- Reassess the risks to you or your business. Given the sense of extreme empowerment felt by the high priests of the Godvernment, you need to keep a very close eye on your personal vulnerabilities.A cautionary example are the Alabama farmers who failed to anticipate the tough new anti-immigrant legislation their meddling state government passed, and who now face sure ruin due to the lack of trained workers willing to do the back-breaking work of bringing in the crops or planting new crops for next spring.
Is there personal or business risk that you can take steps to mitigate now, while you still can? Especially if you are on the wrong side of the populist mantras now being heard in the temples of Washington, you can’t afford to be complacent.
For example, if you or your business are involved in or reliant upon the financial services, you might want to consider developing some new lines of business. On that front, we haven’t even begun to understand the implications and effects of the Dodd-Frank Act, other than that it was written by career politicians with zero business experience in a period of hysteria following the 2008 crash, and that it is very ambitious.
Think Patriot Act for financial services – there will be consequences, and I doubt many of them will be good. Investors should consider doing some short-selling or using options strategies in betting on another big leg down for the banks and the financial-services sector. (In The Casey Report, we’re using a simple options strategy to bet on the failure of a massively overindebted regional bank.)
- Don‘t expect anyone to help you. Actually, with the growing meme to soak the “rich,” namely anyone who pays more than a modest amount of taxes, you need to wake up to the reality that you are on your own.Put another way, if you have assets, you have a target on your back. Laugh at the OWS folks if you want (and it’s hard not to), but it is their world we’ll be living in going forward, not the ones our parents or we made (and, truth be told, screwed up pretty badly). If you think you’re going to be able to afford to retire on your Social Security, think again. If you’re lucky, it will buy you a hot cup of coffee to enjoy while you and your buddies stand around the burning oil drum on a cold winter’s night.
If you don’t have a respectable net worth at this point, then learn useful skills – such as how to speculate in investment markets. Or how to program computers. Apparently, the youth of today like to use the stuff but aren’t so hot on actually learning how to program – they prefer liberal arts educations. Given that many of the iconic successes in the computing industries (Gates, Jobs, Ellison) never graduated college, it would be a mistake to consider that a prerequisite. There are many more directions you might go in, including internationally, the important point being that it’s time to get going.
- Internationalize. With the biggest threat to your wealth and maybe even well-being coming from your own government, it’s essential that you spread your wealth into other political jurisdictions. Don’t do it hastily, but do it nonetheless. InternationalMan.com, a new site that picks up where Doug Casey’s best-selling book International Man left off, may be of some help. Remember, once exchange controls are implemented (almost a certainty), your wealth is trapped and the government will be able to have its way with your assets.
- Front-run the mob. For example, with the mob against all currently viable forms of baseload energy production – and they are – careful bets on rising energy prices are, over a period of time, a sure thing.Let me say that again because it seems self-destructive madness to me, but a large chunk of the mob as well as the priesthood of Godvernment are actually dead set against all currently viable forms of baseload energy. You know, the stuff that keeps the lights on at night. Coal, oil, nuclear and now, thanks to the trumped-up fracking controversy, even natural gas! While the mob hasn’t yet overrun the barriers of sanity and pulled the energy plug – though many would do so in a heartbeat – they have been very effective at slowing exploration and development of energy resources to a crawl. Actions have consequences, in this case, higher energy prices. That’s what I call an opportunity… don’t miss it.
Likewise, the mob is not going to stop demanding that the Godvernment provide succor and sustenance, and so deficit spending and debt has to continue to rise, leading to currency debasement. Buy tangibles, but especially gold and silver, on any setbacks.
Those are just a couple of ideas for front-running the mob, but if you put on your thinking cap, I’m sure you’ll come up with many more.
Wrapping up, I’ll repeat my basic position on all of this… in the form of an excerpt from a lightly edited response to a reader who took offense at a recent article of mine.
The left and the right both have it wrong, as far as I am concerned. Both share equal responsibility for the big dislocations that have proven so damaging to the economy and society.
Thus, I can only conclude that who is in charge is far less important than what those who are charge are actually allowed to do. The size and scope of government, in my view, has to be very specifically spelled out and very limited so that the next gang to take control can’t just willy-nilly play to the prevailing mob sentiments.
That’s how we got here in the first place. Put another way, are many of Obama’s policies counterproductive and damaging to the economy? Of course. But so were those of Baby Bush. And, before him, Clinton (who allowed the government to grab Social Security funds so that he could claim a balanced budget). And before him, Bush senior… and before him… and so forth and so on.
Unless and until we stop the madness – stop the meddling – the path the world takes will remain perilous and, fortunately for us speculators, somewhat predictable.
[Will you be well positioned to survive when your Godvernment’s time runs out? The Casey Report tells you what to expect and how to protect yourself. In the current issue, read investment legend Doug Casey’s outlook for 2012 – on the stock market, the US economy, the euro, gold and silver, the Middle East, China, and much more. Also in this edition: An in-depth analysis of the Fed’s battle for low interest rates, and how to add gold to your IRA and save taxes. For just a few days, you can get The Casey Report for only $98 per year… a staggering 72% off the regular price. Start your subscription today.]
