing in this survey is that there's a big difference between how households perceive their own financial situation and how they perceive the financial situation of those around them. So as we just discussed, 72% of households think they're doing at least okay financially. But when asking about how they perceive their neighbors, people in their community, they tend to think that, tend to perceive that their neighbors are not doing as well. And when asked about the economy nationally, they have an even lower perception, where 22% of the respondents think that the national economy is good or excellent. And just a few years ago, in 2019, 50% of them thought the national economy was doing good or excellent. So respondents basically systemically think that they are, I think, better off than their neighbors and everyone else, which is a very, I think, a really interesting finding.
Now oftentimes, we hear a statistic where US households just don't have enough cash to meet an unforeseen emergency. Now that statistic actually comes from this survey and the latest results show still a very striking finding where about 18% of households surveyed could not meet an emergency expense of less than $100. I find that to be very shocking, especially that unemployment rate is really quite low. Wages have gone up a lot over the past few years. And yet there are 18 people, 18% of households reporting that they would not be able to come up with $100 in an emergency. Now that strikes me as probably less of an income problem and more of a spending problem where you may have certain households that just basically spend all the money they make, not necessarily because they have to, but because they just like to buy things, which is kind of what you see in the rise of buy now pay later.
So more recently, a lot of people, a lot of stores have been experimenting with buy now pay later where they essentially allow customers to buy now and then repay the store in installments over the coming, I'd say months. Now there was also a survey question on the buy now pay later phenomenon and 55% of respondents reported that they chose buy now pay later because it was the only way they can afford buying what they bought. Now 87% also reported that they wanted to spread out of payments and for convenience. Now buy now pay later, it's not for rent or groceries. Overwhelmingly, those transactions are for electronics or fashion. So these are people buying things like the latest cell phones or new shoes or something like that. It doesn't seem like it's something that they need. It's more like something that they want. So I think this is in line with what we were just discussing. This is the US consumer culturally liking to spend a lot of money, even money that they don't have. So I think this is something that's I think pretty well established in the US culture.
So rather than perceive this as some kind of doom, I would say that for there are certain segments of the population that no matter how much money they make, they will spend it all. So you would they will always be indebted. And there are also many famous examples of say actors or musicians making millions and still going broke. Now one other thing that I thought was super interesting in this survey was that there was also a section on crypto. And in it, you can see a very notable decline in interest in crypto. So in 2021, 11% of respondents bought crypto in 2023, just 7%. That makes sense. Crypto prices were going through the moon in 2021. And then we had a bit of a crypto winter. Also interesting to know that the seems like the only reason people buy crypto is because they hope that it will go up in price. There's actually very few people actually using it as a form of payment. Only 1% of respondents saying that they use crypto to actually buy something.
Now the last thing that I thought was really interesting in this survey was the changing attitudes towards education across generations. Now this chart here shows how people perceive the costs and benefits of various levels of education. So for example, 86% of the boomers think that the benefits of a graduate or professional degree exceed its costs. Now what I take away from this chart is that there's a very stark generation of view on education where the boomers think that education, great benefits exceed the costs. But as you go down in generations, all the way to the zoomers, fewer and fewer people think that the benefits of education outweigh their costs. And I think that really this speaks to a very large cultural change in the US. Now when the boomers were growing up, they could pay for college just by working a part time job and they graduated into an economy that was growing jobs are plentiful, salaries are growing and so forth. But the typical zoomer is taking on a lot of debt to go to college. College in some cases costs as much as half a million dollars. And when you graduate, I'm not sure the job market is as great as that great. So I think this makes a lot of sense in this big generational divide. And also might suggest we have some big changes that are going to happen with how education is conducted. I'm not sure it makes sense for college tuition to just skyrocket and for us it happens many schools as we do.
1. So okay, the next thing that I want to talk about is crypto. So over the past week, we saw Ether prices absolutely surge, Bitcoin prices surge as well. And that surge has a lot is seemingly directly related to the approval of spot Ether ETFs. That seems to have been a surprise to many people in the industry who long assume that an Ether ETF probably wouldn't be approved. The approval of an Ether ETF, just like the approval of a Bitcoin ETF, drew a lot of excitement because there are a lot of people who want to front run the inflows. Obviously, when you have an ETF, it's easier for people to go and invest in this asset. People can just go to their broker, click buy, money goes into an ETF, ETF buy Ether and Ether prices go up. And that approval of the Bitcoin spot Bitcoin ETF was very positive for Bitcoin prices.
2. And many people are assuming this will be the same for Ether and that makes a lot of sense. Now, when you look at the actual flows, you can also note that there seems to be some anticipation of this where Bitcoin ETFs did see more inflows after weeks of outflows. A lot of people are anticipating that this could be the next catalyst higher. Now, the approval of the Ether ETF seems to reflect a broader political shift in how crypto is perceived. Now, the house also passed fit 21, which allows the CFTC basically legitimizes crypto by allowing crypto to be brought into the regulated asset class fold, allowing it to basically more widespread adoption.
3. Now, this fit 21 bill is probably not going to go anywhere because the Senate doesn't have any corresponding legislation, but it was a bipartisan bill in the house and it shows that both parties are warming up to the idea of crypto. Now, personally, I think the biggest obstacle to crypto is regulation, whereas the government usually doesn't like to have anyone compete with its currency. Now, if that's changing, I think that's extremely popular, seemingly positive for crypto. I think another big development on the political front is President Trump, again, presidential candidate for the Republican Party, is willing to accept donations in crypto.
4. So that's half the political spectrum being more open to crypto. I suspect that this is a very smart political move because you have a lot of young people who are pro-crypto, and even more importantly, you have a lot of people with a lot of crypto wealth that now have a way, have a party to support to protect that wealth. So they could give a lot of money to the pro-crypto candidate to protect their own interests, and President Trump could get a lot more campaign donations as well. So I think a very smart political move and also very bullish for crypto assets because if eventually there is really widespread support within the regulatory apparatus, I think that's bullish long term.
5. And I will also write about this week how I think the positive surge in crypto assets is going to be positive for other assets as well, because, again, you're basically creating more wealth among an investor class that can rebalance into other asset classes. And there's a lot of interesting research on the subject that I'll go over. Okay, the last thing that I want to talk about this week is our star. So our star is basically, okay, it's an economics concept where it's the interest rate, the real interest rate where the economy is neither growing nor expanding. And the Fed and other central banks like to use our star as a standard to know whether or not monetary policy is being restrictive or stimulative.
6. So if you hold interest rates above our star, that means that you're slowing the economy down, and if interest rates are below our star, that means you're stimulating the economy. Now, the Fed and many other people in the commentary have been really surprised by the resilience of the US economy over the past few years. They all thought that if Fed funds went to five and a half percent, that the economy definitely couldn't be able to handle it. We go into recession and inflation will come back down. But here we are, interest rates at five and a half percent and the economy continues to grow above trend. That is forcing a lot of people to rethink what their art star is, suggesting that our star is probably higher now, which is to say that monetary policy is not as restrictive as thought. And that's actually going to be the topic of the next Jackson home meeting where central bankers around the world discussed just what they got wrong.
7. Now, Governor Waller also had a recent speech on just on Friday directly addressing this topic. Now, he thinks of our star, the markets measure of our star as basically 10 year real interest rates.
And looking at a time series of that, he noticed that the 10 year real interest rates went really low for a long period of time. And post pandemic has surged to about 2%. Suggesting that our star today is higher than it was in the past. Now, in a speech, he gives a number of reasons why he thought our star was lower in the past and could be higher going forward.
Now, again, he's looking at the 10 year real yield as a proxy for our star. So he's looking at now, bring that in mind, he's looking at this from a supply and demand perspective. Now, he knows a number of reasons why real yields could have been lower pre pandemic is because you had a lot of foreigners buying treasuries.
Now, he notes that you had increased openness in capital markets. So you had a lot of foreigners being able to buy treasuries. You had increased central bank buying. So central banks accumulated a whole bunch of foreign reserves. And they usually largely reinvested that into treasuries. And also, he noted that there's a whole lot of sovereign wealth funds.
You can think of it as a lot of, say, countries with a lot of oil revenues or industry revenues, just taking that money investing in US treasuries. And all this foreign buying seems to have pushed yields lower and has pushed real yields lower as well and led to relatively low our star. If you look at a chart of foreign buyers of treasuries, you can definitely see that.
Whereas in the past, there are a lot of foreigners buying treasuries. But what you also note is that after the great financial crisis, foreigners have lost a lot of interest in treasuries. So those few points that had kept our star low don't seem to be as prominent as they going forward.
Now, other things Governor Waller mentioned was an aging population. He's thinking being that as population ages, boomers are going to buy more treasuries because that's, you know, what textbooks tell you as a safe asset. And that's going to push downward pressure on interest rates as well.
Although I will note though that there's some interesting research by Schwab, again, giant brokerage account, looking into their customers. They actually find that boomers tend to have larger allocations to equities than the younger cohorts. So that conventional wisdom doesn't seem to be true.
Governor Waller also mentioned regulatory demand for treasuries as putting downward pressure on interest rates. Now, going forward, his takeaway seems to be that as we have increasing supply of treasuries through large deficits, that's going to put upward pressure on interest rates and probably mean that our star is going to be higher going forward than in the past.
Again, he's very circumspect. A lot of uncertainty here, but based on the supply and demand framework, you know, the whole, in the past, these big demand drivers, foreigners, bank regulation, things like that, probably not going to be as prominent as they are going forward. And at the same time, you have a huge surge in issuance by the US government, fiscal deficit estimated to be 6% a year forever. And that argues for higher real interest rates and in his framework and higher our star.
Now, taking a step back, if you look at what the Fed thinks about our star from their dot plot, you can see that it seems like FOMC market participants basically don't really think our star has changed all that much.
So we continue to think our stars about 0.5% real or 2.5% nominal. And only until recently, only until the last March dot plot, do we see them mildly adjusting their our star estimate from 0.5% to 0.6% real. And that is to say, it seems like most of them think that in the longer run, Fed funds will go to 2.6%, right, 2% inflation plus 0.5%, 2.6% real.
The market, though, is just way ahead of them. If you look at market pricing for for the path of it policy, market thinks that the rate cut cycle is going to bottom at about 3.9%. So, Fed is thinking that longer run interest rates, you know, probably 2.6%, market is thinking 3.8%. Fed is thinking that the our star about 0.6% real market thinking based on 10 year real yields, it's about 2%.
So, the market is just way ahead of the Fed in realizing that, you know, the structure of the economy has changed, maybe aging, maybe deficit spending. In a way, something is different that makes interest rates today less restrictive than, well, so means making 5.5% interest rates today less restrictive than they would be in the past.
Now, the Fed is really behind on the subject, but it doesn't really matter because the market has already priced, priced this new regime in. But definitely will be interesting to see how long it takes the Fed to get on the same page as the market and whether or not the market will, you know, take that in, go even further.
In any case, that's all I've prepared for today. Thanks so much for tuning in. If you're interested in my thoughts, please check out my blog, FedGuy.com, and if you're interested in learning more about macro markets, check out my online courses at centralbanking101.com.