David Stockman on the Fed:

David Stockman (Ronald Reagan's budget director): "Here's the heart of the matter. The Fed is a patsy. It is a pathetic dependent of the big Wall Street banks, traders and hedge funds. Everything (it does) is designed to keep this rickety structure from unwinding. If you had a (former Fed Chairman) Paul Volcker running the Fed today 7/8— utterly fearless and independent and willing to scare the hell out of the market any day of the week — you wouldn't have half, you wouldn't have 95 percent, of the speculative positions today.

Q: You sound as if we're facing a financial crisis like the one that followed the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

A: Oh, far worse than Lehman. When the real margin call in the great beyond arrives, the carnage will be unimaginable.

Q: What will 10-year Treasurys yield in a year or five years?
A: I have no guess, but I do know where it is now (a yield of about 2 percent) is totally artificial. It's the result of massive purchases by not only the Fed but all of the other central banks of the world.
Q: What's wrong with that?
A: It doesn't come out of savings. It's made up money. It's printing press money. When the Fed buys $5 billion worth of bonds this morning, which it's doing periodically, it simply deposits $5 billion in the bank accounts of the eight dealers they buy the bonds from.

(comment: and they use that money to front run your stock trades.)

Q: Do you own any shares?
A: No.

Q: Are you in short-term Treasurys?
A: I'm just in short-term, yeah. Call it cash. I have some gold. I'm not going to take any risk.

Q: Municipal bonds?
A: No.

Q: No munis, no stocks. Wow. You're not making any money.
A: Capital preservation is what your first, second and third priority ought to be in a system that is so jerry-built, so fragile, so exposed to major breakdown that it's not worth what you think you might be able to earn over six months or two years or three years if they can keep the bailing wire and bubble gum holding the system together, OK? It's not worth it.

Comment: Personally, I think that gold is safer than cash.  But obviously you need both.