Protecting Your Investments
The Federal Reserve has tried to calm the investing public with a promise to control inflation, but this will not be easy. The Fed is caught in a cycle that will be hard to break. If it raises interest rates, stock and bond prices will fall. In a repeat of 2013’s Taper Tantrum, the Fed will be pressured to reverse course and try to jam interest rates back toward zero.
But 2022 is not like 2013 because we have serious inflation in 2022 at 7% and threatening to go higher. This time implementing a zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) will fuel the current inflation fire because it requires massive money printing. The Fed can’t have it both ways. It cannot control inflation and continue to buoy up stock and bond prices.
Current inflation is a combination of demand-pull due to pandemic-related supply shortages and cost-push due to $13 trillion in money printing, which is more than our 10 most expensive wars. It is not transitory.
Field of Study: Economics
Serial entrepeneur specializing in target date funds and baby boomer investment education.
Ronald J. Surz is co-host of the Baby Boomer Investing Show and president of Target Date Solutions and Age Sage, Target Date Solutions serves institutional investors, namely 401(k) plans. Age Sage serves do-it-yourself individual investors. His passion is helping his fellow baby boomers at this critical time in their lives when they are relying on their lifetime savings to support a retirement with dignity, so he wrote a book: Baby Boomer Investing in the Perilous 2020s .
