David Stockman: Thundering Collision Coming in Bond Market, Gold Only Safe Asset Left

Former Reagan White House Budget Director David Stockman says, “The central banks realize they cannot keep printing money at these crazy rates, and by that I mean the bond buying. Now, they are going to begin to normalize and shrink their balance sheet. . . . By the fall (of 2018), they (the Federal Reserve) will be shrinking their balance sheet by $600 billion a year. What that means in plain simple English is that they (the Fed) are dumping $600 billion a year of existing bonds into the market just as Uncle Sam will be attempting to borrow $1.25 trillion more. Now, if you don’t think that is a financial collision waiting to happen, then I am not sure what would be. We are heading for a thundering collision in the bond market that will drive yields upward far more than the market is expecting. The stock market operates on the illusion of permanently low interest rates. When interest rates start to rise, everything is going to come apart because cheap debt has been priced in forever, and we are heading for far more expensive debt. . . . Bond prices are going to collapse when yields begin to rise. . . . Stock prices are going to collapse bigtime when the underlying predicate of cheap debt, massive stock buy backs and M&A deals and everything else supporting the market today finally reverses. So, we are going to have deflation in the canyons of Wall Street, and that will not be a happy day.”
Stockman also likes gold and silver and says those are only “safe investments left.”