Global risks those two words encapsulated the gist of the minutes from the Federal Reserves March 15-16 meeting. And that’s ironic, given that U.S. GDP estimates continue to tumble toward zero, suggesting clear and present dangers to the domestic economy.

It was at this March meeting that the central bank left interest rates unchanged and also reduced its likely target number of 2016 rate hikes from four to two. That caution was reflected in the new minutes, which found that several Fed officials noted their concern that raising the target range as soon as April would signal a sense of urgency they did not think appropriate. In contrast, only some Fed policymakers backed raising rates at the next meeting, set for April 26-27.

Ongoing downside risks seen: Overseas risks were the major rationale for the Feds ongoing caution. Several participants expressed the view that the underlying factors abroad that led to a sharp, though temporary, deterioration in global financial conditions earlier this year had not been fully resolved and thus posed ongoing downside risks, the minutes read.

Although the focus was clearly on international economic developments after all, the word global was used about 22 times throughout the minutes the Fed document stressed that bankers are watching not only domestic economic releases, but also information about developments abroad and changes in financial conditions.

Earnings disaster could derail June hike: The takeaway from the minutes is surprise, surprise that the Fed will continue its data-dependent stance and more likely than not will not raise rates in April. The June meeting, rather, is what Wall Street is now focusing on. But what will happen between now and then that more than likely will see the Fed kicking the can even further down the road? First-quarter earnings season, that’s what.

CNN went so far as to call the upcoming earnings season the worst since the Great Recession.

Wall Street is bracing for a 7.9% plunge in first-quarter profits in S&P 500 companies as earnings season kicks off next week, CNN reported. That would be the deepest decline since 2009, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. The culprits? A strong dollar, falling oil prices, and slow global growth. The energy sector is expected to fare the worst.

Fragile apple cart of stocks: This earnings season does have the potential of upsetting a rather fragile apple cart, independent strategist Peter Kenny warned of recent stock gains.

Barrons added: Bottom-up expectations have grown increasingly pessimistic over the past three months, to the point where Wall Street now sees corporate profits slumping for a fourth straight quarter for the first time since the financial crisis. Barrons cited a FactSet estimate of an even worse 8.5% drop in S&P 500 company earnings from the previous quarter.

If a surprise rate hike were to occur in April or June, expect stocks to surrender their tenuous gains. After all, we’ve already seen that even the tiniest of interest rate hikes has gone hand in hand with a huge drop in the markets, noted Robert Murphy of The Mises Institute.

Expert sees $10,000 gold: Ironically, stocks stayed largely in the green Wednesday while gold hung on to mild losses after Tuesdays surge of more than 1%. But investors need gold now more than ever, said Jim Rickards of West Shore Funds in a new Bloomberg interview.

Right now with the Fed dovishness, its going to lead to a weaker dollar. The dollars at a 10-year high on the index. I would expect a weaker dollar, stronger euro, stronger yen, but gold should also go up as the dollar weakens.

Given the vulnerabilities in the stock market, investors need hard assets, not equities alone or even gold ETFs, Rickards said. Stock-market wealth is all electrons, he noted.

If you dont have some assets (that are) tangible, I recommend gold for 10%, real estate, fine art, silver, there are other asset classes, but you have to have something physical or it can all be wiped out, he said, citing the recent massive cybertheft experienced by Bangladesh as well as several New York Stock Exchange closures throughout history.

Rickards maintained his longstanding call that gold will eventually be valued at $10,000 under a global reset of the world financial system under a new gold standard. What does the price of gold have to be to support world trade, world commerce, and the world money supply? Its eighth-grade math; its not difficult. That’s where gold will end up when confidence in paper money is lost during the next major financial crisis. But until then, investors need gold to weather the potentially rocky earnings season ahead.

Republican presidential contender Donald Trump grabbed headlines again over the weekend by reiterating one of his campaigns central claims: that the U.S. is in a recession.

Trump may have a point: The Atlanta Federal Reserves GDPNow forecasting tool has now fallen below 1%, to just 0.7%. Though not yet negative, U.S. growth seems to be losing momentum.

I think were sitting on an economic bubble. A financial bubble, Trump told The Washington Post. Were not at 5% unemployment. Were at a number thats probably into the 20s if you look at the real number. That was a number that was devised, statistically devised to make politicians and in particular presidents look good. And I wouldnt be getting the kind of massive crowds that Im getting if the number was a real number.

Im talking about a bubble where you go into a very massive recession. Hopefully not worse than that, but a very massive recession.

Hollow pockets all over economy: Trumps claims brought out the usual naysayer economists in their rose-colored glasses, but the latter are ignoring a crucial point: Though U.S. GDP hasnt fallen into negative territory for the two straight quarters needed to qualify as a true recession, millions of Americans nevertheless feel as if they are living in one.

Trumps not talking to economists, said Yahoo! Finance columnist Rick Newman. Hes talking to a lot of people who feel they have been in a massive recession for years, I mean 15, 20 years. Thats who is showing up to Donald Trumps rallies by and large, and they have reasons to be angry, by and large. We do know that incomes have stagnated for a lot of people. We do know that many of the better-paying blue-collar or middle-income jobs we used to have are no longer here. And when you look at the aggregate data on the U.S. economy, you see growth; you see the economys doing OK, but there are big hollow pockets in the U.S. economy.

And to see those hollow pockets, look no further than last Fridays nonfarm-payrolls report. Although 215,000 positions purportedly were created in March, the unemployment rate ticked up to 5%, and The Wall Street Journal reported that U.S. companies have announced the most first-quarter layoffs since 2009, citing the latest Challenger Gray data.

29,000 factory jobs lost: And a closer look at the Labor Department report itself reveals that the headline numbers are a rickety faade:

29,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in March, along with 12,000 in mining, only to be replaced by record gains in retail, food services, and drinking establishments, or typically low-paying service-industry jobs.

More than 93 million Americans remain out of the labor force. Although the participation rate improved in March, the number of Americans who have given up looking for work is still higher than a year ago.

Moreover, the newly created jobs are not the type that can sustain the American Dream or get deeply indebted college students out from their parents basements. Circumstantial evidence in the latest U.S. jobs report suggests many of these newly employed workers have found part-time work with mediocre pay, MarketWatch said of the payrolls report.

Indeed, the U.S. manufacturing sector remains in a deep funk, with factory orders down 1.7% in February.

Another dismal earnings season ahead: And Trump could be right on another front: the equities bubble. The stock market could be about to get a huge wakeup call in the coming weeks, when corporate-earnings reporting season begins.

Nearly one-fifth of companies on the S&P 500 index expect to fall short of Wall Street estimates in what promises to be one of the most negative earnings seasons in a decade, MarketWatch reported.

With 94 companies already issuing negative quarterly outlooks, thats the second-highest number since tracking began.

And even worse, this will be the fourth straight negative quarter for earnings, with a decline of 8.7% projected, according to one estimate.

How much can the stock market rally in the face of the reality that earnings expectations have been steadily reduced? asked the Financial Times on March 25.

Stagflation leaving tracks across U.S.: With signs of inflation starting to tick up amid this low-growth environment, some economists are beginning to utter the S word: stagflation.

During the last year, as the economy has returned closer to full employment, the core cost structure of the U.S. economy has risen more aggressively and more broadly than ever before in this recovery, Jim Paulsen of Wells Capital Management told clients. While the U.S. is not facing runaway inflation, the concept of stagflation (i.e., rising inflation rates combined with slower real economic activity) has become much more noticeable.

Overall, for the first time in this recovery, a broad and significant rise in core economic costs is slowing job creation, real consumer spending and profitability, Paulsen said. In other words, stagflation is leaving tracks across the entire (economy).

Stagflation last reared its ugly head in the 1970s and coincided with golds run-up to its then-all-time high above $800. Bank of America has issued a report saying that gold is one asset that can thrive during stagflation, and other analysts have concurred.

Stagflation is the toughest investment regime, composed of inflation and economic stagnation, Acernis Capital CEO Avner Mandelman wrote in Canadas Globe and Mail newspaper earlier this year. The last time we saw this was in the late 1970s. And its coming again. In such a period, one of the only investments that appreciates is gold.

Gold expert Jim Rickards the author of several books including Currency Wars, The Death of Money, and The New Case for Gold recently penned a Q&A, and a Blanchard and Company client reacted with a great response. The article was about the amount of money that the Federal Reserve has stolen from American savers, which is approaching $8 billion, according to a recent study by NerdWallet.

Here is the Q&A:

How much did the Fed steal from U.S. savers? $7.5 billion and still counting. When the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates close to zero, who wins and who loses?

The losers are savers like you and me who keep some portion of their assets in the bank.

The winners are the banks that get to use our money for free and make leveraged investments in safe Treasury notes. This homegrown carry trade can produce 15% returns on equity for the banks at our expense. Artificially low interest rates are a case of stealing from savers and transferring the profits to the banks. Its like a bank robbery in reverse, where the bank robs you!

Relative to normal interest rates at this stage of a business cycle, savers have lost over $7.5 billion in interest due to the Feds policies. Some estimates put the losses much higher.

Here’s what a Blanchard client said upon reading the above: Wait until they go negative!

Negative rates seem to be popping up all over the globe as central banks struggle just to keep their respective economies stagnant, much less growing. Most people can’t imagine negative rates happening in the United States, but the Fed is pretty much close to zero interest rates as it is and has no bullets left in its monetary-policy gun.

What are negative interest rates? Its an even more draconian monetary policy than zero interest rates, in which savers receive little to nothing in interest for their bank deposits. Under negative rates, a bank customer actually gets back less than the original deposit; in effect, a depositor pays the bank a fee for the privilege of storing cash at the bank. Negative rates are a last-ditch attempt by central banks to generate inflation and stimulate the economy by forcing people to spend rather than save, since saving becomes a money-bleeding proposition.

The Fed has already reduced its projected number of interest-rate hikes in 2016 by half, from four to two, and as new economic data come in, it will likely reduce that number further. If the economy undergoes any hiccups at all, the Fed will be forced to reverse its December rate hike its first in almost a decade and be right back at zero, with a negative-interest-rate policy (NIRP) looming on the horizon.

Gold is an excellent asset to hold during both ZIRP and NIRP environments. The dollar will weaken, and virtually no safe asset will offer a rate of return. Investors will start looking for the return of their money, not a return on their money. What happens when you give a bank $100 on deposit but get only $98 back when you return for your money? The power of gold during negative rates is that it offers a better chance at a yield than cash or bonds, which are money losers under NIRP.