DISCLAIMER: The views in this article represent my opinions and should not be taken as legal, financial, investment or other advice. Please do your own due diligence and make your own informed decisions.
While I do not consider myself a “doomsdayer” or” prepper”, I do think that logic, being prepared, and protection are prudent fundamentals to live by.
I wanted to focus today on being prepared for a financial meltdown and take a look at the US Government’s financial situation. While I do not feel a financial meltdown is imminent at the moment, I do feel one is inevitable. When the US financial system and government has its failure, it is a virtual certainty that it will be a global catastrophic event – a worldwide great depression. Why do I feel it is inevitable? Look at the US Government’s balance sheet from their December 31, 2017 Financial Report:
Here is the full report if you wanted to look at it: https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/fsreports/rpt/finrep/fr/17frusg/02142018_FR(Final).pdf
As you can see, the US Government’s Net Worth (Assets minus Liabilities) is negative $20 Trillion. That is with 1/3rd of the assets being Student Loans Receivable, which are likely to be forgiven at some point in the future or never collected. The US Government had a net operating loss (Income minus Expenses) of $1.15 Trillion for the 2017 calendar year (with gross revenue of $3.4 Trillion), which keeps getting bigger each year no matter who is in the Oval Office.
To put this into lay-man’s terms, this would be the equivalent of a family having $100,000 of annual income, but $135,000 of living costs. In terms of their net worth, they would have assets of $103,000, but liabilities of $708,000 – essentially they are in a deep hole, and it is getting worse each year.
Of course, you can see from the US Government’s report that they qualify this horrid balance sheet by saying there are other Government resources not on there, including their claim to natural resources and the Government’s power to tax and set monetary policy.
I wanted to focus on the “Government’s power to tax and set monetary policy”. When the inevitable financial system collapse happens based on the current trajectory (it will take a miracle to change the trajectory), the only recourse to stop the bleeding will be printing money to get out of their hole and/or extreme taxation. When these things happen, you will see hyperinflation like that in other countries (think Venezuela) and who knows what the value of the US dollar will be at that point – no one will want to take the US Dollar as it is becoming worth less each day.
So how do you protect yourself from this? The answer is holding assets that are not fiat currencies (cash) or assets correlated with the US capital markets. You need to hold “stores of value” which will retain their buying power and actually increase in value as the US Dollar fails. This is where GOLD, SILVER and BITCOIN come in.
Gold, silver and Bitcoin may not become the new forms of world currency, but they will be instrumental and extremely valuable as the world resets and looks to figure out a new financial system that makes sense and attempts to streamline government into a model that is sustainable.
I am holding gold, silver and Bitcoin for these protectionary and investment purposes. I think they will each appreciate over time even before the collapse of the US financial system – I would rather hold $10k worth of these things now over $10k worth of cash, as holding cash while normal inflation is taking place is reducing your buying power each day (even when factoring the minor interest you are receiving).
Saying all this, I am still heavily invested in the US and global capital markets at the moment, as I do not think the financial collapse will happen any time soon – we could be a decade away. But for someone in their 30s like me, it is important to take a step back and use logic and critical thinking to prepare and protect my family from the inevitable by holding gold, silver and Bitcoin.
Sorry to get all gloom and doom on you, but it is important to think about such things and to be prepared!
For now though, I am accumulating gold, silver and Bitcoin to keep a decent chuck of my net worth in these protectionary stores of value.
Would love to hear any and all thoughts – knowledge and different perspectives are important!
Thank you for reading,
Brian