18 months ago, right before the Presidential election, we wrote a two-part series that got a little bit of attention. In it, we discussed a strategy for when things get pretty bad.
Part One (go here for more: SHTF Part One) is probably more endemic to today’s news of an inflation rate that has the risk of spiraling out of control than Part Two.
But, to be honest, we didn’t think, even back then, that we’d see 7.9 percent year-over-year inflation. In the United States.
The U.S. Dollar Is…Get This…An Inflationary Asset!
To paraphrase George Costanza’s risk management tapes from the show Seinfeld, “in order to understand ‘inflation’ we must first define ‘inflation.'”
When you print way too much money, you get inflation. “Inflation is, always and everywhere, a monetary problem,” according to Milton Friedman. You can throw blame at whichever President or Congress you’d like (they’re all guilty, as we learn in this balanced piece from the website The Balance), or whichever crisis you’d like (though, to be fair, the Federal Government printed a metric crapton during COVID).
Don’t Believe The (Putin) Hype
Listen to Chuck D.
Don’t listen to Joe B.
The seeds were sown ages ago — like, probably three or four Fed Governors and Presidential Budget Directors ago — and the reality is that Vladimir Putin is a mere scapegoat. Gas prices are rising, but they’re not totally his fault; and the rise in food prices to come will be due, in part, to Putin’s war.
But you could get into a host of academic arguments and ask who bears the most responsibility and it won’t solve the problem.
‘Bitcoin Solves This!’
Yes, and no. And maybe.
As Putin’s War Machine and his “Evil Cronies” are learning, if you can’t use the global financial system that exists — if you’re shut out of traditional banking — you have to make do. In Putin’s case, that means calling China. In your case, that means…well, that means a few things.
First up, you’re not Putin, planning on invading another country. But you don’t know if or when you will fall out of favor with the traditional banks. (See “Trudeau, Justin” for an example of just how that could happen to you.) You also don’t know exactly how bad this inflation stuff will get — and you could find yourself using the black market (WHAT???) before you know it.
Seriously.
Venezuelan Black Market Finance
If you live in Venezuela, you have been dealing with this sort of thing for a while. There’s an official exchange rate, then there’s an unofficial black market rate. And there’s always the risk of the government revaluing the currency.
Zimbabwe had to do this, too, creating a 100 Trillion Dollar Bill back in the day.
And on and on…
Upshot: Get In The Game
You don’t know when the time will come where you need some of that stuff in the post — Cash, Precious Metals, some BTC through Coinbase or Crypto.com, and some ETH too (THOSE ARE AFFILIATE LINKS OVER THERE, WE COULD BE COMPENSATED IF YOU SIGN UP THROUGH THEM) — and you don’t know when it might…hit the fan.
But standing on the sidelines, now, is not an option.
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