First, a big shout-out and huge props to David Rogers Webb for (a) taking the time to assemble his thought-provoking book, (b) providing all the references, and (c) being brave enough to actually publish it!
The deeper I went the more I had to learn. Honestly, the Great Taking inquiry and everywhere it led me was similar to the effort that went into my Covid work. When such moments come along, as your information scout, I dive in, learn as fast as I can, and distill what I discover so you can (a) learn quickly and (b) save a bunch of time.
The final summary ideas are these:
David Rogers Webb has done a great service to us all.
Its major claims are real.
Securities entitlements
QFCâs have seniority.
Pooled assets, with vague areas about control
Harmonization and case precedents have been set.
I went further, to discover:
The system is opaque as shit.
The risks cannot be quantified.
Wall Street miscreants have not been properly punished.
There are too many trust-breaking legal ârulingsâ that protect Wall Streetâs major interests for my taste.
Importantly, nobody has been able to tell me how much collateralization, hypothecation and rehypothecation exists, where it sits, and which financial assets have been encumbered or for which control has been moved.
Because of this pattern of findings, I have to conclude that none of us know what the risks are, how big they might be, or how the system will behave when the next great financial accident comes along. And one certainly is on the way.
But we can project, based on the actions already proven in court and Congress, that the risks are larger than weâve been told, that corruption is both endemic and epidemic, and that when push comes to shove money will be conjured out of thin air to âprotect the systemâ which is actually code-speak for âmake insiders arenât the ones taking any losses.â
Please, the main conclusion â nay, the plea I make â is for you to take any and all necessary steps to protect your wealth from these raccoons!
Note: The links for this episode will be embedded in the first comment (as there are many and they would clog up this page).
I canât find the words to describe how valuable your research on this topic has been! You have my deepest gratitude. Now all we can hope for is that âwe the peopleâ pay attention, educate ourselves, and take the tough actions necessary 5o protect ourselves from this predatory system. Iâm not optimistic.
Feel like there is a rug pull going on with the âProtecting Your Wealth from the Great Takingâ seminar. I was one of those that upgraded when you got rid of the lowest tier a year or two ago. Overall its been of value but heavy on the hair on fire stuff, little on the what can be done to avoid being herded over the cliff. After paying to be led around to understand the situation, you want extra for the conclusion.
Youâve provided many examples of when it comes down to it they will gleefully ignore/change the laws to save their asses. I donât see a reason why any dancing into the nooks and crannies of the law will result in a different outcome. And being Canadian itâs less likely to be of utility to me.
Chris, please read THE BANK RESOLUTION ACT signed by the G20 many years ago. Attention to where the UNSECURED DEBT HOLDERS stand.
Also many individual countries went even further by writing their countries own act on top of the BRA. Often the second in line the derivative were listed!
Maybe this is why some politicians suddenly care about âthe safety of the childrenâ as they push hard to take the one civil right that I have that I value above all else.
I have some similar conclusions as yours with one big exception. Iâve seen all the answers for âwhat to doâ from Chrisâ presentations already episode by episode. I donât need to attend the seminar. Iâve already taken the actions I need to take. I have zero debt. I keep only small bank deposits that I need to function in this monetary system until it breaks. And Iâm 100% out of ââthe marketsââ. Because of all, that I am totally out of the reach of The Great Taking, though I do realize I will always be exposed to the second and third order consequences of TGT if or when it happens.
It looks to me like the seminar is only for people who canât/wonât take the above steps. The seminar is for people who want to risk âdancing into the nooks and crannies of the lawâ looking for just the right loopholes and shelters which will protect them while they remain fully engaged in the rigged system. I follow the comments closely and the majority of commenters, even here at PP!, still want to dance within The Rigged System and they are apparently waving money at Chris to get him to show them where all those loopholes and shelters are. You know, like the Direct Registration System and âcash accountsâ only (no âmargin accountsâ). Iâm not going to play their game any more so I donât need Chrisâ seminar on loopholes and shelters. Sounds like you donât either. Welcome aboard. But be aware if youâre not going to dance you have to eliminate debt, minimize bank balances, and get out of all stocks and bonds. Is that what youâve done or are working toward?
I call Chrisâ seminar âThe Barrel-Making Seminarâ because it sounds equivalent to giving strategy and technical advice to people preparing to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel
. There are certain vital barrel modifications Chris can tell you about to improve your chances of survival. I choose to NOT go over the falls in a barrel so I donât need the seminar. After the seminar I AM going to watch what happens when TGT is triggered and our friends here start going over the falls. I hope for the best for them.
Iâm in the same boat, @mongothepawn. I wrestle with these two, but with a third as well:
try to strategically alter/align the 401k so that itâs either not wiped out or at least not right away, thus perhaps allowing for a liquidation window when TSHTF.
I donât have my 401k in a margin account (as best I can tell) and itâs with Fidelity so itâs not with a smaller brokerage. I could probably do even more to really protect it, but I am wondering, like you, if thatâs even worth it. Maybe the liquidate+penalties option makes sense. I really like the idea of being fully debt-free right now.
I have many irons in the fire right now and one of them is liquidating the last asset that I own in Texas. I recently moved to SW Virginia from Texas and these two locations are far from each other.
I purchased an acre at a sheriffâs tax auction in 2021. The 1 acre is in a âgoodâ school district, next to a large luxury housing development, and close to major infrastructure. I listed it for sale in August 2022 when I accepted the new job in Virginia. It quickly sold and it was soon discovered that the 1 acre had no access.
The no access issue was a surprise because it had a public road running to the property in the late 1990âs. The luxury âmaster planâ housing community bought up a bunch of land surrounding my 1 acre and somehow shortened the old public road. The road now ends about 100 feet from my 1 acre.
I attempted to fix this access issue by hiring a survey crew to map out an easement. I presented the easement plans and $5,000 to the HOA and requested the easement. They denied my request. I then filed a lawsuit against them seeking to obtain an easement by necessity. I am now $80,000 into this mess and I am just now seeing a possible end to the nightmare. Word of advice to everyone. If it is ever possible to avoid involving lawyers in a dispute, do so because they are not cheap.
I was deposed last week by the defendantâs lawyer after I submitted a motion for summary judgement. The defense lawyer attempted many times to extract an unforced error from me. I did not fall into any of their traps. My lawyer told me that I made no mistakes when I met with her in private after the deposition.
I am hoping to get my legal fees back and sell the property to the HOA. If I can get this mess wrapped up soon, I will have enough money to pay off the house that I paid too much for last summer. It is an ok house built in the late 1990âs and will meet most of my needs. My real goal is to find and buy about 30 plus acres with a 200 foot elevation change on the property. I would then build a âfish tankâ at the high part of the land and recharge the fish tank with rain water. I get about 40 inches a year here and collecting the runoff from a few acres and storing it in the fish tank would give me a limitless supply of fresh water. I would then run a 1 inch diameter pipe to the low part of the land to a Pelton wheel generator. The goal would be to have a 2,000 KW to 3,000 KW power plant.
The fish tank would also provide me with a large source of clean water. I could easily process a small flow of water through beds of gravel, sand, and charcoal. I would then store the filtered water in a dark cistern with rocks containing calcium and magnesium chloride.
Liquidating retirement savings might seem like an over reaction now, but it could be seen as a lucky move in the near future. There are too many claims on real assets and not enough real assets.
This is really good. And causing me to think more deeply about my situation and the state of the world/US.
My honest assessment is that I can understand the âimminent-nessâ of things. I read Chris talking about his âspidey sense janglingâ and I can follow along and agree, but I donât echo that spidey sense. I donât really âfeel itâ. Maybe I should, but I just donât. So I donât pull the trigger on any more âradicalâ prep ideas⊠like cashing in the 401k, taking the penalty hit, and bunkering up somewhere.
My âbeing truly honest with myselfâ take is: I kinda hope that if the SHTF, there will be enough time to recognize it for what it is and enough time to react and adjust, or at least enough time to do that better/faster than many others, thus greatly increasing my odds of success (survival?).
I know as I type that out that I should consider that a bad plan, but I just canât get myself to do anything more radical right now. Spring is here, the weather is warming, my neighborhood and town are quiet, Iâm nowhere near any major cities, and so itâs hard to feel alarmed. Iâm reasonably prepped for short-term emergencies, and I have a 28ft RV which in a pinch would be the bug-out plan. So even though I get the sense of fatalism and urgency that PP.com exudes, I just go each day like the last⊠mostly.
One more thing that I think feeds this sense of not wanting to take any radical/major steps: I have a 22yo and 20yo that are just now starting to âspread their wingsâ and go out into the wide, wide world.
I find it hard (impossible?) to justify clipping their wings, so to speak and filling them with fear and hesitation. Itâs not that I hide my head in the sand but rather that I just donât make doom-n-gloom + prepper talk the focus.
Maybe thatâs a mistake. I dunno.
Lots of stuff for me to think about and pray about, honestly.
All perfectly valid reasons and hesitations. Itâs a deeply uncertain time and that makes the cost of any decision - this way or that way - to seem high, because it is. Uncertainty adds to the hesitation and that factors into the perceived cost.
This is some seriously complicated game-theory stuff!
As Kanneman taught us, we have a fast brain and a slow brain. Our fast brain is intuitive and running all the time and making most of the decisions leaving us to back fill with rationalizations for our decisions.
The slow brain, when engaged, likes certainty and paths that it can chase from beginning to end, forward and backward.
Well, uncertainty doesnât allow that, and thatâs why it penalizes careful decision-making. You can agonize all you want, but with enough uncertainty thereâs no âright decisionâ that you could defend reasonably or rationally.
Tough times.
This is why at the yearly gathering I want to run a scenario gaming session where the collective smarts and intuition of the assembled people weigh in on the various possibilities and vote to arrive at a Bayesian âconclusionâ much as the Scorpion submarine hunters did.
That all seems to be a balanced view to me thc0655. I can attest to the debt free life, recently got rid of the mortgage, I have a small limit CC, as a sort of fraud firewall, which is regularly cleared. If you sit down and look at your finances as the tax mans cut, the banks cut, then what you get, you soon realise debt is a mugs game.
Dan