After selling off an astounding 56% between October of 2007 and March 2009, the S&P 500 has staged a rally for the ages, surging 120% and recovering all of its lost ground too. This stunning turnaround certainly qualifies as one of the more memorable, and unusual, stock market rallies in history. The problem is that the rally has been underwritten by the Federal Reserve's unconventional monetary policies But for some reason, this belief has not weakened the celebration.

Although the Fed has been tinkering with interest rates and liquidity for a century, nothing in its history could prepare the markets for its activities over the last four years. (See 'The Stimulus Trap' article in my latest newsletter). And while most market analysts give credit to Ben Bernanke for saving the economy and sparking the rally, they have not fully grasped that market performance is now almost completely correlated to Fed activism. A detailed look at stock market movements over the past four years reveals a clear pattern: upward movements are directly tied to the delivery of fresh stimulants from the Fed. Downward movements occur when markets perceive that the deliveries will stop. In other words, the rally is really just a bender. The rest is commentary. 

Since 2008, the Fed has injected fresh cash into the economy with four distinct shots of quantitative easing and has added two kickers of Operation Twist. In recent months, the Fed has dispensed with the pretense of designing, announcing, and serving new rounds of stimulus and is now continuously monetizing over $85 billion per month of Treasury and mortgage-backed debt. The new cash needs a place to go, and stocks, which now often provide higher yields than long term Treasury bonds, and which offer much better protections against inflation, provide the best outlet.

But the four year rally has been punctuated by several sharp and brief drops. It is no coincidence that these episodes occurred during periods in which the delivery of fresh stimulus was in doubt. If the Fed were ever to follow through on its promise to exit the bond market, we believe the current rally would come to an immediate halt. This provides yet another reason to believe that stimulus is now permanent. 

A close look at the performance of the S&P 500 over the past four years tells the story. 

 

 

In May 2007, with the "Goldilocks" economy of 2005 and 2006 still in control, the S&P finally eclipsed the March 2000 high of the dotcom era. It ultimately hit an all-time high of 1565 in October 2007. But later in the year, things began to unravel when bankruptcies of premier subprime lenders signaled real trouble. A blood bath, though, did not materialize. As late as August 2008, the S&P was trading at nearly 1300, down a less-than-tragic 16% from its high. But when Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and AIG imploded almost simultaneously in September 2008, the markets panicked. Hundreds of billions of dollars of potentially worthless debt now sat on the books of the nation's financial system. No one knew where the next bomb would explode. A stampede thus ensued. (A minor replay of this dynamic just occurred in Cyprus. See my recent commentary for more on this).  

Less than a month later the index fell below 900, a fall of more than 30%. By November 21, the S&P had lost another 100 points. Four days later, the Fed introduced the first round of what would come to be commonly known as "quantitative easing". This consisted of purchasing $600 billion of government-sponsored enterprises debt and mortgage-backed securities. By the day of the announcement (even though nothing had yet been done), the S&P rallied almost 50 points to 851. Still encouraged by the Fed, the S&P was at 931 on January 6, 2009, significantly higher than in late November. 

Despite the first round of asset purchases, the market was still in chaos and had not yet stabilized. By early March, the S&P had lost an additional 25%, bringing total "peak-to-trough" losses at more than 50%. On March 18, 2009, the Fed announced that it was going to expand the size of its stimulus program. This time it really got the stock market's attention. The new guidelines called for a total purchase of $1.25 trillion of MBS and $300 billion of Treasury debt. On the day of the announcement, the S&P opened at 776 and by the time the asset purchases were complete a year later, in March 2010, the S&P was trading at 1171, an increase of 50%.

When the spigots of quantitative easing shut down in the second quarter of 2010 the S&P turned south, declining to a low of 1022 in July (a 13% decline from March). In late August, just before Bernanke delivered his 2010 Jackson Hole speech, in which he would hint at the next round of stimulus (to be later dubbed "QE2"), the S&P was still hovering a full 10% below its post QE1 high. But the expectation of another shot was enough to ignite a rally. When the formal announcement of QE2 came in November, the index had already advanced to 1193. When the program expired at the end of the 2nd quarter of 2011, the S&P stood at 1307, a 25% increase from before Bernanke jawboned the markets at Jackson Hole.

The market response to QE2 was in many ways similar, if less spectacular, than its prior response to QE1. And like the first go-round, the rally ended with the withdrawal of stimulus. In addition, after the cessation of QE2, the markets had to contend with the farce of the U.S. debt ceiling drama. As a result, the S&P declined from a high of 1343 on July 22 to 1123 by August 19, a drop of 16%. This is also the same time period when the U.S. received its downgrade by Standard and Poor's. Ironically, the U.S. eventually got a temporary reprieve from the spotlight when its problems became overshadowed by funding tensions in Greece and Southern Europe, causing the market to once again flock to the so-called "safe haven" of U.S. assets.

The cover from Europe could only go so far. Pressure soon began to build on the Fed to deliver once again. It acted in September 2011 with its "Operation Twist", a program that consisted of buying longer-term treasuries while selling an equal amount of shorter dated paper. Although Twist was advertised as being balance sheet neutral, the short-term sales the Fed made were somewhat offset by the extension of credit lines to Europe and an extended commitment to the 0% interest rate policy that at the time called for an end date of mid-2013. The day the Fed announced Operation Twist, the S&P opened at 1203. By the following April it had reached 1400, a return of 16%.

But once again the stimulus began to fade. In the second quarter of 2012, a sell off took hold, and by June 5, the S&P traded as low as 1277, a decline of 9% since April. Cue the Fed! On June 20, the Fed announced the extension of Operation Twist, sparking a new rally which has continued into 2013. This buoyancy has been maintained, in part, by the announcement of QE3 on September 13, 2012, which also included another extension of the zero interest rate policy until at least mid-2015. By October, Fed governors were already mentioning inflation targets and when QE4 was launched on December 12, they clarified that zero interest rate policies would be in place until unemployment fell below 6.5%. The current leg of the rally has been somewhat non-linear as the election, the Fiscal Cliff, and the endless empty headlines out of Europe have continued to put pressure on the markets. Despite these obstacles, the S&P has rallied past 1500 and on March 5, 2013, it closed at 1538, within shouting distance of its all-time high of 1576 on October 11, 2007.

When the Fed made the first round of asset purchases in November of 2008, the market was still in a state of flux. However, since the system stabilized in mid 2009, there has been a reliable correlation between the timing of the programs and the performance of the markets. This intention was stated explicitly in Ben Bernanke's November 4,2010, Washington Times Op-ed in which he provided the rationale for QE2:

"This approach eased financial conditions in the past and, so far, looks to be effective again. Stock prices rose and long-term interest rates fell when investors began to anticipate the most recent action. Easier financial conditions will promote economic growth. For example, lower mortgage rates will make housing more affordable and allow more homeowners to refinance. Lower corporate bond rates will encourage investment. And higher stock prices will boost consumer wealth and help increase confidence, which can also spur spending."

With the Fed on pace to expand its balance sheet by over $1 trillion in 2013, there can be little doubt that much of that money is headed straight into the stock market. Treasury bonds are still offering negative real yields and so there is less incentive than ever to own government paper.

Recently, the New York Post's Jonathan Trugman pointed out that Citigroup could be considered the poster child of the dubious rally. Since the crisis began, he reports that the Bank has received $45 billion in TARP funding, an additional $45 billion line of credit from the Treasury, and a government guarantee of $300 billion for its own troubled assets. At the same time, its cost of capital (the money it borrows from the Fed) is near zero, while it earns 3% to 5% on mortgages and 12% to 18% on credit cards. But from an operational standpoint, those gifts have failed to create a flourishing, self-sustaining, business. The company had shed almost 100,000 employees from its period of peak employment a few years ago (down to 260,000 employees) and it announced three months ago that an additional 11,000 cuts are to come. But Citi's share price has risen more than 85 percent since June of 2012, despite scant evidence that the company has turned itself around.

But look what all the Fed intervention has wrought. Each time they have intervened the resulting rally has diminished in intensity, and a sell-off has always ensued when the drug wore off. Through the years, the cycle of stimulus administration has quickened pace and has now arrived at a stage where it is continuous. Currently, the Fed is talking about a potential exit strategy, but as we have argued in the past, and as the chart above surely indicates, any withdrawal of stimulus could likely have dire implications for stocks which will not be tolerated by Washington.

Japan has been unsuccessfully trying to inflate its way out of these problems for the past 20 years(see 'Japan's Dangerous Game' in my latest newsletter). Now many of the indebted nations of the developed world seem intent to follow that example. But the monetary experiment of unending stimulus has, up to now, never been tried on a global scale. No one knows when or how it will end, but I believe it will end badly.

Investing in stocks is supposed to be a way to harness real economic growth, not a way to front run stimulus. Our advice for stock investors is to recognize that and to get as far away from artificially induced highs as possible. More fundamentally sound markets exist. We just have to find them.

Peter Schiff is the CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, best-selling author and host of syndicated Peter Schiff Show. 

Subscribe to Euro Pacific's Weekly Digest: Receive all commentaries by Peter Schiff, John Browne, and other Euro Pacific commentators delivered to your inbox every Monday! 

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For years we have been warned by Keynesian economists to fear the so-called "liquidity trap," an economic cul-de-sac that can suck down an economy like a tar pit swallowing a mastodon. They argue that economies grow because banks lend and consumers spend. But a "liquidity trap," they argue, convinces consumers not to consume and businesses not to borrow. The resulting combination of slack demand and falling prices creates a pernicious cycle that cannot be overcome by the ordinary forces that create growth, like savings or investment. They say that a liquidity trap can even resist the extraordinary force of monetary stimulus by rendering cash injections into useless "string pushing." Some of these economists suggest that its power can only be countered by a world war or other fortunately timed event that leads to otherwise politically unattainable levels of government spending.

Putting aside the dubious proposition that the human desire to strive and succeed can be permanently short-circuited by an economic contraction, and that modest expected price declines can quell our desire to consume, the Keynesians have overlooked a much more dangerous and demonstrable pitfall of their own creation: something that I call "The Stimulus Trap." This condition occurs when an economy becomes addicted to the monetary stimulus provided by a central bank, and as a result fails to restructure itself in a manner that will allow for robust, and sustainable, growth. The trap redirects capital into non-productive sectors and starves those areas of the economy that could lead an economic rebirth. The condition is characterized by anemic growth and deteriorating underlying economic fundamentals which is often masked by inflation or asset price bubbles (I look at how stimulus has impacted the U.S. stock market in the March edition of my newsletter).

Japan has been caught in such a stimulus trap for more than a decade. Following a stock and housing market boom of unsustainable proportions in the 1980s, the Japanese economy spectacularly imploded in 1991. The crash initiated a "lost decade" of de-leveraging and contraction. But beginning in 2001, the Bank of Japan unveiled a series of unconventional policies that it describes as "quantitative easing," which involved pushing interest rates to zero, flooding commercial banks with excess liquidity, and buying unprecedented quantities of government bonds, asset-backed securities, and corporate debt. Although Japan has been technically in recovery ever since, its performance is but a shadow of the roaring growth that typified the 40 years prior to 1991. Recently, conditions in Japan have deteriorated further and the underlying imbalances have gotten progressively worse. Yet despite this, the new government is set to double down on the failed policies of the last decade.

I believe that the United States is now following Japan into the mire. After the crash of 2008, we implemented nearly the same set of policies as did Japan in 2001. In the past two years, despite the surging stock market and apparently declining unemployment rate, the size and scope of these efforts have increased. But as is the case in Japan, we can clearly witness how the stimulus has perpetuated stagnation. (See my analysis of the new plans of the Japanese government).   

In 2008, one of the country's biggest problems was that we had over-leveraged too many non-productive sectors of the economy. For instance, we irresponsibly lent far too much money to people to buy over-priced real estate. Since then, the problem has gotten worse. Currently the process of writing, securitizing, and buying home mortgages has been essentially nationalized. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (which are now officially government agencies) write and package the vast majority of new home mortgages, which are then guaranteed (almost exclusively) through the Federal Housing Administration, and then sold to the Federal Reserve. According to a tally by ProPublica, these government entities bought or insured more than nine out of 10 home mortgages originated last year, a $1.3 trillion business. Compare this to 2006, when the government share was only three in 10. As a result of this, our lending is far more irresponsible than it has ever been.

In the fourth quarter of 2012, 44% of all FHA borrowers either had no credit score or a score of 679 or lower. In addition, the overwhelming majority of FHA guaranteed loans are being made at 95% or greater loan-to-value. This means down payments are an afterthought. Under the FHA's Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), loans are now even extended to underwater borrowers whose mortgages may be worth far more than their homes. As a result, the FHA could be exposed to enormous losses in the event of future housing market downturns. Such an outcome would be likely if mortgage interest rates were ever to rise even modestly from their current low levels. 

In fact, losses on low-quality mortgages have already left the FHA with $16 billion in losses. To close the gap, it has had to raise the insurance premiums it charges to borrowers. With those premiums expected to rise again next month, many fear that marginal borrowers could be priced out of the market. But rather than learning from its mistakes, the government just announced that Fannie Mae would pick up the slack, lowering its lending standards to match the ones that had led to losses at the FHA. In other words, we haven't solved the problem of bad lending - we have simply made it bigger and nationalized it. 

The overall financial sector is equally addicted to cheap money. Banks have seen strong earnings and rising share prices in recent years. But their businesses have largely focused on the simple process of capturing the spread between the zero percent cost of Fed capital and the 3% yield of long term Treasury debt and government insured mortgage backed securities. As a result, banks are not making productive private sector loans to businesses. Instead, the capital is being used to pump up the already bloated housing and government sectors.

Corporate profits are indeed high at the moment, but much of that success comes from the extremely low borrowing costs and extremely high leverage. Investors chasing any kind of yield they can find are pouring money into companies with dubious prospects. This January, yields on junk rated debt fell below 6% for the first time. Currently they are approaching 5.5%. Consumers are using cheap money to buy on credit. Savings rates are now hitting post-recession lows.

Lastly (but certainly not least), the Federal government is now totally dependent on the Fed's largess.  Without the Fed buying the bulk of Treasury debt, interest rates would likely rise, thereby increasing the cost of servicing the massive national debt.  While Congress and the media have focused on the $85 billion in annual cuts earmarked in the "Sequester," an increase of Treasury yields to 5% (3% higher than current levels) on the $16 trillion in outstanding government debt would translate to $480 billion per year of increased interest payments. Such an increase would force a tough choice between raising taxes, cutting domestic spending or reducing interest payments sent abroad for debt service. If foreign creditors begin to doubt that America has the resolve to make the hard choices, they may refuse to roll-over maturing obligations, forcing the government to actually repay principal.  With trillions maturing each year, actual repayment is mathematically impossible.

But for now most people feel that the transition is underway to a healthy economy. The prevailing debate is when and how the Fed will let the economy fly on its own. Many of the top market analysts have great faith that Ben Bernanke can pull the monetary tablecloth off the table without disturbing the dishes. Those who hold this view fail to understand that the United States is caught in a stimulus trap from which there is no easy exit. How can the Fed wean the economy from stimulus when stimulus IS the economy?  In truth, the trick Bernanke must actually perform is to pull the table out from beneath the cloth, leaving both the cloth and the dishes suspended in air. (Read how Iceland confronted its own crisis while avoiding the stimulus trap).

What would happen to the Treasury market if the Federal Reserve, by far the biggest buyer and largest holder of Treasury bonds, became a net seller? Who will be there to keep the sell off from becoming an interest rate spiking rout? It may sound absurd to those of us who remember the economy before the crash, but our new economy can't tolerate "sky high" rates of four or five percent. What would happen to the housing market and the stock market if interest rates were to return to those traditional levels? The red ink would flow in rivers. With yields rising and asset prices falling, how long would it take before the Fed reverses course and serves up another round of stimulus? Not long at all.

That means any talk of an exit strategy is just that, talk.  Not only can the Fed not exit, but it will have to delve further into the stimulus abyss.  While doing so, the Fed will continuously insist that the exit lies just behind an ever moving horizon. It will repeat this mantra until a currency crisis finally forces a painful exit.

Unfortunately, the longer the Fed waits to exit, the more painful the exit will be. But trading long-term pain for short-term gain is the Fed's specialty. In the meantime, Wall Street watches in uncomprehending stupor as the economy settles deeper and deeper into the stimulus trap. 

Peter Schiff is the CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, best-selling author and host of syndicated Peter Schiff Show. 

Subscribe to Euro Pacific's Weekly Digest: Receive all commentaries by Peter Schiff, John Browne, and other Euro Pacific commentators delivered to your inbox every Monday! 

And be sure to order a copy of Peter Schiff's recently released NY Times Best Seller, The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy - How to Save Yourself and Your Country. 

This week financial analysts, economists, politicians, and bank depositors from around the world were outraged that European leaders, more specifically the Germans, currently calling many of the shots in Brussels and Frankfurt, could be so politically reckless, economically ignorant, and emotionally callous as to violate the sanctity of bank deposits in order to fund a bailout of Cyprus. The chorus of condemnation may have been the deciding factor in giving the Cypriot parliament the confidence to unanimously vote down the measures in hopes that Berlin will cave or Russia will swoop in with a bailout.

The decision to inflict pain on both large and small depositors was almost universally described as a historic blunder. But the mistake was to do so in a manner that was not camouflaged by financial smoke and mirrors. In truth, rank and file depositors have been paying, and will continue to pay, for all manner of bailouts and stimulus. (Read about the Stimulus Trap in my just released newsletter).Whether it's through lower interest payments on deposits, inflation, higher taxes, higher borrowing costs, or the accumulation of unsustainable sovereign debt, Cypriots will bear the burden of past profligacy. But the new plan for Cyprus was far too transparent, simple, and direct to survive in a world dependent on deceit and obfuscation. It was dead on arrival.

All over the world, most notably in the United States, Britain and Japan, central bankers are actively pursuing inflation targets of two to three percent. But isn't inflation, which allows governments to pay off debt through the creation of new money that transfers purchasing power from savers to borrowers, just a deposit tax in disguise? (Read more about Japan's plan to do just that). British citizens of all means have been living with such a three percent stealth tax for the past three years, and it is expected to stay that high for at least two more years. Yet a one-time tax of 6.75% in Cyprus is seen as the ultimate act of betrayal?  

Many are lamenting that Cyprus' membership in the EU prevents it from devaluing its own currency to get out of the jam. How would such a course be morally superior? Taking actual losses on deposits is no different than taking losses through devaluation and inflation. Both result in the loss of purchasing power. Asking for a depositor haircut at least deals with the problem honestly and immediately. Although it's not quite as honest, devaluation can also be effective.

The same dynamic holds true with bailout funds. Suppose the EU were to come through with more funds? All that means is that Cypriots will have to pay more in future debt and interest repayments. In so doing they would saddle future generations with a burden that they had no hand in creating. How is that fair?   

And it's not as if depositors at Cypriot banks, many of whom are reported to be Russian citizens seeking tax havens, were not complicit in the risk taking. Bloomberg reports that over the past five years euro deposits at Cyprus banks returned more than 24 percent cumulatively, almost double the returns on comparable German accounts. The banks were able to offer such returns because they were exposed to riskier assets (i.e. Greek government bonds). What's so wrong with asking those who took greater risks to earn higher returns to give something back when their decisions go bad?

Cypriot citizens, as members of the EU, had the choice to put their deposits in any EU bank. Even after paying the taxes that had been proposed in the bailout, long-term depositors would have made more money by keeping their savings in the high yielding Cypriot banks than low yielding German banks. So what kind of sadistic Rubicon are we crossing?

The predominating fear internationally was not that mom and pop Cypriots would have trouble making ends meet, or that Russian mobsters would have lost any of their questionable fortunes, but that a run on banks in Cyprus would lead to similar panics in Greece, Spain, and then the world at large. As a result, the troubles of an insignificant economy are seen to threaten the entire global financial edifice.  This is just the latest sign that our current system rests upon nothing but confidence...which in the end can be ephemeral.

Despite the surmounting mathematical challenges faced by the overly indebted countries, investors have confidence that central banks will be able to engineer a return to sustainable economic growth without creating runaway inflation or triggering a renewed recession through premature tightening. This would be a tall order in even the best of circumstances. But if a small issue like Cyprus can shake that confidence...how strong can it be? Read how this confidence in central bank support has been the driving force in stock market rally.

Interestingly, the troubles in Cyprus have encouraged many to boast about the comparative health of American banking institutions and the superior sanctity of our own depositor protections.  Both of these strengths are illusory, and as a result, what happens in Cyprus will not necessarily stay in Cyprus. 

This month the Federal Reserve released the results of "stress tests" that it conducted on the major U.S. banks. While the media heralded the overwhelming success, in which 14 of 16 institutions received gold stars, they did not mention how the tests failed to test how the banks would perform if interest rates were to return to their historic norms. 

Currently, the ultra-low rates provided by the Federal Reserve, which provide a low cost of capital and sustain profits on highly leveraged bond and mortgage portfolios, are a key element keeping banks in the black.  All of that would be threatened in a rising rate environment. And while the tests did assume that rates would rise from the current 1.9% on the 10 year Treasury, there were no considerations for yields surpassing 4%. They assume that interest rates will stay near historic lows, no matter how bad (or good) the economy gets, how high inflation rises, or how much money the government borrows.

The Fed saw yields rising to 4% (by the end of 2015) only under their most optimistic forecast. In the scenarios involving economic deterioration, they predicted yields would come down dramatically from current levels. At no point did researchers ask the most fundamental questions: What if all the money that has been created over the past few years leads to an increase in inflation that forces interest rates past 4% even if the economy remains weak -- do they not remember the stagflation of the 1970s? Or what if the continued fiscal cowardice in Washington leads to a diminishment of bond investors' enthusiasm?

Given our past experience with bursting bubbles, would it not have been wise for the Fed to consider whether banks could withstand the bursting of the Treasury bond bubble, which many suggest is the biggest bubble of them all?  But since the Fed did not recognize the smaller bubbles until after they burst, it is not surprising that they are equally blind to this one? The Fed, after all, does not have a history of learning from its mistakes. However, I believe the oversight is no accident. The Fed knows that major banks would fail if the bond market crashed, but it does not want to shake the confidence that is essential to the current economy.

This episode also puts into starker focus the inadequacy of deposit insurance. By offering the illusion of systemic safety in bank deposits, government guarantees encourage recklessness by banks and depositors. They provide the same incentives that federal flood insurance does in convincing homeowners to build on flood zones. Consumer choice and risk aversion are powerful forces that could bring needed discipline to banking. The FDIC in the U.S. is in the same situation as insurance giant AIG before the crash of 2008.  

While the FDIC currently has about $25 billion available to bail out failing banks in the event of isolated events (mainly held in U.S. treasuries that would need to be sold), it insures more than $10 trillion in deposits. Clearly it lacks the resources to cover major losses in a systemic failure.  A failure of just one of the nation's forty largest banks could swamp the resources of the FDIC. I believe that a significant spike in Treasury yields, to say 6%, would result in the failure of several major banks. Bank of America and Citibank for example each have over $1 trillion in deposits. Where would the FDIC get the money to make the depositors whole in such a situation? The government would be unlikely to pass a major tax increase to fund an FDIC bailout. More likely the Fed would print the money. In that event, depositors may not lose their money, but their money will lose much of its purchasing power. In the end, honest losses could prove to be much smaller.

Peter Schiff is the CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, best-selling author and host of syndicated Peter Schiff Show. 

Subscribe to Euro Pacific's Weekly Digest: Receive all commentaries by Peter Schiff, John Browne, and other Euro Pacific commentators delivered to your inbox every Monday!  

And be sure to order a copy of Peter Schiff's recently released NY Times Best Seller, The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy - How to Save Yourself and Your Country. 

Testifying before the US Senate this past Tuesday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke made an extraordinary claim about its bloated balance sheet: "We could exit without ever selling by letting it run off." What Bernanke means here is that the Fed could simply hold its Treasuries and agency bonds until they mature, at which point the government would then be forced to pay the Fed back the principal amount. Through this process, the Fed's unprecedented and inflationary position will be gradually and placidly unwound. 

Growing rumors last month of a potential "tightening" of monetary policy - seemingly confirmed by the Fed minutes released on Feb. 20th - have spooked the precious metals markets, leading to a 5.8% correction in gold and 10.2% in silver.

However, these fears are preposterous on two counts.

First, the Fed just spent the past year and a half extending the maturities of its entire portfolio. That was the entire purpose of Operation Twist. The average maturity of the entire portfolio is now over 10 years. That means any wind-down using the strategy Bernanke outlined would play out over the course of decades - not months or years. 

Fortunately for hard asset investors, it is unlikely to play out at all. 

The second reason these fears are unfounded is that there is no exit strategy. Listening to Bernanke's testimony, it was clear that here was a man simply speculating about when an exit might be undertaken - or perhaps ifit would ever be taken. Senator Corker from Tennessee accused Bernanke during the hearing of being "the biggest dove since World War II." "I think it's something you're rather proud of," the Senator continued. The Chairman's response to the charge of recklessly endangering the nation's currency? "In some respects, I am." 

The Fed Chairman has been talking about tightening for some time. In 2010, he said, "As the expansion matures, the Federal Reserve will need to begin to tighten monetary conditions to prevent the development of inflationary pressures."

Back then, the same mainstream analysts were predicting recovery and a reversal of quantitative easing (QE). Instead, we have subsequently seen QE2, Operation Twist, and now QE3 to eternity.

While these mainstream commentators are at best guessing as to why or when the Fed might reverse course, I understand that it is extremely unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future. In fact, I've bet my net worth on it.

There is no exit strategy because the results of the Fed withdrawing its artificial support would be disastrous for the US Treasury and in the short-term, the US economy. 

The Fed is expected to buy nearly 90% of new Treasury bonds in 2013, according to Bloomberg. This is a tremendous subsidy that has kept 10-year Treasury yields below 1.95% on average this year so far. Last year, with 10-year yields averaging 1.8%, the Treasury spent $360 billion on interest payments alone. That represented nearly 10% of all expenditures.

Let's assume a Fed tightening causes these rates to triple - not unreasonable for a government facing over 100% debt-to-GDP. If these rates triple by 2015, and another $2 trillion or so is added to the debt, then interest would make up over 30% of annual federal expenditures. Just interest. Then, there are principal repayments, Medicare/Medicaid, Social Security, the Armed Forces, and all the other entitlements for which the Treasury is responsible. Is Washington going to default on our creditors, our seniors, or our men and women in uniform?

I believe these assumptions are still rosy compared to what might actually happen if the Fed were to withdraw support. As I outlined in my January Gold Letter, the US sovereign debt market is a house of cards in which the Fed, foreign creditors, and domestic investors each play a part. If the Fed were to signal that creditors might face haircuts, then the reaction could be swift to the downside. If rates went above 10%, as they have in Greece, then over half of the federal budget would be committed to interest payments alone.

But that's not all. Higher interest rates would cause the shaky housing market to take another nosedive. Few Americans are in a position to buy a $300K house at 10+% interest. Rather, prices would have to decline to levels affordable for cash buyers and those willing and able to take out high-interest mortgages. That might mean another 50% decline or more, in real terms.

With housing taking a second bath, we can expect the banks not to be far behind. That sector remains bloated and dependent on various subsidies from the Fed. With loan rates higher than their customers can afford, banks would fail at a rate higher than 2007-8. This would trigger another round of bailouts from the Treasury; but without Fed assistance, where will the funds come from?

If there isn't a bailout, the major money-center banks would collapse, crippling Wall Street's reputation as the global financial center. The US dollar's reserve status might then be abandoned once and for all.

Quickly, one can see how the Fed's money-printing is the mask holding this charade together.

To see in real time what happens when the mask is pulled off, look to the Mediterranean. Greece has seen the Golden Dawn neo-nazi party win 7% of seats in the last two elections. Italy, meanwhile, just saw a comedian with no political background grab 25% of its parliament in a satirical candidacy. Street protests, unemployment, and other signs of instability are rampant. The protestors are not learning a tough lesson about the consequences of profligate spending; instead, they're simply angry that the money has stopped flowing.

No one in Washington - not least Ben Bernanke - has any intention of setting off a similar episode in the US. Yet, that's exactly what a tightening of monetary policy would do. So, at least as long as the CPI numbers can be fudged to make inflation appear "contained," the Fed is going to keep filling the punch bowl. 

Returning to the latest Fed minutes that have hard asset investors so upset, it is telling that while there was some discussion of the dangers of money-printing, only one of twelve governors actually voted against continuing current policies. With no concrete actions being taken and an overwhelming majority still in favor of current policies, it seems gold bears are making much ado about nothing.

As investors realize this, they will once again put their pedals to the precious metals.

Peter Schiff is CEO ofEuro Pacific Precious Metals, a gold and silver dealer selling reputable, well-known bullion coins and bars at competitive prices. 

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The birth, and the apparent death, of the trillion dollar platinum coin idea may one day be recalled as a mere footnote in the current debt crisis drama. The ultimate rejection of the idea (which was to use a loophole in commemorative coinage law to mint a platinum coin of any denomination) by both the the President and the Federal Reserve seems to offer some relief that our economic policy is not being run by out-of-touch academics and irresponsible congressmen. In reality, our government has been creating more than one trillion dollars out of thin air every year for the past five. The only difference is that the blatant dishonesty of a trillion-dollar platinum coin is so easy to understand that the public simply couldn't be expected to swallow it. The American people are more than willing to be fooled, but they won't tolerate so simple a ruse.    

People have a long and intimate history with coins. Some of us collected them as kids, and we all touch and see them every day. Unlike currency bills, we know intuitively that a coin's value is supposed to come from its metal content. That's why quarters are bigger than dimes.  As a result, most people have viscerally rejected the platinum coin idea. To assign an arbitrary, sky high, valuation to a small piece of metal strikes most people as a deceitful, desperate act. They are right.  

However, the same people have no problem with images of thousands of crisp paper notes flying off the printing presses. The acceptance is not impacted by how many zeroes the bills contain. People simply believe that paper money derives value from the numbers, not the paper. This was not always so. Paper money originally entered the public awareness as promissory notes to pay different amounts of gold. Once people got used to the paper, few really cared when the gold backing was finally removed. As a result, the public would likely have been much more accepting of the Fed printing a trillion dollar bill than the government minting a trillion dollar coin. But there was no legal pathway for the Fed to simply give that money to the government.  

The government, not the Fed, mints coins, so they did not have to rely on the Fed to create value out of thin air. That is why the platinum coin idea was so seductive, if ultimately unsellable.   

But the Fed does the exact same thing all the time using sophisticated accounting and state of the art computing.  The Fed "expands its balance sheet" by buying government bonds from private banks. In exchange for these securities, the Fed credits the banks with funds it creates out of thin air. The banks then pass the funds to the general public through loans.  But it's important to realize that the Fed does not have any money to actually buy the bonds in the first place. The funds are "created" by a Fed computer. The process is easier (and equally duplicitous) than minting a trillion dollar coin (which at least requires the production of something other than computer code).  The only difference is the lack of window dressing. It's a shame that the platinum coin episode did not result in a wider recognition of this brutal truth.  

A similarly silly and meaningless distinction is being made with respect to raising the debt ceiling. In his press conference yesterday, President Obama said the Republican reluctance to raise the debt limit was the equivalent of a diner who had ordered and enjoyed a meal who then decides to leave the restaurant without paying the bill. The President is actually arguing that if the diner had no cash on hand, it would be much more responsible to simply use a credit card. In taking this moral high ground, the President ignores the fact that the diner (who has indebted himself through habitual restaurant meals) intends to pay his credit card bill with another card, and then repeat the process until he runs out of cards. So in the end, it's not the restaurateur who gets stiffed, but the issuer of the last card the diner is able to acquire.  As with the platinum coin, this is a distinction without a difference. 

Currently the Federal Government counts more than $16 trillion in funded obligations. Over the next 10 years we are expected to add another $10 trillion or more. At no point in the foreseeable future are we expected to approach balance in our annual budget. All of our future bills are expected to be paid by future borrowing on a massive scale. Anyone with an ounce of integrity would have to plan for the possibility that an ever increasing debt rollover is a limited prospect. Such an understanding will mean that eventually someone will get stuck with the bill. How is this any more responsible than dining and ditching?    

In truth, a failure to raise the debt ceiling is not a commitment to renege on obligations. It is simply a decision to stop borrowing. The government could still meet obligations by cutting spending, raising taxes, or making reforms to entitlements. But it chooses not to take this difficult step. 

More important than that is the message America is sending its creditors. By informing them that the United States will not use its taxing power to repay its debts, but will only rely on its ability to borrow more (ironically from the same creditors), it effectively admits to running the world's largest Ponzi scheme. It's a shame that more people can't seem to grasp these very simple truths.

Economists who hold the popular view that expanding the money supply will provide the best medicine for our ailing economy dismiss the inflationary concerns of monetary hawks, like me, by pointing to the supposedly low inflation that has occurred during the current period of rampant Fed activism. In a recent blog post aimed specifically at me, Paul Krugman noted that the sub 2.5% increases in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the past few years are all that is needed to prove me wrong. In fact, Krugman and others have even suggested that the CPI itself overstates inflation and that the Fed would be better able to help the economy if less strict methodologies were used. However, there is plenty of evidence to suggest that the CPI is essentially meaningless as it woefully under reports rising prices.

Magazines and newspapers provide a good case in point. The truth has not been exposed through the economic reporting that these outlets provide, but in the prices that are permanently fixed to their covers. For instance, from 1999 to 2002 the Bureau of Labor Statistic's (BLS) "Newspaper and Magazine Index" (a component of the CPI) increased by 37.1%. But a perusal of the cover prices of the 10 most popular newspapers and magazines (WSJ, Washington Post, Time, Sports Illustrated, U.S. News & World Report, Newsweek, People, NY Times, USA Today, and the LA Times) over the same time frame showed an average cover price increase of 131.5% (3.5 times faster than the BLS' stats). This is not even in the same ballpark.

Some defenders of the BLS may conclude that prices were held down by the availability of free online news content or the convenience of digital delivery. But that is beside the point. Prior to the digital age, the BLS could have claimed that newspaper costs were held down by public libraries that provided free access. It's also true that online publications deliver less value on some fronts. Not only do many people enjoy the tactile process of reading physical newspapers or magazines, but they offer the secondary value in helping to kindle fires, housebreak puppies, pack dishes, and line birdcages.  

Another stunning example is found in health insurance costs, which is a major line item for most families. According to the BLS we can all breathe easy on that front because their "Health Insurance Index" increased a mere 4.3% (total) in the four years between 2008 and 2012.  Interestingly, over the same time, the Kaiser Survey of Employer Sponsored Health Insurance showed that the cost of family health insurance rose 24.2% (5.5 times faster). But even if the BLS had reported higher costs, it wouldn't have made much of a difference in the CPI itself. Believe it or not, health insurance costs are assigned a weighting of less than one percent of the overall CPI. In contrast, the Kaiser Survey revealed that in 2012 the average total cost for family health insurance coverage was $15,745, or almost one third of the median family income.

If the BLS could be so blatantly wrong in reporting the prices of newspapers and health insurance, should we believe that they are more accurate on all other sectors? If the inaccuracy of these two components were consistent with the rest of the CPI's components, inflation could now be reported in double-digits!

Even more egregious than the manner in which prices are currently reported is the way that CPI methods have been changed over the years to insure that most increases are factored out.  Since the 1970's, the CPI formula has changed so thoroughly that it bears scant resemblance to the one used during the "malaise days" of the Carter years. Main stream economists dismiss criticism of the changes as tin hat conspiracy theories. But given the huge stakes involved, it's hard to believe that institutional bias plays no role. Government statisticians are responsible for coming up with the formulas, and their bosses catch huge breaks if the inflation numbers come in low. Human behavior is always influenced by such incentives. 

The newer CPI methodologies are designed to report not just on price movements, but on spending patterns, consumer choices, substitution bias, and product changes. In other words, the metrics have been altered to track not so much the cost of things, but the cost of living (or more accurately, the cost of surviving). But if you simply focus on price, especially on those staple commodity goods and services that haven't radically changed in quality over the years, the under reporting of inflation becomes more apparent.

As reported in our Global Investor Newsletter, we selected BLS price changes for twenty everyday goods and services over two separate ten-year periods, and then compared those changes to the reported changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the same period. (The twenty items we selected are: eggs, new cars, milk, gasoline, bread, rent of primary residence, coffee, dental services, potatoes, electricity, sugar, airline tickets, butter, store bought beer, apples, public transportation, cereal, tires, beef, and prescription drugs.)

We know that people do not spend equal amounts on the above items, and we know their share of income devoted to them has changed over the decades. But as we are only interested in how these prices have changed relative to the CPI, those issues don't really matter. We chose to look at the period between 1970 and 1980 and then again between 2002 and 2012, because these time frames both had big deficits and loose monetary policy, and they straddle the time in which the most significant changes to the CPI methodology took effect. And while the CPI rose much faster in the 1970's, the degree to which the prices of our 20 items outpaced the CPI was much higher more recently.

Between 1970 and 1980 the officially reported CPI rose a whopping 112%, and prices of our basket of goods and services rose by 117%, just 5% faster. In contrast between 2002 and 2012 the CPI rose just 27.5%, but our basket increased by 44.3%, a rate that was 61% faster. And remember, this is using the BLS' own price data, which we have already shown can grossly under-estimate the true rate of increase. The difference can be explained by how CPI is weighted and mixed. The formula used in the 1970's effectively captured the price movements of our twenty everyday products. But in the last ten years it has been quite a different story.

If these price changes in our experiments had been fully captured, CPI could currently be high enough to severely restrict Fed action to stimulate the economy. Instead, the Fed is operating as if inflation is extremely low. As a result, they are making a huge policy mistake that will come back to haunt us. During the last decade the Fed spent many years denying the existence of a housing bubble, even as a mountain of evidence piled up to the contrary. That error caused the Fed to hold interest rates too low for too long, blowing more air into the bubble and imposing enormous negative consequences on the economy. The Fed, now similarly blind to the inflation threat, is repeating its mistake, only this time the negative consequences will be even more dire.

Apart from the statistical problems that hide inflation, there are also macroeconomic factors that have helped keep prices down despite the quantitative easing. Massive U.S. trade deficits and foreign central bank dollar accumulation mean that much of the printed money winds up in foreign bank vaults, not U.S. shopping centers. As foreign consumer goods flow in, and dollars flow out, a lid is kept on domestic prices. In effect, our inflation is exported as foreign central banks monetize our deficits and recycle their surpluses into U.S. Treasuries. The demand has pushed down bond yields which has allowed the U.S. government to borrow inexpensively. Of course, when the flows reverse, bond prices will fall, yields will climb, and a tidal wave of dollars will wash up on American shores, drowning consumers in a sea of inflation.   

Unlike Krugman and the Keynesians, I would argue that it is impossible to create something from nothing. I believe that printing a dollar diminishes the value of all existing dollars by an aggregate amount equal to the purchasing power of the new dollar. The other side takes the position that the new money creates tangible economic growth and  that real economic value can therefore be created by putting zeroes onto a piece of paper. I think that those making such absurd claims should bear the burden of proof. For more on the interesting topic of hidden inflation, see my video that I just posted.

 

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By upping the ante once again in its gamble to revive the lethargic economy through monetary action, the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee is now compelling the rest of us to buy into a game that we may not be able to afford.  At his press conference this week, Fed Chairman Bernanke explained how the easiest policy stance in Fed history has just gotten that much easier.  First it gave us zero interest rates, then QEs I and II, Operation Twist, and finally "unlimited" QE3.  Now that those moves have failed to deliver economic health, the Fed has doubled the size of its open-ended money printing and has announced a program of data flexibility that virtually insures that they will never bump into limitations, until it's too late.  Although their new policies will create numerous long-term challenges for the economy, the biggest near-term challenge for the Fed will be how to keep the momentum going by upping the ante even higher their next meeting. The big news is that the Fed is now doubling the amount of money it is printing. In addition to its ongoing $40 billion per month of mortgage backed securities (to stimulate housing), it will now buy $45 billion per month of Treasury debt. The latter program replaces Operation Twist, which had used proceeds from the sales of short-term treasuries to finance the purchase of longer yielding paper. The problem is the Fed has already blown through its short-term inventory, so the new buying will be pure balance sheet expansion. To cloak these shockingly accommodative moves in the garb of moderation, the Fed announced that future policy decisions will be put on automatic pilot by pegging liquidity withdrawal to two sets of economic data. By committing to tightening policy if either unemployment falls below 6.5% or if inflation goes higher than 2.5%, Bernanke is likely looking to silence fears that the Fed will stay too loose for too long. While these statistical benchmarks would be too accommodative even if they were rigidly enforced, the goalposts have been specifically designed to be completely movable, and hence essentially meaningless. Bernanke said that in order to identify signs of true economic health, the Fed will discount unemployment declines that result from diminishing labor participation rates. It is widely known that a good portion of unemployment declines since 2009 have resulted from the many millions of formerly employed Americans who have dropped out of the workforce. But like many other economists, Bernanke failed to identify where he thinks "real" employment is now after factoring out these workers.  So how far down will the unemployment number have to drift before the Fed's triggering mechanism is tripped? No one knows, and that is exactly how the Fed wants it. A similarly loose criterion exists for the Fed's other goalpost - inflation. Bernanke stated that he will look past current inflation statistics and look primarily at "core inflation expectations." In other words, he is not interested in data that can be demonstrably shown but on much more amorphous forecasts of other economists who have drunk the Fed's Kool-Aid. He also made clear that rising food or energy prices will never fall into the Fed's radar screen of inflation dangers. For as long as I can remember (and I can remember for quite some time) the Fed has stripped out "volatile" increases in food and energy, preferring the "core" inflation readings. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, the headline numbers are significantly higher than the core. In other words, Bernanke simply prefers to look at lower numbers. In his press conference, he made it clear that the Fed will avoid looking at price changes in "globally traded commodities," that are all highly influenced by inflation.       These subjective and attenuated criteria give Fed officials far too much leeway to ignore the guidelines that they are putting into place. If the Fed will not react to what inflation is, but rather to what it expects it to be, what will happen if their expectations turn out to be wrong? After all, their track record in forecasting the events of the last decade has been anything but stellar. The Fed officials repeatedly assured us that there was no housing bubble, even after it burst. Then they assured us the problem was contained to subprime mortgages. Then they assured us that a slowdown in housing would not impact the broader economy. I could go on, but my point is if the Fed is as spectacularly wrong about inflation as it has been about almost everything else, will they be able to slam on the brakes in time to prevent inflation from running out of control? And if so, at what cost to the overall economy? The Fed is committing to more than a $1 trillion annual expansion in its balance sheet, an amount greater than the total size of its balance sheet as late as 2008. Most forecasters believe that the Fed will have $4 trillion worth of assets on its books by the end of 2013, and perhaps more than $5 trillion by the end of 2014. If conditions arise that require the Fed to withdraw liquidity, the size of the sales that would be required will be massive. Who exactly does the Fed believe will have pockets deep enough to take the other side of the trade?  As the biggest buyer of treasuries, it is impossible for the Fed to sell without chances of collapsing the market. Surely any other holders of treasuries would want to front-run the Fed, and what buyer would be foolish enough to get in front of the Fed freight train? The bottom line is that it is impossible for the Fed to fight inflation, which is precisely why it will never acknowledge the existence of any inflation to fight.  But perhaps the most absurd statement in Bernanke's press conference was his contention that the Fed is not engaged in debt monetization because it intends to sell the debt once the economy improves. This is like a thief claiming that he is not stealing your car, because he intends to return it when he no longer needs it. To make the analogy more accurate, there could not be any other cars on the road for him to steal.  Without the Fed's buying, it would be impossible for the Treasury to finances its debts at rates it can afford. That is precisely why the Fed has chosen to monetize the debt. Of course, officially acknowledging that fact would make the Fed's job that much harder. Without the monetization safety valve, the government would have to make massive immediate cuts in all entitlements and national defense, plus big tax increases on the middle class. As I wrote when the Fed first embarked on this ill-fated journey, it has no exit strategy. The Fed adopted what amounts to "the roach motel" of monetary policy. If the Fed actually raised rates as a result of one of its movable goal posts being hit, the result could be a much greater financial crisis than the one we lived through in 2008. The bond bubble would burst, interest rates and unemployment would soar, housing prices would collapse, banks would fail, borrowers would default, budget deficits would swell, and there would be no way to finance another round of bailouts for anyone, including the Federal Government itself.  In order to generate phony economic growth and to "pay" our country's debts in the most dishonest manner possible, the Federal Reserve is 100% committed to the destruction of the dollar. Anyone with wealth in the U.S. dollar should be concerned that economic leadership is firmly in the hands of irresponsible bureaucrats who are committed to an ivory tower version of reality that bears no resemblance to the world as it really is.

There never really could be much doubt that the current experiment in competitive global currency debasement would end in anything less than a total war. There was always a chance that one or more of the principal players would snap out of it, change course and save their citizenry from a never ending cycle of devaluation. But developments since September 13, when the U.S. Federal Reserve finally laid all its cards on the table and went "all in" on permanent quantitative easing, indicate that the brainwashing is widely established and will be difficult to break. The vast majority of the world's leading central bankers seem content to walk in lock step down the path of money creation as a means to economic salvation. Never mind that the path will prevent real growth and may ultimately lead off a cliff. The herd is moving. And if it can't be turned, the only thing that one can do is attempt to get out of its way. 

The details of the Fed's new plan (which I christened Operation Screw in last week's commentary) are not nearly as important as the philosophy it reveals. The Federal Reserve has already unleashed two huge waves of quantitative easing (purchases of either government securities or mortgage-backed securities) in order to stimulate consumer spending and ignite business activity. But the economy has not responded as hoped. GDP growth has languished below trend, the unemployment rate has stayed north of 8%, and the labor participation rate has fallen to all-time lows. In the meantime, America's fiscal position has grown significantly worse with government debt climbing to unimaginable territory. Despite the lack of results, the conclusion at the Federal Reserve is that the programs were too small and too incremental to be effective. They have determined that something larger, and potentially permanent, would be more likely to do the trick.    

However, in making its new plan public, the Fed made a startling admission. At his press conference, Ben Bernanke backed away from previous assertions that printed money would be effective in directly pushing up business activity. Instead he explained how the new stimulus would be focused directly at the housing market through purchases of mortgage backed securities. He made clear that this strategy is intended to spark a surge in home prices that will in turn pull up the broader economy.  Such a belief requires a dangerous amnesia to the events of the last decade. Despite the calamity that followed the bursting of our last housing bubble, economists feel this to be a wise strategy, proving that a poor memory is a prerequisite for the profession.    

But now that the Fed is thus committed, the focus has shifted to foreign capitals. Not surprisingly, the dollar came under immediate pressure as soon as the plan was announced. In the 24 hours following the announcement, the Greenback was down 2.2% against the euro, 1.6% against the Australian Dollar, and 1.1% against the Canadian Dollar. A week after the Fed's move, the Mexican Peso had appreciated 2.7% against the US dollar. Many currency watchers noted that more dollar declines would be likely if foreign central banks failed to match the Fed in their commitments to print money. On cue, the foreign bankers responded.    

It is seen as gospel in our current "through the looking glass" economic world that a weak currency is something to be desired and a strong currency is something to be disdained. Weak currencies are supposed to offer advantages to exporters and are seen as an easy way to boost GDP. In reality, weak currencies simply create the illusion of growth while eroding real purchasing power. Strong currencies confer greater wealth and potency to an economy. But in today's world,no central banker is prepared to stand idly by while their currency appreciates. As a result, foreign central banks are rolling out their own heavy artillery to combat the Fed.    

Perhaps anticipating the Fed's actions, on September 6th the European Central Bank announced its own plan of unlimited buying of debt of troubled EU nations (however, the plan did come with important concessions to the German point of view - see John Browne's commentary). On September 17th, the Brazilian central bank auctioned $2.17 billion of reverse swap contracts to help push down the Brazilian Real. The next day, Peru and Turkey cut rates more than expected. On September 19th, the Bank of Japan increased its asset purchase program from 70 trillion yen to 80 trillion and extended the program by six months. It's clear we are seeing a central banking domino effect that is not likely to end in the foreseeable future.    

Although the Fed is directing its fire towards the housing market, the needle they are actually hoping to move is not home prices, but the unemployment rate.  Until that rate falls to the desired levels (some at the Fed have suggested 5.5%), then we can be fairly certain that these injections will continue. This will place permanent pressure on banks around the world to follow suit.    

All of this simultaneous money creation will likely be a boon for nominal stock and real estate prices. But in real terms such gains will likely not keep pace with dollar depreciation. Inflation pushes up prices for just about everything, so stocks and real estate are not likely to prove to be exceptions.   Even bond prices can rise in the short term, but their real values are the most vulnerable to decline.   In fact, even nominal bond prices will ultimately fall, as inflation eventually sends interest rates climbing. But prices for hard assets, precious metals, commodities, and even those few remaining relatively hard currencies should be on the leading edge of the upward trend in prices. 

While I believe the Fed's plan will be a disaster for the economy, the silver lining is that it provides investors with a road map. As the policy of the Fed is to debase the currency, those holding dollar based assets may seek alternatives in hard assets and in the currencies of the few remaining countries whose bankers have not drunken so freely from the Keynesian Kool-Aid. We believe that such opportunities do exist. Some broad ideas are outlined in the latest edition of my Global Investor Newsletter, which became available for download this week. I encourage those looking for ways to distance their wealth from the policies of Ben Bernanke to start their search today.

Peter Schiff is the CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, best-selling author and host of syndicated Peter Schiff Show. 

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With yesterday's Fed decision and press conference, Chairman Ben Bernanke finally and decisively laid his cards on the table. And confirming what I have been saying for many years, all he was holding was more of the same snake oil and bluster. Going further than he has ever gone before, he made it clear that he will be permanently binding the American economy to a losing strategy. As a result, September 13, 2012 may one day be regarded as the day America finally threw in the economic towel.

Here is the outline of the Fed's plan: buy hundreds of billions of home mortgages annually in order to push down mortgage rates and push up home prices, thereby encouraging people to build and buy homes and spend the extracted equity on consumer goods. Furthermore, the Fed hopes that ultra-cheap money will push up stock prices so that Wall Street and stock investors feel wealthier and begin to spend more freely. He won't admit this directly, but rather than building an economy on increased productivity, production, and wealth accumulation, he is trying to build one on confidence, increased leverage, and rising asset prices. In other words, the Fed prefers the illusion of growth to the restructuring needed to allow for real growth.

The problem that went unnoticed by the reporters at the Fed's press conference (and those who have written about it subsequently) is that we already tried this strategy and it ended in disaster. Loose monetary policy created the housing and stock bubbles of the last decade, the bursting of which almost blew up the economy. Apparently for Bernanke and his cohorts, almost isn't good enough. They are coming back to finish the job. But this time, they are packing weaponry of a much higher caliber. Not only are they pushing mortgage rates down to historical lows but now they are buying all the loans!

Last year, the Fed launched the so-called "Operation Twist," which was designed to lower long-term interest rates and flatten the yield curve. Without creating any real benefits for the economy, the move exposed US taxpayers and holders of dollar-based assets to the dangers of shortening the maturity on $16 trillion of outstanding government debt. Such a repositioning exposes the Treasury to much faster and more painful consequences if interest rates rise. Still, the set of policies announced yesterday will do so much more damage than "Operation Twist," they should be dubbed "Operation Screw." Because make no mistake, anyone holding US dollars, Treasury bonds, or living on a fixed income will have their purchasing power stolen by these actions.

Prior injections of quantitative easing have done little to revive our economy or set us on a path for real recovery. We are now in more debt, have more people out of work, and have deeper fiscal problems than we had before the Fed began down this path. All the supporters can say is things would have been worse absent the stimulus. While counterfactual arguments are hard to prove, I do not doubt that things would have been worse in the short-term if we had simply allowed the imbalances of the old economy to work themselves out. But in exchange for that pain, I believe that we would be on the road to a real recovery. Instead, we have artificially sustained a borrow-and-spend model that puts us farther away from solid ground.

Because the initials of quantitative easing - QE - have brought to mind the famous Queen Elizabeth cruise ships, many have likened these Fed moves as giant vessels that are loaded up and sent out to sea. But based on their newly announced plans, the analogy no longer applies. As the new commitments are open-ended, quantitative easing will now be delivered via a non-stop conveyor belt that dumps cheap money on the economy. The only variable is how fast the belt moves.

Fortunately, the crude limitations of the Fed's only policy tool have become more apparent to the markets. If you must stick with the nautical metaphors, QE3 has sunk before it has even left port. The move was explicitly designed to push down long-term interest rates, but interest rates spiked significantly in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. Traders realize that an open-ended commitment to buying bonds means that inflation and dollar weakness will likely destroy any nominal gains in the bonds themselves. To underscore this point, the Fed announcement also caused a sharp selloff in Treasuries and the dollar and a strong rally in commodities, especially precious metals.

Given that 30-year fixed mortgages are already at historic lows, there can be little confidence that the new plan will succeed in pushing them much lower, especially given the upward spike that occurred in the immediate aftermath of the announcement. Instead, Bernanke is likely trying to provide the confidence home owners need to exchange fixed-rate mortgages for lower adjustable rate loans - which would free up more cash for current consumer spending. He is looking for homeowners to do their own twist. If he succeeds, more homeowners will be vulnerable to increasing rates, which will further limit the Fed's future ability to increase rates to fight rising prices.

The goal of the plan is to create consumer purchasing power by raising home and stock prices. No one seems to be considering the likelihood that unending QE will fail to lift bond, stock, or home prices, but will instead bleed straight through to higher prices for food, energy, and other consumer staples. If that occurs, consumers will have less purchasing power as a result of Bernanke's efforts, not more.

The Fed decision comes at the same time as the situation in Europe is finally moving out of urgent crisis mode. While I do not think the ECB's decision to underwrite more sovereign debt from troubled EU members will work out well in the long term, at least those moves have come with some German strings attached [For more on this, see John Browne's article from earlier this week]. As a result, I feel that the attention of currency traders may now shift to the poor fundamentals of the US dollar, rather than the potential for a breakup of the euro.

In the meantime, the implications for American investors should be clear. The Fed will try to conjure a recovery on the backs of currency debasement. It will not stop or alter from this course. If the economy fails to respond to the drugs, Bernanke will simply up the dosage. In fact, he is so convinced we will remain dependent on quantitative easing that he explicitly said he won't turn off the spigots even if things noticeably improve. In other words, the dollar is screwed.

 

This past Friday, as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke delivered his annual address from Jackson Hole - the State of the Dollar, if you will - I couldn't help but hear it as an incumbent's campaign speech. While Wall Street was hoping for some concrete announcement, what we got was a mushy appraisal of the Fed's handling of the financial crisis so far and a suggestion that more 'help' is on the way. 

It is important to remember that it's not just President Obama's job on the line in this election; in two years time, the next President will have the opportunity to either reappoint Bernanke or choose someone else. So we must understand what platform Bernanke is running on, as his office has an even greater effect on global markets than the President's.

Bernanke has been the perfect tag-team partner for George W. Bush and then Barack Obama as they have pursued an economic policy of deficits, bailouts, and stimulus. Without the Fed providing artificial support to housing and US debt, Washington would have already been shut out of foreign credit markets. In other words, they would have faced a debt ceiling that no amount of bipartisan support could raise. Fortunately for the politicians, Helicopter Ben was there to monetize the debts.

As far back as his time as an academic, Bernanke made clear that when the going got tough, he wouldn't hesitate to fire up the printing presses. He specialized in studying the Great Depression and, contrary to greater minds like Murray Rothbard, determined that the problem was too little money printing. He went on to propose several ways the central bank could create inflation even when interest rates had been dropped to zero through large-scale asset purchases (LSAPs). Sure enough, the credit crunch of 2008 gave the Fed Chairman an opportunity to test his theory.

All told, the Fed spent $2.35 trillion on LSAPs, including $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, $900 billion in Treasury debt, and $200 billion of other debt from federal agencies. That means the Fed printed the equivalent of 15% of US GDP in a couple of years. That's a lot of new dollars for the real economy to absorb, and a tremendous subsidy to the phony economy.

This has bought time for President Obama to enact an $800 billion stimulus program, an auto industry bailout, socialized medicine, and other economically damaging measures. In short, because of the Fed's interventions, Obama got the time and money needed to push the US further down the road to a centrally planned economy. It is also now much more unlikely that Washington will be able to manage a controlled descent to lower standards of living. Instead, we're going to head right off a fiscal cliff.

The Fed Chairman even admitted to this reality in his statement. Here are two choice quotes:

"As I noted, the Federal Reserve is limited by law mainly to the purchase of Treasury and agency securities. ... Conceivably, if the Federal Reserve became too dominant a buyer in certain segments of these markets, trading among private agents could dry up, degrading liquidity and price discovery." [emphasis added]

"...expansions of the balance sheet could reduce public confidence in the Fed's ability to exit smoothly from its accommodative policies at the appropriate time. ... such a reduction in confidence might increase the risk of a costly unanchoring of inflation expectations, leading in turn to financial and economic instability." [emphasis added]

So we all agree that the prospect of inflationary depression was made worse by the Fed's actions - but at least Ben Bernanke has pleased his boss. As a guaranteed monetary dove, Ben Bernanke appears to be a shoo-in if Obama is re-elected.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has pledged to fire Bernanke if elected. While I am not confident that Mr. Romney has the economic understanding to appoint a competent replacement - let alone pursue a policy of restoring the gold standard or legalizing competing currencies - he may well be seen as a threat not only to the Fed Chairman's self-interest, but also to his inflationary agenda.

Given this background, let's look at Bernanke's quotes that have been the focus of media speculation for the past week: the US economy is "far from satisfactory," unemployment is a "grave concern," and the Fed "will provide additional policy accommodation as needed." These comments seem designed to reassure markets (and Washington) that there will be no major shift toward austerity in the near future. The party can go on. But they also hint that Bernanke might be planning to double down again. I have long written that another round of quantitative easing is all but inevitable. It now seems to be imminent.

In reality, when the money drops may have more to do with politics than economics. The Fed may not want to appear to be directly interfering in the election by stimulating the economy this fall, but there are strong incentives for Bernanke to try to perk up the phony recovery before November and deliver the election to Obama. However, if Romney wins, Bernanke can at least fall back on his appeal as a team player as he lobbies for another term.

For gold and silver buyers, either scenario is likely to continue to stoke our market in the short- and medium-term. As the past week's rally indicates, there is no longer a fear that the Fed has had enough of money-printing - in fact, it looks prepared for much more.

 

Peter Schiff is CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Precious Metals.        

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