The Fed’s FOMC announcement came out…

We got exactly what I expected, a kind of wishy-washy, “hedging our bets” statement from the Fed. You have to remember that Bernanke was Greenspan’s right hand man for much of the bubble days of the ‘90s and early ‘00s, so the guy is an expert at walking both sides of the line when it comes to policy and public statements.

For instance, the Fed announced it would keep interest rates between 0% and 0.25% for an “extended period.” No surprise there. As I’ve noted previously, 80%+ of the $200+ trillion in derivatives sitting on US commercial banks’ balance sheets are related to interest rates.

For the Fed to hint at raising rates (let alone raise them) would kick off a systemic implosion that would wipe out the very guys the Fed has been bailing out. Suffice to say the Fed won’t be raising interest rates …

Yesterday we detailed the different between this current economic contraction, and your usual run of the mill plain vanilla recessions. We also went over the MASSIVE consumer credit contraction that needs to occur before American households have finished de-leveraging.

Today, we’re detailing why stocks will Crash this coming fall. As you know the media is rife with folks calling the end of the recession and the beginning of a new bull market. It’s clear to me that this is a load of nonsense. Today I’ll show you why.

Because a lot of the alleged “analysis” that is backing up the bulls’ claims of a new bull market comes from technical analysis and charts, I’m presenting the below chart from David Rosenberg of Gluskin Shef. It charts today’s bear market over that of 1929-1932.

As you can see, today’s bear market is mirroring that of the ‘30s almost to perfection. Indeed, …

Gold may be nearing its next major leg up.

No investment ever goes straight up or straight down. During the last bull market in gold, the precious metal rose 2,329% from a low of $35 in 1970 to a high of $850 in 1980. However, during that time, there was a period of 18 months in which gold fell nearly 50% (see the chart below).

As you can see, from mid-1971 to December 1974, gold rose 471%. It then fell 50%, from December ’74 to August ’76. After that, it began its next leg up, exploding 750% higher from August ’76 to January 1980.

Now, in its current bull market (2001 to March 2008), gold rose over 300% from $250 to a little over $1,000. And just like in the mid-70s, it began showing signs of weakness after its first big rally up to $1,014 in March ’08. At one point, …