Video News/In Focus with Jeremy Szafron

(Kitco News) - The Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates for the first time in three years lands on a Main Street economy already under severe strain, and precious metals are the only reliable place left to hide, according to Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO of QI Research and a former Fed insider. Speaking with Kitco News on the day of the hike, DiMartino Booth pushed back on the characterization of financial conditions as accommodative, noting that US small business bankruptcies are up 64% year over year through August. "I doubt that most small business owners who are choking under high interest rates would consider financial conditions to be accommodative," she said. She argued the Fed and Wall Street are looking at two different economies, pointing to record private credit defaults and rising corporate bankruptcies even as officials describe the consumer as resilient. On gold's drop following the decision, she called it a likely knee-jerk reaction tied to margin-call selling rather than a change in the thesis, adding that "whenever you see stress in the credit markets, the only place that you can hide with any certainty is precious metals."