The Only Debate Topic That Matters

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
The Only Debate Topic That Matters

September 29, 2016
Hot Springs, VA

Loading up the nation with debt and leaving it for the following generations to pay is morally irresponsible. Excessive debt is a means by which governments oppress the people and waste their substance. No nation has a right to contract debt for periods longer than the majority contracting it can expect to live. ” – Thomas Jefferson

The S&P closed out Wednesday at $2,171. Gold closed at $1,327 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $47.12 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 1.57%. Bitcoin is trading around $605 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

Nearly one-third of all Americans – almost 100 million people – tuned in to watch the first presidential debate earlier this week. This represents an increase in viewership by nearly 40% from the 2012 presidential debates, and it almost rivaled television’s biggest draw – the Super Bowl – which received 112 million viewers last year. Apparently the debate was aired on television throughout Europe as well.

I see these numbers and the first thing that pops into my head is a question: how in the world do the ratings agencies know how many people are sitting on the couch in front of a given television?

I didn’t spend too much time with this, but all of the numbers I have seen reference “viewers” and “people”, not “households”. They are very specific about this.

I can’t help but think about poor Winston in George Orwell’s 1984 – he sits down in front of his telescreen and while he is watching it, it is also watching him… Continue reading “The Only Debate Topic That Matters”

The Path to the Great Reset

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
The Path to the Great Reset

April 6, 2016
Hot Springs, VA

But if government manages to establish paper tickets or bank credit as money, as equivalent to gold grams or ounces, then the government, as dominant money-supplier, becomes free to create money costlessly and at will. As a result, this ‘inflation’ of the money supply destroys the value of the dollar or pound, drives up prices, cripples economic calculation, and hobbles and seriously damages the workings of the market economy.
Murray Rothbard

The S&P closed out Tuesday at $2,045. Gold closed at $1,229 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $35.89 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 1.78%. Bitcoin is trading around $423 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

I began writing a book titled The Individual is Rising back in 2013. The first edition was published in the summer of 2014, and then the updated, expanded, and revised second edition was published in August of 2015.

The central thesis of the book was that a financial “Great Reset” was on the horizon specifically due to the gross abuse and mismanagement of the monetary system that grew progressively more blatant over the course of the past century. Continue reading “The Path to the Great Reset”

Trees Don’t Grow to the Sky: the Fallacy of Keynesian Economics

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Trees Don’t Grow to the Sky: The Fallacy of Keynesian Economics

February 16, 2016
Hot Springs, VA

“There is no means of avoiding a final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as a result of a voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
-Ludwig von Mises

The S&P closed out Friday at $1,858. Gold closed at $1,239 per ounce. Crude Oil closed at $29.44 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 1.64%. Bitcoin is trading around $405 per BTC today.

Dear Journal,

The snow has returned to the mountains of Virginia with another eight inches gracefully covering the ground. As winter continues to play out here on the home front, I can’t help but notice winter settling in over the financial markets as well. I expect the last three quarters of 2016 to be especially volatile.

Simply tracking the brief market updates in this journal series tells the basic story and highlights the budding trends. My last entry of 2015 observed the S&P comfortably perched at $2,056 while gold was safely out-of-sight at $1,068 per ounce. Crude oil was trading at $36.81 and the 10-year Treasury rate was 2.23%. A week later the S&P was slightly down while gold, oil, and the 10-year rate were slightly up. The following week the S&P had continued to fall to $1,938 while gold continued to rise to $1,085. Oil plummeted again to $30.44 and the 10-year rate fell to 2.10%.

These trends have continued week-after-week for the first two months of 2016. Today, the S&P is down 10% from its December high. Gold is up 15%, oil is down 24%, and the 10-year Treasury rate is down 28% over this same time period. This crude analysis very clearly demonstrates that capital is fleeing the U.S. equity markets and flowing into gold and U.S. Treasuries which are considered safe-haven assets. Meanwhile, we are seeing 12-year lows in crude oil and all-time lows in U.S. shale oil and gas companies.

Expanding our gaze a bit: we are seeing new 52-week lows in the major stock markets of Europe and Japan as well. European banks are particularly troubling as those stocks have fallen more to start 2016 than they did to start 2008. Further, we are seeing six-year lows in junk bonds as well as emerging markets.

All of this is occurring while the Federal Reserve proclaims the economy healthy and ready for “normalization” policies. But what is normal? Continue reading “Trees Don’t Grow to the Sky: the Fallacy of Keynesian Economics”

When Countries Go Bankrupt

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
When Countries Go Bankrupt

June 30, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Monday at $2,058. Gold closed at $1,179 per ounce. Oil checked out at $58 per barrel, and the 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.33%. Bitcoin is trading up around $262 per BTC as the Greek crisis continues to play out.

Dear Journal,

I have been musing on the modern credit system in my last few journal entries and, ‘lo and behold, Greece has presented us with a real-time example of what happens when the credit expansion hits the wall.

Panos Kammenos, head of the government’s coalition ally in Greece, appeared on local television this past Saturday. “Citizens should not be scared, there is no blackmail,”  Kammenos assured the Greek people. “The banks won’t shut, the ATMs will (have cash). All this is exaggeration.”

The very next day Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced that banks in Greece would not open on Monday. “In the coming days, what’s needed is patience and composure,”  Tsipras proclaimed. “The bank deposits of the Greek people are fully secure.”

Here are the details of the Greek government’s capital controls:

  • From Monday, June 29, 2015, banks will remain closed up to and including Monday, July 6
  • Deposits are fully safeguarded
  • The payment of pensions is exempted from the restrictions on banking transactions.
  • Management of credit institutions will announce how these will be paid
  • Electronic transactions within the country won’t be affected. All transactions with credit or debit cards and other electronic forms (web banking, phone banking) can be conducted as normal
  • Prepaid cards may be used to the limit existing before the beginning of the bank holiday
  • From midday June 29, ATMs will operate with a daily cash withdrawal limit of 60 euros per card, which is equivalent to 1,800 euros a month
  • Foreign tourists can make cash withdrawals from ATMs with their cards without restrictions provided these have been issued abroad
  • A special Committee to Approve Bank Transactions has been established at the State General Accounting Office in cooperation with the Finance Ministry, the Bank of Greece, the Union of Greek Banks and the Capital Markets Commission. This committee will deal with applications for urgent and imperative payments that can’t be satisfied through the cash withdrawal limits or by electronic transactions (e.g. payments abroad for health reasons). Wages paid electronically to bank accounts aren’t affected.

Continue reading “When Countries Go Bankrupt”

Economics in One Lesson

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Economics in One Lesson

June 29, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P closed out Friday at $2,101. Gold closed at $1,175 per ounce. Oil checked out at $60 per barrel. The 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.48%, and bitcoin is trading around $246 per BTC.

Dear Journal,

We are back in the mountains of Virginia after our annual family gathering in Emerald Isle, NC. Last week, in addition to enjoying the beautiful Crystal Coast, I thought about the modern credit system that has been in place since 1971.

Speaking of last week’s journal entry, I felt a little clarification was in order after re-reading it myself. Lest the reader think otherwise, I am no Luddite and I have nothing against commercial development. I simply believe very strongly in the old capitalist principle that said commercial development should be fueled by actual capital that was formed from production and savings. Instead of capital, the modern credit system fuels commercial development with credit created ex nihilo. No one forewent present consumption to build said credit, and this dynamic creates distortions and malinvestment that accumulate over time.

The capitalist sees a private beach and wonders if commercial development would be a worthwhile endeavor. Does the market want three story luxury homes by the beach and cheap surf shops on the island? Will these projects be profitable? Will they attract additional capital to the area? To the capitalist, the focus is on individual human action. Private capital is then heavily deployed if commercial development is pursued. Continue reading “Economics in One Lesson”

A Look at the Modern Credit System

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
A Look at the Modern Credit System

June 22, 2015
Emerald Isle, NC

The S&P closed out Friday at $2,110. Gold closed at $1,202 per ounce. Oil checked out at $60 per barrel. The 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.27%, and bitcoin is trading around $247 per BTC.

Dear Journal,

I am writing this entry from North Carolina’s glorious Crystal Coast. My family has been making a week-long trip to Emerald Isle every summer since the 1970’s. Back then the island consisted of a small convenience store, Clyde’s Shrimp Shack, and a few dinky cottages by the beach.

The Withrow clan still rents a couple beach-front cottages each summer but the cottages have magically transformed. In the early days, the luxury cottages had a spiral staircase leading up to a second floor with an extra bedroom. The average cottages offered a few bedrooms on the ground level with no spiral staircase. You now find three story luxury homes towering over the beach where the dinky cottages or empty lots once stood.

To most eyes this looks like progress. Maybe it is. However, my eyes only see evidence of the exponential credit expansion that has been taking place for more than forty years now. I feel slightly hypocritical as I enjoy a cold beverage from the the third story balcony watching the waves crash down upon the beach below. You see, I know how this all got here. I know how this went from a dinky little cottage to a three-story luxury home with a balcony overlooking the sea. Continue reading “A Look at the Modern Credit System”

Who is John Galt?

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Who Is John Galt?

May 21, 2015
Topsail Island, NC

The S&P closed out Wednesday at $2,125. Gold closed at $1,209 per ounce. Oil checked out at $58 per barrel. The 10-year Treasury rate closed at 2.25%, and bitcoin is trading around $234 per BTC.

Dear Journal,

It has been two months since my previous entry… sorry about that. Little Madison is now seven months old and much of your editor’s time has been spent learning about life from her.

It is simply amazing to watch an infant’s development. One day she is completely immobile and then all of a sudden she is sitting up on her own. Then she is picking up her toys and banging them together. Then she is rolling from her back to her belly and back again while stretching to reach for a toy that is just out of her grasp. And those blue eyes shine with intelligence, curiosity, and love the entire time.

The first thing Madison does when she wakes up in the morning is smile a smile that lights up the room. She is so happy simply to have the opportunity to be here for another day. It’s a shame we adults do not often have that same outlook.

Along with learning from my daughter, I have also spent considerable time over the past two months preparing for the next step of my liberation plan.

As my bio states, I began a transformational journey a few years back in which I walked away from corporate America and moved to the mountains of rural Virginia. Somehow I managed to get wife Rachel to go along with this plan… I think wine must have been strategically involved in the negotiations.

The idea was to purchase a property with a little bit of land in a rural area with a low cost of living to create a higher overall quality of life with less exposure to the fragile monetary system as captained by the Federal Reserve which will one day explode and drastically reduce the quality of life for many Americans.

No one knows when this fraudulent monetary system will crash and burn but I have no doubt that the day is coming. You just can’t create trillions of dollars from thin air and then spend them like they are real money and expect this to work indefinitely. It is a basic principle of the Universe that all actions have opposing reactions in some capacity. Try as they might, the Ivy Leaguers at the Federal Reserve do not have the power to alter reality. They only have the power to kick the can down the road.

Many people are beginning to wake up to this central banking fraud that began in America in 1913 and really ramped up in 1971, and the initial reaction is to push for reform. Some want better people running the system. Others want rules-based policy. Still others want to transfer monetary authority from the Fed back to Congress. Those of us who study Austrian Economics say the answer is to let the free market reign and End the Fed altogether – in a responsible manner if possible.

Alas, the consequences of this reckless monetary policy are now unavoidable whether or not any real change actually occurs. The Federal Reserve’s credit expansion is exponential in nature, as I touched on back in January. More and more credit must be created from nothing just to keep the system afloat. The system teeters on the edge every time the credit slows. One day the system will fall and those who are most dependent upon easy credit, monetary expansion, and the government programs they finance will be in a very unfortunate situation. This is true of individuals dependent upon government programs and it is true of the industries that benefit most from this fraudulent monetary system. The social welfare system, the military-industrial complex, and the financial system will all be decimated as benefits evaporate and jobs go up in smoke. What does the economy look like if social welfare programs, including Social Security, dissipate just as the financial sector freezes up?

As bleak as this is, there are individual solutions available. For me, the solution began with a question: Who is John Galt?

The idea behind my personal exodus from corporate America in a major financial center stemmed from “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand. Though I fundamentally do not care for Rand’s “Objectivist” philosophy, her portrayal of John Galt in Atlas Shrugged really resonated with me.

A budding engineer in corporate America, John Galt began to see the corrupt political system for what it really was – naked force used against the population for the benefit of the politically connected. Rather than exhaust his energy fighting the corrupt system, John sidestepped it. He moved to a remote location and focused his creative energies on building a better system and he invited others of like mind to join him in this effort.

This idea jumped off the page (and screen) at me. We are all conditioned to fundamentally accept the current system as permanent and necessary therefore any dissent is directed towards either reforming or capturing the system via a political party. This has led to conflict, often violent, throughout modern history as opposing groups vie for political power.

John Galt had the wisdom to reject the use of force as a means of social order so he simply withdrew his consent from the system entirely. He didn’t try to fight the system. He didn’t try to change the system from within. He didn’t organize mass protests against the system. He worked to make the system obsolete by demonstrating a better way of engaging with others in society.

While “Atlas Shrugged” focused on big business tycoons, modern technology today can empower every individual to walk away from the System without necessarily sacrificing their quality of life. I am publishing this journal entry from the beach in Topsail Island, NC but it will be read by people in other parts of the U.S. as well as in other countries. That is a very powerful concept which is unprecedented in history. The internet enables individuals to trade goods, services, and information with anyone, anywhere, at any time. One can even use apolitical digital currency such as Bitcoin to facilitate these transactions. This opens up a whole new world for the enterprising individual!

We are currently at a crossroads where the old ways are transitioning into the new. We do not want to discard the valuable wisdom gained over the past century but we do want to move away from a system that treats individuals like milk cows.

Such a societal transformation can only be done on the individual level; it cannot be forced upon others. The Republicans thought they were leading a revolution back towards limited government in the 80’s when they got Ronald Reagan elected. Instead, deficits and debt skyrocketed under Reagan and the military-industrial complex managed to capture the Republican Party. Likewise, the Democrats thought they were leading a progressive revolution towards egalitarianism and transparency when they got Barack Obama elected in 2008. Instead, the Obama administration has expanded the wealth gap even further by catering to the special interests while being the least transparent administration in history – a very impressive feat considering George W. Bush had just set that record himself over the prior eight years.

The point is, the System is not going to reform or restrain itself. It is going to continue to engorge itself on the American middle class until it blows up. I don’t fault anyone who truly seeks to change the system via the political process, but I am convinced it cannot be done in any meaningful way. The political system can be used effectively as an educational platform, as Ron Paul demonstrated, but not as a tool to structurally restrain the System.

So, to come full circle, I advanced one more step in my personal liberation plan last Friday as I worked my final day as a W-2 employee. Then I took the next logical step – I took my family to the beach.

Next week I will expand upon how I was able to resign from my job and leave the rat race in the rear-view mirror.

Until then the Carolina coast calls…

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Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and the paradigm shift currently in motion please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.

The Coming College Collapse

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
The Coming College Collapse

March 19, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P opened at $2,093 today. Gold is checking in at $1,166 per ounce. Oil is floating around $46 per barrel. Bitcoin is down to $262 per BTC, and the 10-year Treasury rate opened at 1.94% today.

Big news this month… two colleges died! Sweet Briar College in rural Virginia recently announced its own funeral scheduled for the end of the 2014-2015 academic year. Tennessee Temple University in Chattanooga also pronounced its coming death scheduled for May 1, 2015.

Sweet Briar is a small liberal arts women’s college with less than 750 students and Tennessee Temple is a small Christian university with less than 500 students so these are certainly niche schools that faced challenges not yet encountered by their larger peers. I think it would be unwise to dismiss these closures at outliers, however. Instead, this may be foreshadowing the coming student loan bubble collapse and the growing obsolescence of traditional higher education. Beware bubble, the needle approacheth.

Indeed, the Obama administration is now pushing a “student aid bill of rights” chock full of government regulations, controls, and oversight… what could be a better sign of the impending college collapse than that? And the federal government already finances or guarantees ninety-some percent of all student loans as it is.

College is still the holy grail of success in many American minds but that sentiment is gradually changing. Colleges, in most cases (specialized fields of study being the exception), are little more than glorified diploma mills. Everyone goes to college primarily to receive a degree that is seen as a ‘certification’ of sorts to work a corporate job. That’s why college graduates list their degree at the top of their resume and they mention it first thing in job interviews – having a degree demonstrates that they are qualified to hold a job.

So the system works like this:

1. Kids are told to get good grades in high school so they can get into college.

2. As high school graduation approaches, kids are hustled through the college application process. They are encouraged to apply early to as many schools as possible to give themselves the best chance of getting in. Critical thinking and introspection can wait.

3. Once accepted into college, the kids are walked through the student loan process. It is understood that they don’t have enough money to pay for tuition so someone else must lend it to them. And that someone else is probably the federal government.

4. Colleges raise tuition each year because the federal government is willing to finance or guarantee nearly all student loans sans sound underwriting guidelines.

5. Students apply for new student loans at the higher tuition rate for each subsequent year in college.

6. Students graduate with massive student loan debt and face a competitive job market because nearly all of their peers have a bachelor’s degree as well.

As you can see, the student loan racket is perpetuated by cheap money supplied by the Feds. The only reason colleges can raise tuitions significantly each and every year is because a very large percentage of the population attends college. The only reason a very large percentage of the population attends college is because the Feds supply them with cheap money to do so with few questions asked.

But there’s a catch. When we talk about this cheap “money” supplied by the Feds we are really talking about credit. This credit is created ex nihilo (out of nothing) – it only exists as an electronic record on a computer network somewhere in the “cloud”. Unlike real money, credit can vanish just as quickly as it appeared in the first place. You can’t put it in a safe. You can’t put it under your mattress for a rainy day. Credit is intangible.

The current model of higher education depends on constant credit expansion. Students don’t pay for college up front; they finance it as they go by obtaining multiple loans over time. Their continued enrollment depends upon their ability to get the next loan. It is assumed by pretty much everyone – parents, students, guidance counselors, professors, university presidents, Wall Street CEOs, government officials – that this system of constant credit expansion can continue into the future.

The word credit is derived from the Latin credere which means “to believe”. Credit depends on trust; it’s all a confidence game. And we are starting to see the trust in American higher education teeter. This trust will continue to degenerate as student loan debt continues to pile up and the job market continues to be flooded with bachelor’s degrees. This process is accentuated by the mountain of debt being accumulated by the federal government – the same group that finances the student loan bubble.

When the trust disappears, so does the credit… probably to the tune of trillions of dollars overnight. What happens then? Common sense suggests that colleges would be forced to reduce tuition drastically if students actually had to pay for college themselves. But have you been to a college campus recently? The campuses are pristine, the buildings are luxurious, and the amenities are plentiful. Have you looked at your alma mater’s annual financial statements recently? What does its long-term debt look like? How about its pension liabilities?

The fact is most American colleges would be insolvent if it weren’t for the Fed’s exponential credit expansion. If you think the credit can expand forever then this fact doesn’t really matter. But if you think the credit will eventually dry up then we are likely to see many more Sweet Briars and Tennessee Temple’s to come.

So do not despair, dear Vixens and Crusaders, you will not be the only alma mater-less Americans for long.

Until the morrow,

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Joe Withrow
Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and the paradigm shift currently in motion please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.

Individual Solutions: Building Financial Resiliency

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Journal of a Wayward Philosopher
Individual Solutions: Building Financial Resiliency

February 12, 2015
Hot Springs, VA

The S&P opened at $2,071 today. Gold is down to $1,226 per ounce. Oil is floating around $49 per barrel. Bitcoin is hanging around $221 per BTC, and the 10-year Treasury rate opened at 2.03% today.

Ten central banks have cut interest rates so far in 2015. The list includes: Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, India, Egypt, Pakistan, Peru, Russia, and Turkey. Additionally, both the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank are actively buying sovereign debt… with counterfeited currency created from thin air. The Federal Reserve is taking a break from this exercise after nearly six years of creating currency to shop at the U.S. Treasury and go yard-saling on Wall Street. Of course the $4.5 trillion worth of sovereign debt and mortgage-backed securities still sits on the Fed’s balance sheet in the interim.

All of this economic intervention is a concerted effort to stave off a major credit contraction. The central bankers talk about hitting certain GDP and unemployment rate metrics but that is all part of their dog and pony show. If creating currency out of thin air could actually grow an economy and create jobs then we would already live in a utopian paradise. But that’s just not how the world works.

Try as they may to avoid it, the coming credit contraction is inevitable. You see, the global monetary system has been fraudulent for a little more than four decades now. Gold officially anchored the global monetary system for two centuries prior to 1971. Then, in 1971, President Nixon’s administration acted to break away from two hundred years of tradition and the U.S. ended direct convertibility of the dollar to gold. Of course the “Great Society” welfare programs and the Vietnam War had a lot to do with this decision.

“Your dollar will be worth just as much tomorrow as it is today,” Nixon proclaimed on television with a straight face. “The effect of this action, in other words, will be to stabilize the dollar.”

Of course the exact opposite happened: the U.S. dollar fell off a cliff. Anyone living during the 70’s can attest to this. What was the price of a new home back then? A new car? A hamburger? The difference between what those items cost in 1971 and what they cost today represents how far the U.S. dollar has fallen in purchasing power.

How did this happen?

Well, with all ties to gold removed governments and central banks discovered they could conjure currency into existence to pay for anything they wanted. Tanks, fighter jets, food stamps, Medicare part D, $800 trash cans… no problem! So they embarked upon this historic credit expansion armed with a magical monetary system that provided them with money for nothing.

But governments weren’t the only beneficiaries. The companies making the tanks and the bombs made out like bandits. So did all of the bureaucrats who were hired as government expanded. And the people receiving welfare benefits found the system quite palatable as well. Pretty soon smart people learned that the best business in the world was to sell something to the U.S. government because it had unlimited money to spend. So they descended upon K Street like buzzards on road-kill and pretty soon the suburbs surrounding D.C. claimed home to six of the wealthiest ten counties in the U.S.

The champagne has been flowing up on the Hill and in the lobbyist offices on K Street for four decades now thanks mostly to the fraudulent fiat monetary system in place since 1971. The establishment hails their elastic currency system as a major success but theirs is a self-serving and short term view. Credit has been constantly expanding since 1971 but do we really think this can go on forever? Can we continue to run up debt, print money to pay interest on that debt, and then buy all of the fighter jets, disability checks, politicians, and cheap junk from China without ever having to think twice about it? If not, what happens when the credit contracts and we can no longer afford all of these expenditures?

The Austrian School of Economics tells us what the result of this madness will be: a “crack-up boom” followed by a monstrous bust as all of the bad debt and malinvestments are finally liquidated.

The crack-up boom occurs as the prices of assets and real goods are driven up to the moon by enormous amounts of excess currency conjured into existence in an attempt to perpetuate the credit expansion. After all, that new currency has to go somewhere. This scheme will work to stave off the credit contraction… until it doesn’t. Then cometh the bust.

While Austrian Economics can make the diagnosis, the timing of the bust cannot be predicted. There are too many interconnected factors at play. What’s important is that there is still time to build financial resiliency in advance. The cornerstone of financial resiliency is knowledge and understanding. Understand fiat money is an illusion. Understand the difference between money and wealth. Study Austrian Economics to get a feel for what’s really going on in the economy.

Once you understand how the monetary system actually works you can formulate a customized asset allocation model based upon your personal circumstances.

A resilient asset allocation model will consist of cash (20-30%), precious metals (10-30%), real estate (30-60%), and strategic equities (10-15%).

At minimum you should carry enough cash to cover at least 6-12 months of expenses. Distressed assets will go on sale when then bust hits so any cash in excess of your reserve fund can be used to acquire these distressed assets (real estate, stocks, businesses, etc.) when they are cheap.

Your precious metals allocation should consist of physical gold and silver bullion stored at home or in a legal segregated account overseas. Never store precious metals in a domestic bank vault – Americans learned this the hard way back in the 30’s when the banks closed and FDR raided the vaults to confiscate gold. Remember, precious metals are insurance not speculation. The price of gold (and silver) will skyrocket in terms of fiat currency, but its purchasing power will remain relatively constant just as it has for thousands of years. Those who save in fiat currency will see their wealth evaporate as the credit contraction unfolds while those who hold precious metals will weather the storm. J.P Morgan testified before Congress in 1912: “Gold is money. Everything else is credit.” Don’t be fooled.

Real estate presents a unique opportunity currently as we are living during a period of historically low interest rates and lenders are willing to offer long term mortgages at these low rates. This provides a tremendous opportunity to lock in these low rates on real estate for thirty years during which time interest rates will inevitably rise significantly.

We firmly believe stocks should make up the smallest percentage of a resilient portfolio under current economic conditions. Stockholders have been the primary beneficiaries of the massive credit expansion and all of the easy-money chicanery over the past several years. Financial institutions have poured new money into the equities markets and publicly-traded companies have used a ton of excess cash to buy back shares of their own stock. As a result current stock valuations do not reflect the underlying health of the economy. Though stocks will run for a bit longer, we are closer to the end than the beginning of the bull cycle. We think the exception is in the resource and commodity sector, however. The stocks of well-managed companies in this sector could do extremely well over the next few years as the global financial system continues to falter.

Nobody can control macroeconomic conditions but we can each control our individual response to them. Building financial resiliency by constructing a diversified portfolio across several asset classes is an individual solution to a collective problem. Financial resiliency is just half of the picture, however. Tomorrow we will look at what we call home resiliency.

Until the morrow,

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Joe Withrow

Wayward Philosopher

For more of Joe’s thoughts on the “Great Reset” and the paradigm shift underway please read “The Individual is Rising” which is available at http://www.theindividualisrising.com/. The book is also available on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle editions.