Jim Rickards latest FED predictions

The thing that is great about Jim Rickards is that he is not afraid to make specific forecasts regarding what he thinks the FED will do. He doesn't hedge. And most of the time he is right which is why what he says will always be welcome here.

Here he predicts  the FED will continue to taper in March, but will pause the taper in June due to weakness in the economy. So it will be easy to see if the hits this one. Jim wrote the best seller "Currency Wars" which has inspired me to write a post tomorrow night I will title "Cryptocurrency Wars" in his honor.  :)    It is about what appears to be a war between Bitcoin and the existing financial establishment as symbolized by JP Morgan.


Addendum: While on the topic of Rickards and predictions, here are a couple of mainstream media articles that illustrate how you can often find out early things that later show up in these media sources. This is how Rickards has earned credibility in my view over time.

The first is this CNBC article confirming what you would already know if you listened to Rickards (and a number of alternatve media sites). The Chinese probably have over 4,000 tons of gold now even though they still show only around 1,000 officially. Rickards actually mentioned that same amount in an interview recently. And the article says they might actually want to "internationalize the yuan". Really? Pretty sure I've heard that before elsewhere.

The second is an article in the Wall Street Journal  noting how the FED has now changed its guidelines for when to end QE since official unemployment numbers are lower than they expected too quickly. I follow Rickards twitter pretty often. Last week he was predicting the FED would do exactly what this article talks about. He said they have to leave room to "pause the taper" later this year when the economy shows weakness. Then Chairwoman Yellen said exactly that before Congress. Then Rickards re confirmed his prediction in the Yahoo Finance interview with Lauren Lyster.

Update 1-19-2015: This is a forecast that Jim Rickards did miss (at least in terms of timing). The Fed followed through with its taper, but it is not clear yet if they will be able to stick to that at this point in time. Just have to continue to follow it. In addtion, it should be noted that Jim Rickards revised his timing on this forecast when it became clear the Fed would complete the taper. He now is predicting a possible renewal of QE in 2016.