One of life’s most painful moments comes when we must admit that we haven’t done our homework–that we are unprepared. ~ Merlin Olsen
Financial Preparedness is a newsletter for prudent people who want to learn how to prepare for the unexpected so they can protect their life, health and wealth at a time of unprecedented and hidden fragility and danger.
Since at least 2008, the federal government and the Federal Reserve have been bailing out corporations that should have failed due to mismanagement. With each successive crisis and bailout, these institutions learned that they could privatize gains and socialize losses, which injected tremendous and unprecedented moral hazard into the financial system.
During the Great Financial Crisis, almost every financial institution got bailed out, no one was prosecuted, and nearly every executive not only kept their job but received a large bonus as well. The banks that were Too Big To Fail are now even bigger and more leveraged.
Since then, I have been predicting that the next financial crisis will be not only the worst of our lifetime, but the worst in human history. Debt (which creates fragility) of all kinds is by far at a record level. Even before any new spending programs in the last 20 years, the federal government faced unfunded liabilities of over $200 trillion. Congress is spending (and the Fed is printing) insane amounts of “money.”
The real unemployment rate is far higher than the official figure, most Americans have no savings, and many of them now “draw” for a living. We have become a nation of takers, with a rapidly dwindling number of makers.
The media and commentariat class dream up “an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary” to justify taking away our treasure and liberty. Everything from financial markets to elections is rigged.
In light of events during 2020 and especially since the last election, I now believe that the coming crisis will be even worse than I imagined, and may well include the collapse of the financial system, the rule of law and civil society itself.
Even if there’s never another financial crisis, there are hundreds of different natural or man-made Black Swan events that could occur at any moment that could have a profound and permanent effect on your life. Although it appears that man has fully tamed nature and mastered his world, an unprecedented number of highly unstable complex systems abound that could collapse at any moment, causing catastrophic destruction, death, hardship and misery. The thin veneer of civilization could suddenly be stripped away, revealing man’s true violent nature and once again making life “nasty, brutish and short.” It may be hard to believe, but we are only nine meals away from total chaos.
So I must speak out. I love to write and share important and helpful information with people, so I started a weekly newsletter that educates them about how to prepare for the very hard times that I believe are (or could be) imminent. Sign up now to receive it.