What does FED's zero interest rate for the foreseable future mean ?

Despite that bond yields in Europe are imploding, and Italy becoming the newest member of the elitist 7% club, among countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, all seems to be running well in the US wonderland. The cost of borrowing, as measured by US T-bills, has reached the lowest level since the beginning of the financial crisis. The demand of short term bills, namely 3 weeks, which are yielding 0%, and 13 weeks which are yielding 0.005%, is still extremely high as the bid/cover ratio stood at 3.41 in the most recent Treasury Auction.

Gold soars, as the European bailout is back on track

Investors were reminded once again today that there are no golden pennies lying on the sidewalk, as gold shed all concerns and manged to pull itself up to the 1763 level. Not very nice for me since I exited all my gold positions at 1755. Silver went pretty much through the same lines as the other precious metals, rising today from $34.02 to $34.50, in what seems to be a rather anemic movement. The main drivers today was ECB's rate cut and (again) turmoil on the Greek political scene as Papandreou succesfully bluffed most of media with his resignation story.

FED's Chairman Bernanke sees trouble ahead

It's time to sober up and say a little prayer for the wellbeing of the United States of America. The recent Federal Open Market Committee decided today to keep the benchmark interest rate at the 0% - 0.25% interval, effectively prolonging the Zero Interest Rate Policy, through at least mid- 2013. FED's policy makers agreed that the economy picked up some steam while "signficant downsize risk" still remains. The US Federal Reserve will still conduct the so called "Operation Twist" which aims to swap short term Treasuries with longer term maturities in order to flatten the yield curve and lower the costs of capital investments. 

The inflation rate, measured by the CPI rose to 2.9% in September, the highest since 2008, while the core-CPI (excluding housing and energy costs) rose to 1.6%.