The Fed Just Became the World’s #1 Gold Salesman…

To the surprise of absolutely no one, the Federal Reserve announced its decision yesterday to cut interest rates… and kept the door open to further rate cuts in the future.

The funny thing is that we’ll never truly know why.

Sure, it’s possible that Fed officials honestly felt that the economy needs lower rates (despite obviously persistent inflation risks).

Of course, it’s also possible that Fed Chairman Jerome Powell finally caved to all the insults and pressure from the President.

Or that the rest of the FOMC members looked at what’s happening with Lisa Cook and submitted to inevitability, fearing that they too would be investigated for mortgage fraud (or some other criminal matter) if they didn’t cut rates.

Again, we may never know their real motivations. But it’s clear that the White House has gotten its way.

The President and Treasury Secretary believe that lower rates will stimulate the economy, raise wages, raise asset prices, improve housing affordability, and broadly create conditions for economic prosperity… and they’ve been pushing hard for rate cuts.

Lower rates will also help bail out the US government— whose national debt is so gargantuan that the Treasury is set to spend $1.2 trillion this Fiscal Year (which ends on September 30) just to pay interest.

The Trump administration sees lower rates as the key to slashing that annual interest bill.

Of course, a better solution would be to cut spending, bring the budget closer into balance, and reduce America’s debt-to-GDP ratio.

Putting America’s fiscal house in order would also attract investment in US government bonds the old-fashioned way— by restoring confidence that the US Treasury can pay back its debts through growth, strength, and prestige.

But making such cuts is politically difficult. Even the party that claims to be fiscally conservative isn’t really that interested in meaningful spending cuts.

So, they’re going with Plan B– push the Fed to lower interest rates.

But as we’ve argued before, they’re setting themselves up for disappointment.

Remember what happened last year— between September and December 2024, the Fed cut rates three times for a total of 1%. Yet over that same period, US government bond yields actually INCREASED by 1%.

This proves that the Fed can’t just snap its fingers and force interest rates lower simply by having a committee meeting.

Interest rates are ultimately determined by supply and demand for money. So if they Fed really wants to see lower rates, they’re going to have to intervene directly in the bond market.

They’ve done this many times before– this is when the Fed ‘prints’ money, i.e. what they call “quantitative easing”. And the most recent example was during the pandemic when the Fed created about $5 trillion of new money.

They used that money to buy government bonds– essentially creating artificial demand for Treasurys that pushed yields down to record lows.

And life felt pretty good for a while– people were able to buy homes and finance mortgages at rates lower than 3%. The government was able to sell 10-year debt for less than 0.5%.

But all those trillions of dollars of new money from the Fed came at a consequence: inflation soared to 9%— the highest in decades.

This is the major tradeoff that the Fed is facing right now: the White House wants lower interest rates. And the Fed seems to be capitulating to the pressure.

But for interest rates to get really low (and remain there), the Fed will almost certainly have to engage in more Quantitative Easing… and that means more inflation.

That alone is going to push a lot more capital into the gold market.

For the past few years, foreign governments and central banks have been selling off their US dollar reserves and funneling that money into gold; this has been the primary reason why gold has soared to all-time highs.

And with the Fed’s capitulation on rates, this trend will continue.

It’s also very likely that pension funds, insurance funds, and other long-term institutional investors will seek refuge in gold as well, driving the price even higher.

To be clear, this isn’t a prediction that gold is going to go up every day, or every month, or even every year.

But if you take a longer-term view—say, 8 to 10 years when the US national debt hits $60 trillion and Social Security runs out of funds— the case for owning gold becomes even more compelling.

I don’t hold this view because I’m a “gold bug”. I’m not fanatical about a hunk of metal. But I do understand these long-term trends, and in my view, we’re still in the early innings.

Another option is to buy gold-related companies, which can offer powerful leverage to the metal itself.

Central banks buy physical gold. They do not buy shares of gold companies. That’s why, even as gold surged, many of the companies we researched traded at dirt-cheap valuations—as low as 2-3x earnings in some cases.

But investors are starting to catch on and pay attention to these deeply undervalued businesses; in fact, we’ve seen several companies in our portfolio gain up to 4x, some even just over the last few months.

Given that Q3 earnings are coming up just around the corner, we believe that some of these gold (and related silver and platinum) companies are about to post record earnings and could see their share prices soar even more.

If you’re interested, we publish all of this investment research, including detailed analysis of deeply undervalued gold companies, in our premium service.

It’s called the 4th Pillar, and we’re currently offering a limited time 40% promotional discount; click here to learn more.

Source

Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur and permanent traveler. His daily letter is both educational and entertaining, and we suggest that those who want unbiased, actionable information about global opportunities sign up for Sovereign Man’s free, actionable newsletter at http://www.SovereignMan.com.

From Simon Black of SovereignMan.com

Source: https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/the-fed-just-became-the-worlds-1-gold-salesman-153549/