Insurance company buys $400 million in gold

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This isn't a good sign. Northwestern Mutual, the third-largest life insurer in the country, has bought gold for the first time in its history, Bloomberg reports. And it bought a lot.

“Gold just seems to make sense; it’s a store of value,” chief executive Edward Zore told Bloomberg. “In the Depression, gold did very, very well.”

Northwestern now has about $400 million in gold. The way Zore sees it, the investment just can't go bad.

Some of the stocks in the company's portfolio fell 95% in the financial crisis. Gold isn't going to do that, Zore said. In fact, he thinks the price of gold could even increase five-fold if the economy continues to deteriorate.