RunawayTrader

Well, what can you expect? Anytime you’ve got the Feds monkeying with monetary policy, you know you’ve got trouble. In this case, the Feds have whacked short-term interest rates, and accordingly, the banks and S&Ls have truncated the rates they pay savings account holders.

And how bad is it? Drumroll, please.

I did some checking on the Internet and discovered that 2% interest on a certificate of deposit for a year or two is probably the best you’re going to get.

Your local bank? Well, that’s what raised my ire to the boiling point and why I’m blogging today.

The object of my anger happens to be U.S. Bank, but it could be any bank, Wells Fargo, Chase, you name it.

I wanted to create a special account where I could put aside a year’s worth of money should I decide to just lay on my butt for 12 months and not worry about putting shoulder to the wheel. So, I recently opened a US Bank savings account to husband those dollars.

Now let me confess firsthand that I didn’t expect this account to pay much in the way of interest. But that wasn’t the point. I just wanted a safe place to tuck my extra bucks. I think the going rate is something like .005 or thereabouts. Bottom line: if you put away $5000 today; U.S. Bank will give you $5025 a year from now.

But today, or tonight to be more precise, I checked online for my balance and discovered my account had been credited with, get this, 79-cents in interest. And this is for, like, a month-and-a-half of interest.

Seventy-nine cents? Get real.

What do you expect about nine months after the Federal Reserve shoved short-term rates to nearly 0 percent? Smalltime savers like me are paying the price now for efforts that were crafted to ultimately bail out the banks and get the country out of a severe financial crisis.

And don’t expect the Fed to raise rates anytime soon. Most experts don’t expect the Fed to raise rates this year—or even early next year. So maybe a year or two from now we can expect some relief.

In the meantime, I pulled a wad of cash from my newly-minted savings account and bought more platinum bars. I am expecting platinum to rise as automakers and others recover (platinum is used mostly in industrial uses such as catalytic converters, jewelry and in investment-grade bars). Spot platinum is selling for about $1273 an ounce. But get this; it hit a high of over $2000 an ounce about a year ago.

And, of course, there’s a ready market for platinum so it’s not like you’re investing in more illiquid commodities like real estate or antique. I can find an online buyer for platinum bars in a New York minute.

Meantime, I’ll leave a few bucks in that crummy savings account and put my newly purchased bars of platinum in my U.S. Bank savings deposit box. How’s that for a deal? I expect, at mininum, to earn more than 79-cents a month.

Charlie, the Runaway Trader