E The Secret Fed Plan To Buy Gold

When I spoke to a senior official at the Federal Reserve the other day, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

If the American economy moves into the next recession with interest rates already near zero, the markets will take the interest rates for all interest bearing securities well into negative numbers.

At that point, our central bank’s primary tool for stimulating US businesses will become utterly useless, ineffective, and impotent.

What else is in the tool bag?

How about large-scale purchases of Gold (GLD)?

You are probably as shocked as I am with this possibility. But there is a rock solid logic to the plan. As solid as the vault at Fort Knox.

The idea is to create asset price inflation that will spread to the rest of the economy. It already did this with great success from 2009-2014 with quantitative easing, whereby almost every class of debt securities were hoovered up by the government.

“QE on steroids”, to be implemented only after overnight rates go negative, would involve large scale purchases of not only gold, but stocks, government bonds, and exchange traded funds as well.

If you think I’ve been smoking California’s largest cash export (it’s not the sunshine), you would be in error. I should point out that the Japanese government is already pursuing QE to this extent, at least in terms of equity type investments.

And, as the history buff that I am, I can tell you that it has been done in the US as well, with tremendous results.

If you thought that president Obama had it rough when he came into office in 2009, it was nothing compared to what Franklin Delano Roosevelt inherited.

The country was in its fourth year of the Great Depression. US GDP had cratered by 43%, consumer prices crashed by 24%, the unemployment rate was 25%, and stock prices vaporized by 90%. Mass starvation loomed.

Drastic measures were called for.

FDR issued Executive Order 6102 banning private ownership of gold, ordering the public to sell their holding to the US Treasury at a lowly $20.67 an ounce.