Reply to Resilience Rob, “use it to retire and/or for it to preserve its purchasing power”
Points well taken. However, my comments call for some rather lengthy clarifications.
When I retired some thirty years ago the disconnect between GDP and newly created fiat currencies was already apparent. After selling my practice and medical building, without much knowledge of economics at that time, I invested in gold. I started studying economics after I lost a considerable sum in the tech bubble. In 2006 there was a very expensive report written by a renowned and astute economist for his clients. In that report Mr. Schultz told his clients in italics, “It is the derivative market you Idiots”. He went on to state that there was 620-640 trillion of bets in that market that were leveraged around 30 times. He further declared that most if not all banks were technically insolvent. I called the head of a central bank whom I knew for some clarification. He had an anonymous person call me who listed 50 of the worlds largest banks with whom this country had to restrict any larger transactions due to the liabilities of their balance sheets.
Today we have an estimated Quad trillion (add 15 zeros to the above figure) bets that are leveraged by one hundred to several hundred times. Now factor in the enormous debt/income, PE ratios, stock buy backs etc of large corporations, escalation of wars, climate change, massive corruption at every level of business and government, ever increasing civil unrest, absolute control of information in the West, and on and on.
I believe though that the financial crisis is the ticking time bomb. For over a decade economists have been using the phrase, “We know the price of every thing, but the value of nothing”. We often elude to the economy as being an upside down pyramid of DEBT. The system can only exist in its very nature by ever increasing the base of the pyramid with debt and in the very tiny upside down tip of the pyramid are the assets.
So we seem to understand the crisis and we pretend that taking rapidly decreasing PPP values of worthless currency notes and placing them in the total illusionary Ponzi scheme of investments is going to secure our future. I mentioned briefly the above to point out that every business, healthy or unhealthy, is connected, directly and indirectly, when the system collapses. There is general consensus amongst the experts that a collapse most likely will be so sudden and traumatic. It has been made clear to the “tribe” that we are in an ever increasing crisis. My humble opinion, is that it is time to turn down the fear knobs And concentrate on constructive preparations in detail and first directed at those of average means.
How to collect and store water, how to purify water, how to use a given quantity of water for multiple uses, what Antibiotics and other medications to store and for which ailments, what vegetables have the most nutrition, how to save the seeds, how to nourish the garden soil with home made compost, becoming energy independent, usage of 20 year dry batteries or lithium batteries, should one have a home wood burner to heat and cook with and what size, how much firewood to store, how to bind with a small community and share responsibility and security of every sort. These and hundreds of others are often complex issues and deserve in detail discussions. For those fortunate with more resources topics of which foreign passports to own or where to store gold might be of interest. The other point being made here is that it not only takes time and knowledge to become independent and more secure but also a lot of resources that also tend to play in the future much more important roles and even offer immediate financial dividends.
