A bit of recent news that hasn't gotten enough press is the fact that the Federal Reserve has surpassed China in total U.S. Treasury holdings and is now the largest holder of Treasuries in the world. As of last week, China held $896 billion of Treasuries while Japan held $877 billion. The Fed now holds $1.108 trillion and it has not even passed the halfway mark of its second round of money printing, which they call Quantitative Easing.
By June the Fed could own $1.6 trillion of Treasury bonds. The experiment that the Fed has embarked upon is simply unprecedented in this country. So far it has been an abysmal failure. Ten year treasury yields are nearly 120 basis points higher since the Fed announced their second round of Quantitative Easing just three months ago. Food inflation is raging throughout the world, even though Ben Bernanke denies any responsibility for it. Speculation is running rampant as to how much inflation the U.S. will export.
This is what fiat currencies and the printing of money bring: Rampant speculation and volatile prices. It is incredibly difficult to predict how the Fed's printing will impact prices, so speculators are doing what they do: They're jumping ahead of the curve and buying commodities before they all shoot through the roof. Sugar is now at a 30 year high and cotton is at a 28 year high. All of this is happening while we're supposed to be in a deflationary stage due to the credit collapse.
The Federal Reserve has been destroying our currency for nearly 100 years now. The dollar has lost 97% of its value since the Fed's creation in 1913. But none of the Fed chairmen has been as bold as Ben Bernanke. What he is doing would have been impossible to fathom just three short years ago. It's bad enough that the Fed is taking money from savers by holding short-term rates so low and giving it to the banks. To add insult to injury, the Fed debases the currency by printing trillions of dollars to prop up the government's budget deficit. It is a terrible time to be a saver or to be living on a fixed income.
These are frightening times and it is prudent to prepare by owning gold and even stocks of companies that make things we truly need, such as food, water, and energy. The future depends partly on how much faith people lose in the dollar. A serious collapse of the dollar and hyperinflation likely won't come from the physical printing of money itself. It will come from a breakdown of faith and confidence in our fiat system.
