Fed Minutes Reveal The Easing Cycle Has Already Begun – Ep. 179

  • Gold and silver prices continue to march higher
  • Gold was up another $7 today; it closed at $1363.20 – that is the high for the year
  • Silver was up .15 at $20.06
  • Silver is now going up relative to the price of gold which is very for the precious metals complex
  • Gold stocks are on fire; the XAU index, a gold stock index was up 3.27% today
  • It’s now up better than 135% on the year and well over 150% from the lows on the third week in January
  • But do you think that any major players on Wall Street have recommended gold stocks?
  • Do any of the big hedge funds have positions in gold?
  • No! They are clueless
  • What is happening, as I have said before, is that there is a picture, that’s kind of blurry, but it’s coming into focus, still not clear, but it’s a game changer
  • The perception is that we had this great recovery and that the Fed was going to be able to unwind its balance sheet, normalize interest rates and everything was going to be great
  • So the whole investment world was preparing for higher rates, a stronger dollar and a stronger U.S. economy
  • But what is the actual picture?
  • The actual picture is an economic recovery that is over, if it ever even happened,
  • The Fed is finished tightening and they’re about to start a new easing campaign
  • We’re not done with QE; we’re just getting started – QE3 is closer to the beginning than the end
  • Rather than shrinking the balance sheet, it’s about to explode
  • This picture is getting clearer and now you see the markets re-pricing
  • Gold is going up every day
  • Gold stocks are going up
  • The banks are getting crushed
  • The European banks hit new lows again today
  • FOMC minutes came out for June and what did the minutes reveal?
  • The members were concerned about weakening employment number and they wanted more data before raising rates
  • They wanted to make sure the weakening numbers were an aberration rather than a new trend
  • Who didn’t see that coming?
  • Also they wanted to see what happened with the Brexit vote
  • We knew about the Brexit vote all year – why did the Fed ever pretend that they would raise rates in June?
  • Because they wanted the market to believe that a rate hike was possible because it validates the phony recovery
  • So now the instead of raising rates, they spoke about raising them and they are going to cut rates by just talking about reducing them
  • They can do a lot by adjusting their rhetoric before they actually cut rates
  • They are already cutting by backtracking their rhetoric, because that’s all they’ve got
  • Teddy Roosevelt said, “Walk softly but carry a big stick.”
  • The Fed has to speak loudly because it has no stick