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Bubba,

Maybe you haven't noticed, but everything you post and write are doom and gloom. Is that how you want to go through life? There's a time to be bullish and the time to be bearish. We are somewhere in the middle right now so you're not doing anyone a favor by posting these articles.

Robert Campbell? Who the hell is that? Did you tell you to load up at the bottom of the housing market? Of course interest rate will rise in the near future. It has nothing to do with the Fed, but has everything to do with the economy improving. If the economy tanked from here, there is no rise in interest rate. You see how these economists talk from both sides of their mouth and will point to the right side and ignore the wrong side?

Campbell was yelling deflation all the way through 2011. He completely missed the bottom of the housing market. He let his emotion got in the way of the data. Why would anyone want to quote him and subscribe to his newsletter is beyond me. Apparently, there's a sucker born every minute. That's how these doom and gloom economists can make their money. If you want to make money, subscribe to Bruce Norris newsletter.

Bubbabear says

yet doing so would create a potential catastrophe for pension plans and insurance companies which need higher rates.

Huh? The pension funds and insurance companies have done quite well in the low rate environment, due to their heavily long-term weighted bond portfolios gaining substantial amounts of value in excess of quoted coupon rates. Go look at the total return of long-term bond funds over the past decade -- extremely good, due to capital gains. Bond-centric asset managers like PIMCO have made out like bandits, as has the equity market. Pretty much all asset classes, except perhaps the precious metals and cash, have seen their returns augmented significantly due to the low interest rate environment.

Its the rising rate environment that will kill the pension funds and insurers, due to the capital losses induced on their bond portfolios when the cycle starts to really go in reverse. And that most certainly will be profoundly painful.

This is why I like the precious metals sector for the next 20-30 years; its one of the only sectors that seems to be significantly inversely correlated to the performance of long-term bonds. And ownership of the PM sector as a percentage of pension assets has almost never been lower worldwide.

Bubbabear stop with all the doom & gloom trolling. You know full well that America has never had a recession or depression & our economy is booming. Everyone has 40 hr./week jobs making 6 figures. Pensions are completely safe. No one has lost their part of the Am. Dream through foreclosure. There are only 3 people that aren't participating in the job market. etc.

I simply can't list all the positives for our economic future.

Has anyone seen my straitjacket?

Bubbabear says

“Thus the Fed may have to let interest rates rise to prevent the pension catastrophe from becoming even worse,” he writes. Indeed, rising interest rates are part and parcel of the inflationary aspect of the 60-year cycle We should eventually expect to see a gradual rising trend in coming years as the new inflationary cycle becomes established.

Pensions and savings vehicles tend to benefit the little people. Low interest rates benefit the too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions higher up the food chain. Interest rates will remain low no matter how much suffering is created for savers and those reliant on the pensions they worked for all their lives. What's good for the super-rich is what will be, no matter the cost to anyone else. That's how oligarchies roll.