Gilder sees a political backlash when negative interest rates start taking away people’s savings. Jim Rickards, chief global strategist at money manager West Shore Funds and author of “The New Case for Gold,” says the Fed and its peers have expanded their balance sheets to “the outer limit of confidence.”
Rickards helped negotiate the rescue of Long-Term Capital Management in the late 1990s and says it’s been downhill ever since. “In 1998, Wall Street bailed out a hedge fund. In 2008 the Fed bailed out Wall Street,” he said. “What’s going to happen in 2018? It’s going to be the IMF bailing out the central banks.”
He sees a chance of “close to 100 percent” that a downturn worse than the Great Recession is on the way in the next few years -- and then, “you’re going to be hearing a lot more about gold.”