As part of the Fed's latest QE iteration, it has already been made clear that despite initial disclosures that the Fed would stay in the 2-10 Year bound of Treasurys, Ben Bernanke is now also gobbling up the very long end of the curve. For all those who are, therefore, still confused why bonds continue to surge to record levels, don't be: when there is a guaranteed bidder just below you in the face of the Fed, and who you can turn around and sell to at will, there is no pricing risk. The problem, from a bigger stand point, is what happens when the Fed is actively buying up 30 Year bonds with impunity and the much desired (by the Fed) inflation still does not appear? Well, the Fed then, in Michael Pento's opinion, will begin to purchase stocks and real estate. And as all those who enjoy comparing the US to Japan can attest, outright purchases of securities by the Japanese government is a long-honored tradition in the ongoing fight with deflation in Japan. However, and as the recent BOJ (lack of) intervention demonstrated, Japan never could do anything with the required resolve, and bidding up one stock here and there would never achieve anything. Which is why in this interview with Eric King, Michael Pento makes the case that as opposed to the occasional market intervention via the President's Working Group, Bernanke will soon make stock purchases an outright policy of the Federal Reserve as its last ditch attempt to engender inflation before the hundreds of billions of Commercial Real Estate and other bank debt start maturing in 2011/2012. Bernanke is running out of time and he knows it. And once the Fed becomes the bidder of last resort in stocks, all bets are off, as the Central Bank will become the defacto only market in virtually every risky category. And the only safe vehicle, once the market then begins to price in Fed driven asset-price hyperinflation, will be gold.

Pento also provides some perspectives on the Fed's balance sheet, which he anticipates will expand in a "great fashion", but a much bigger concern to the recent Euro Pacific Capital addition, is the possible surge in M2: "That base money can expand, M2 which is currently running around 8.5 trillion all the way up to nearly 25 to 30 trillion dollars of money supply and that's enough obviously to send prices through the roof." All Bernanke needs to do is light the "alternative asset purchasing" match and all those who wonder what left field hyperinflation could come out of, will get their answer.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Pento interview without a requisite smack-down, in this case of Dennis Gartman, whose call to sell gold denominated in euros at the very bottom of the recent gold correction needs no further commentary: EUR-denom gold has jumped well over 10% since Gartman said to get out. Pento adds the following: "There is so much misinformation out there, Dennis Gartman was out there saying gold has lost its inflation hedging properties: this is just ludicrous and insane. I can tell you that gold will never lose its inflation lure, and that's precisely why I've stepped up my purchases of gold., I see what the monetary base is doing, I can clearly see Bernanke's next step to vastly increase the size of the balance sheet and the monetary base. So for me, it's 100% an inflation hedge."

Pento also goes into explaining why housing is facing a "deflationary depression," and a further collapse in pricing, why inflation benefits only those closest to the money, i.e., the banks and the military complex, why it destroys the middle class (we are sure Buffett ca. 2003 could say something about that too... the current, far more senile and captured Uncle Warren, not so much), the impact on discretionary purchases, on unemployment, real incomes, and all other items which tend to "follow the money."

Lastly, Pento concludes with an analysis of what would have happened had the government allowed the deflationary depression to occur two years ago, without the tens of trillions in bank bailouts. We protracted, and elongated the depression. But instead of having the benefit of falling prices, you have rising prices." And if Pento is right, the price rise has only just begun.

Full King World News interview here.