tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post1285948835369304061..comments2024-02-29T03:21:35.007-08:00Comments on The Great Depression of 2006 : Investment MisdirectionJim in San Marcoshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09435296419912935381noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-58791736594055155202015-10-28T16:39:46.307-07:002015-10-28T16:39:46.307-07:00I am not convinced that owning your own business i...I am not convinced that owning your own business is a sound model for all investors.<br /><br />First, there is the time commitment. Then, you have to report everything to the government. The government will take more as the years go on and the national debt increases, and there is nowhere you can hide. Your business will become ground zero for local and national plundering.<br /><br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-5012361033810853782015-10-21T12:40:36.025-07:002015-10-21T12:40:36.025-07:00Either put your money into the stock market (and l...Either put your money into the stock market (and lose 40-60% of it sometime during the next few years); put your money into treasuries (making no return as you fund the welfare/warfare state) OR... forget about retirement and just keep working to support yourself. <br /><br />The best investment with the best return is a successful business, or businesses, that you own. I believe that that is what boomers should be setting up and transitioning towards in order to be able to maintain a decent standard of living in their later years (being productive and adding value to the society is much healthier mentally and physically than retiring... work, is an anti-aging activity). <br /><br />Forget gold and silver. They'll never be used as money again (and there is not enough of it to back a big currency... that would be a very deflationary thing to do). It's a new digital world. A fiat world: the government will always tell you what the legal tender or money will be. They won't let you be a winner in a financial crisis for putting your money into physical gold and silver. They'll either highly tax, restrict or confiscate it.<br /><br />In the depression of the 30's all asset classes went down. The only thing that was valuable and went up was the USD. In the 2007-2008 crash the same exact thing happened. Take your savings (dollars) and put it into safe investments that give the best yield you can get (e.g., a four-plex rental property, etc.) and set up a business or two (something that you enjoy doing) so that you have an income source (investment income, business income and social security will give you a decent standard of living). Just face the fact that you will need to work for the rest of your life (change your attitude and realize that it is the healthier thing to do). Statistics have already shown that the whole concept of retirement: puttering around the house, fishing and golfing, etc. is a death sentence. <br /><br />Don't buy the hogwash that the USD is going to be worthless. Or that it has lost 95% of its purchasing power (that is ridiculous... our standard of living has increased 8X during the period of time that the USD has supposedly devalued). There won't be hyper-inflation (that only happened with revolutionary governments that defaulted on their debts and didn't have bond markets... like Weimar Republic and Zimbabwe). <br /><br />The USA has the biggest deepest bond market (safe haven), the strongest military, the world reserve currency, and a lot of assets and resources. The USD is the major component in most every country's foreign reserves. It doesn't matter if the petro-dollar goes (countries start buying oil with gold or other currencies) because that is a very small part of global trade. The biggest percentage of money flowing around the globe is investment capital and that is USD. The USD will be "Numero Uno" for a long time to come. (The SDR will just be for global trade. Things will change when this happens. The USD will still be the currency of the USA.)<br /><br />Get onto a healthy lifestyle (food, water, sleep, exercise, stress management); pay off all your debt; put your savings into safe decent investments (you need to be an active investor); set up some businesses that you will enjoy; collect your social security (for as long as it is around); and you'll be fine.AIMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-34435385444401967952015-10-20T23:04:44.133-07:002015-10-20T23:04:44.133-07:00Hi Jim,
you are doing a good job with your blog. ...Hi Jim,<br /><br />you are doing a good job with your blog. Every effort counts towards educating people of the real world around them by offering them alternative views. Mainstream news are just propaganda which are full of lies. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07926894423657986847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-36917956507115359522015-10-20T21:26:52.584-07:002015-10-20T21:26:52.584-07:00Hi Anthony
No argument from me. But how can we co...Hi Anthony<br /><br />No argument from me. But how can we convince everyone else? I can't even convince my wife.<br /><br />That gives me a pretty good idea why the government has had its way for so long.<br /><br />We can complain about the system, but until it fails, we are considered idiots. So I guess we give them a little more rope to hang themselves with.Jim in San Marcoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09435296419912935381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-37306007753353629832015-10-20T02:41:57.358-07:002015-10-20T02:41:57.358-07:00Hi Jim,
Logically the paper market for just about...Hi Jim,<br /><br />Logically the paper market for just about anything including commodities is nothing but fraud, except that it's backed by the banks and the government. So is fractional reserve banking, same as the old days where the goldsmith issued more notes then the gold they have in their vault. Fraud.<br /><br />The American founding fathers were correct, only gold and silver is money and only the government (congress) may coin or create money. Even if we are to go with the times and accept that money is to be backed by nothing but the full faith of the government, it should be through a National Central Bank with the citizens benefitting from it's creation and not through a private bank (Federal Reserve. <br /><br /><br /><br />Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07926894423657986847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-23996322804655581952015-10-19T19:54:23.984-07:002015-10-19T19:54:23.984-07:00Hi Anthony
Welcome back, I agree completely.
I r...Hi Anthony<br /><br />Welcome back, I agree completely.<br /><br />I really like gold, silver and platinum. Silver is underpriced and platinum is more of an unknown commodity to most of the world, but because of its scarcity, is 27 times more rare than gold. I believe down to earth investors who buy these metals and take possession of them will make out very well in retirement.<br /><br />Right now we have a paper market in commodities that is a little misleading. I would hazard a guess that the paper market only has the backing of about 10 percent real product. What has happened in the past, there was no delivery of the metal, only delivery of the dollar value of the metal to the certificate holder on redemption.<br /><br />When interest rates were 8% you were losing $80,000 a year holding one million in gold. The most you are losing now is $5,000 and we know that inflation is more than .05%. <br /><br />The real neat thing about gold and silver, these items are not visible in any bank account if you are retired or not retired. So if you have a student scholarship for your kid to secure or an SSI claim to submit, . . . . .Jim in San Marcoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09435296419912935381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-36379007192916660572015-10-19T19:24:19.184-07:002015-10-19T19:24:19.184-07:00Hi Anon 1:41
Your close, to what I am trying to ...Hi Anon 1:41 <br /><br />Your close, to what I am trying to convey.<br /><br />We can use economics to explain what has happened in the past, not to project what will happen in the future.<br /><br />Most people follow others when it comes to everything. It never bothered me to be the first and only one on the dance floor with my date, others would follow in after that.<br /><br />The biggest mistake is to believe that the world is in a fixed state. Fortunes are lost and made everyday. The people that do very well do not seem to be moving with the herd, rather against it. The rich are few and the poor, many. Risk has its just rewards, just as failure has its multitude of minions.Jim in San Marcoshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09435296419912935381noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-10054719972414672112015-10-19T04:12:38.645-07:002015-10-19T04:12:38.645-07:00The whole world has gone mad, rewarding the specul...The whole world has gone mad, rewarding the speculators at the expense of the savers. They forgot what Capitalism is about, deferring current gratification, saving it, deploying the savings (capital) into productive assets, and enjoy the returns in the future. ZIRP is bidding up everything to crazy levels, reducing the returns, and thereby justifying more loans for leverage.<br /><br />I really wonder why so many people in the West and Japan still haven't woke up. In Japan, their bonds are like almost zero for decades and so many Japanese still dutifully save and buy their bonds. In the rest of Asia, people like gold cause they don't trust the government (currency) and since cash savings is returning zero, there is no harm in holding physical gold. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07926894423657986847noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27697009.post-62744679494054560622015-10-19T01:41:52.519-07:002015-10-19T01:41:52.519-07:00there is a new normal, regardless of which side yo...there is a new normal, regardless of which side you land on, the sooner you realize this, the sooner you will go with the flow.<br />after reading your blog for years, i believe you finally realize that the real world dose not follow academic theorems and calculus. <br />we live in a "fixed" world, either you adapt and survive or get left behind. <br /><br />cheersAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com