“I was willing to wait another cycle, but I can’t wait forever,” Daly said of the Fed’s decision last week to leave short-term borrowing costs in their 4.25%-4.50% range rather than cut them, as a couple of her colleagues wanted and as President Trump has demanded.

While that doesn’t mean a September rate cut is a lock, she said, “I would lean to thinking that every meeting going forward is a live meeting to think about these policy adjustments.”

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said there is still plenty of data due out before the Fed’s policy-setting meeting in September, and she’s keeping an open mind. Bloomberg via Getty Images

The two quarter-point interest-rate cuts that Fed policymakers back in June penciled in for this year still “look to be an appropriate amount of recalibration, and less important is, does it happen in September and December than does it happen at all…there’s all kinds of permutations to get those two cuts.”

Daly said there is still plenty of data including a couple of labor market and inflation reports due out before the Fed’s policy-setting meeting, in September, and she’s keeping an open mind.

“We of course could do fewer than two (rate cuts) if inflation picks up and spills over or if the labor market springs back,” Daly said. But “I think the more likely thing is that we might have to do more than two…we also should be prepared in my judgment to do more if the labor market looks to be entering that period of weakness and we still haven’t seen spillovers to inflation.”

A Labor Department report Friday showed US employers added just 73,000 jobs last month, and massive revisions to previously reported data showed only 33,000 jobs were added in the two prior months.

Those figures, to Daly’s mind, don’t mean the job market is precariously weak – in times of economic flux, she said, raw employment numbers are often less informative than ratios like the unemployment rate, which ticked up just a tenth of a percentage point in July to 4.2%.

The Federal Reserve headquarters in Washington, DC. Reuters

Still, she said, looking at a broad dashboard of labor-market measures, there is “evidence after piece of evidence” that the labor market is softening quite a bit compared to last year.

“I would see further softening as an unwelcome result,” she said. “I’m comfortable with the decision we made in July, but I am increasingly less comfortable with making that decision again and again.”

At the same time, she said, there’s no evidence that tariff-driven price increases are seeping more broadly into inflation, and if the Fed waits long enough to be certain it won’t — a process that could take six months or a year, she said – the Fed will “for sure” be too late to move.

The Fed is approaching a “tradeoff space where you are trying to make a judgment about where does policy need to be to continue to put downward pressure on inflation, and where does it need to be to continue to make sure that sustainable employment can be achieved,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t think that July was a necessary change, but I do think, increasingly, policy is not aligned.”

The post Fed’s Mary Daly says time is nearing for rate cuts — may need more than two appeared first on Our Story Insight.

With gold near an all-time high, selling for over $3,200 an ounce, folks are raiding their jewelry boxes and heading to pawn shops, jewelers and smelters to turn their little-worn necklaces, watches, bracelets and earrings into cold hard cash.

“Every day we have more customers just coming in, selling their gold, raiding their cabinets and stuff like that, looking for jewelry,”  said Sabashden M. Hernandez, who works at family-owned A&M Precious Metals in Los Angeles’ jewelry district. “I have not seen anything like this. I’ve been in this business for about eight years and this is pretty crazy for me.”

And at A&M, people are getting their money’s worth. Because the price of gold is so high, customers are getting 99% of the gold’s market value. The shop only takes a 1% cut. 

So how does A&M make a profit? Quantity. On a good day, Hernandez is buying over 400 ounces in gold – at 24k, that’s over $1.2 million.

People are making money by selling and melting their gold, valued for over $3,200 an ounce. Getty Images

The price of gold is so high, customers are getting 99% of the metal’s market value. Getty Images

“A couple years ago, we would have about seven to eight appointments a day. Now we’re in a range of 15 to 20 customers a day,” said Hernandez.

Hernandez says his shop acts as a middleman. The gold is melted down into gold bars, which are then sold to refiners. Refiners turn it into a form that jewelers can work with, getting back to storefronts in no time. And it’s all done in a few block radius in downtown Los Angeles.

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Hernandez holds up a jar filled with gold pellets – the contents weigh exactly 1 kilogram.

“Jewelers here in the jewelry district grab this so they can make chains and stuff,” said Hernandez. “The kilo nowadays is about $107,000.”

Behind the front office is where the magic happens. Alberto Hernandez, Sabashden Hernandez’s uncle, has been smelting gold for more than 20 years. Their smelter is able to hit 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But today it’s running at around 2,000 degrees – roughly the melting point of gold.

Molten gold settles in a mold at A&M Precious Metals in the Jewelry District of Los Angeles. AP

“I have not seen anything like this,” Sabashden M. Hernandez, who works at A&M Precious Metals, said. “I’ve been in this business for about eight years and this is pretty crazy for me.” dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

After the gold is weighed and assayed for quality, it’s thrown in the smelter. In just a few minutes, and with the help of borax to filter out impurities, it’s in molten form. It’s then poured into a mold, cooled off in water, buffed and weighed.

“We smelted it down and we’re going to send that off to the refiner. So that all we were doing was blending it up to make sure we get an even assay when we go to check it right now,” said Alberto Hernandez.

The gold is checked for purity. Fourteen-karat gold is 58.3% pure, while 24-karat gold is 99.9% pure (the market price is based on 24-karat gold).

After it’s checked for purity, the customer walks away with the cash – often surprised by how much money they made.

“I have plenty of customers that say that they’re waiting for gold to go up and now that it’s over $3,000, it’s perfect timing for them. So it’s amazing to hear how long they’ve held on to it,” said Alberto Hernandez.

Hernandez says business changes every day.  When gold is up in the morning, they get more appointments. When it’s down, it’s a little slower. Sometimes customers bring in heirlooms and antiques worth more than their weight in gold.

“I tell them, ‘You sure you want to really melt this down?’” said Hernandez. “’It’s an antique,’ and they just want to do it because they want the money right now because gold’s hot.”

The post Value of gold nearing all-time high, Americans are cashing in appeared first on Our Story Insight.