For this 1st post I need to roll up my sleeves and get something off my chest. No, wait…I’m not just sleeve-rolling, I’m going to take my shirt off altogether and stand here in shorts and sandals, a beer in one hand and a set of BBQ tongs in the other. This kind of thing needs to be said under the wide open sky and in a place where the listeners are feeling a little loose and well fed. Hopefully some of you were my former clients, but anyone with a few coins to clink together is welcome to this shindig.

If you haven’t done so, please read my “About Me” page for some background….

To cut to the chase—since the basic rule of blogs is “keep it short”, and I already know with certainty that few of my posts will be—the question I put before you is “Where should you invest your money?”

That’s been my job for almost 10 years now, to answer that question. I’m not the best money manager around, nor the most experienced. But I try to be responsible for the money at my disposal. And I think I have a good nose for ferreting out sound advice in others. So I muddle through…. And when I went to social events and family functions, I always had an answer for the question “Where should I invest my money?” And often it was a good answer.

Well, for the last year and a half, I haven’t had an answer. At least not one that I could earn a paycheck on. I cannot any longer recommend investments in any financial vehicles—not on the short term or long. The fact is, everywhere I look I see a crisis looming over the financial markets. All of them. Worldwide.

Now if you’ve stumbled onto this blog, you probably already have heard about this, to some extent. And my real interest is not in making stock market predictions. I am firmly cognizant of the fact that when they extend more than a couple moments out, all predictions are doomed to become useless at best. No, my real interest and purpose for this journal is to try to come to grips with what quality of lifestyle one needs to adopt in order to be adequately prepared for the crisis to come. I’m writing this particular post only to help me clear out some bad air so I can move forward with a clear conscience.

Furthermore, I suppose I could also assume that if you are reading this you probably also have an inkling where your money would be most safely invested. In gold. Not really because it’s an investment, but simply because it’s going to be the only stable storehouse of value during the next decade at least. But money managers can’t recommend gold as an investment, because financial firms don’t sell gold. They sell financial products. They sell paper. You can trade gold futures through a commodity firm, but the vast majority of financial companies don’t deal in commodity contracts. And I don’t recommend the electronic form of gold, anyways. Nor holding paper stock of gold mining companies. The gold I recommend is the kind you hold in your hand, stash under the floorboards, lock away in a safe, or build a castle wall around.

The second place to “invest” your money is: PAY OFF YOUR DEBT! I know you have some…judging by the figures it easily amounts to well over a year’s pay. (Yes, your mortgage is actually debt after all). Debt is enslavement, plain and simple. It can be manageable in stable times, but in the coming few years I’m convince we need to be as unfettered and flexible as possible, as many aspects of our lives will undoubtedly go through in continual strain and upheaval. Banks will not forgive or forget. They exist for one essential reason: to take money from you. Use the current calm to put your boat in order. The storm will come soon enough.

So, back at the backyard BBQ….

“Should I buy stocks or bonds? Or mutual funds?”
--No, you should not.

“What if I hedge them with options?”
--No. Get your money as liquid as possible--out of accounts and into hand if feasible.

“What about CD’s? Or an annuity? Those are guaranteed…”
--By whom? Against what? Everybody losing their money?

“Surely then, real estate is the place to be...? Buildings are hard assets after all.”
--Yes. Hard to sell when you’re desperate. Besides, if you own a home, then you have a substantial investment in real estate already. Why put in more? In fact, eventually I want you to question that investment very closely.

“Well, then you can short the market.”
--Maybe you can short the market, but I can’t. For one thing, shorting is a rigged game, and there are money managers out there who just love to squeeze shorts. But more importantly, to short you have to have leverage, or margin debt. Most money manager’s don’t get that (which is part of the incentive to squeeze them). And you shouldn’t touch margin debt anyway, because one of the themes for the coming crisis is that Debt is Deadly. Don’t have it. Get rid of it. Also, when you have margin debt, timing becomes incredibly important, and we don’t know whether the S&P will rise another 100 points before the crash occurs. You can be wiped out waiting to be proved right.

Here’s the thing, folks…the thing I’ve been biting back for more than a year now (this is where I jump up on top of the Igloo cooler and wave my tongs frenetically….) There is a severe crisis unfolding for mankind. Not just a crisis of financial markets or economics, either. There are severe stresses to every thread in the fabric of mankind. The organism called “mankind”, as a masse, is held together by a set of systems, unique to our nature and all tightly interwoven. Over many years, centuries according to some, these systems have been steadily degenerating. Perverted would actually be a more precise term. There is nowhere to place fault, because the forces at work are larger than any individual human beings. Occaisionally (roughly every 80 years according to Strauss and Howe) a crisis erupts, dramatically changing the fabric of society and reducing the stress for another few decades. But looking at various indicators of the stress on these systems, again and again we see that this time the curves have gone parabolic. And for the first time, the threads of the fabric have been woven on a global level.

Now I’m planning on developing these assessments in posts to come, but here’s the gist of it from the point of view of financial markets, economics and commerce:

--Paper assets (and especially electronic assets) have become lies….
--Fiat currencies (especially the US dollar) have become lies….
--Stock as a representation of ownership of assets has become a lie….
--The Federal Reserve and the Central Banks look to have had a long history of lying….
--“Healthy Inflation” was always a lie, which means working and saving are compromised….
--Business Enterprise has lost most of its integrity, and not just due to what you see in the headlines….

I could go on. And I will in future posts. So much of our financial system has become a tower of babel and lies. But what has become obvious more recently is that many of the power-possessing beings—in the US at least although undoubtedly elsewhere also—appear to be making an intentional and concerted effort to accelerate the monetary engines into the final moments. It’s my belief that they also see the developing crisis, sense its inevitability, and perhaps figure they can make their last-minute grabs for power in the hopes their sins will be buried beneath the ensuing rubble. Either that or they believe that it’s better to burn out than just fade away….