Hedge fund manager Bill Fleckenstein thinks the European Central Bank is about to turn the whole euro crisis on its head, based on recent reports that the central bank is close to working out a plan to limit government borrowing costs in the eurozone.

In a column for MSN Money, Fleckenstein writes that his "feeling is that we are in the ninth inning of the ECB's transformation," and that a bond buying plan would be a "definite inflection point" for both markets and world economic growth.

Fleckenstein thinks that accordingly, the death of the deflation trade has arrived:

It is important to note that, while nothing has happened yet, there is now a clear path to get the ECB to the printing press promised land. If so, it is a very, very big game-changer. As I have stated often, if the ECB becomes the Fed, then the deflation fear trade, and all of its main consequences (e.g., indiscriminate government bond buying), are over, and the next big idea is going to be inflation.

That doesn't mean folks are going to instantly switch to an inflation fear trade, but that is where we are heading. Certainly, all those people who are concerned about deflation due to a banking and government bond market collapse in Europe will stop worrying about those things and will unwind positions put on to protect them from what they used to be afraid of.

Read the full column at MSN Money >