There is something seriously wrong in America. We all sense it, but few in the mainstream media are willing to touch it or can effectively articulate it within the public’s sound-bite oriented attention span.
It isn’t just about the remnants of the financial crisis; it isn’t the protracted jobs recession and slow recovery; it isn’t the trillions of dollars in deficit spending; it isn’t the degree of rampant financial malfeasance. It is something deeper which reaches into the soul of who we are as a people and society. It will soon be the central theme to your investment strategy and financial security.
On the surface it might appear we have lost our optimism about the future and our confidence that America is still the ‘beacon on the hill’ that countries around the world admire and look to for leadership. Though our children mouth the platitudes taught by older generations, they ring hollow in the hallways with video surveillance, motion sensors and metal detectors when recited by them. The high minded ideals seem misplaced in unemployment lines where they stand with freshly minted advanced degrees in hand, huge education debts and little hope other than the faint possibility of a non-paying internship position.
Our leaders have become propaganda machines promising change but delivering the lobbyists’ agenda which appears to make matters only worse. Every election, waves of our well intentioned fellow citizens go to Washington with high hopes of making a difference, but are quickly ground into submission by an unscrupulous culture of power, influence and compromise. The few who maintain their convictions are quickly neutralized and removed like an ugly infection by the party apparatus. So what is to be done?
First we need to recognize the real problem, not what the media spin machine purports the problems to be. We need to realize that we are in an era of trading personal freedom for what is economic freedom or touted as national security. Like slavery we are succumbing to a sacrifice of our liberty for the basic primeval needs of safety and survival. Few recognize the insidious cancer other than possible slave masters behind the curtain.
Many of you will no doubt think this harsh. Consider the personal freedoms we have surrendered in the last decade, for what we are sold with high pressure tactics, as increased personal security and labeled a matter of national security on our war on terror:
1. Personal surveillance has become ubiquitous due to the fear of terrorism as represented by: surveillance cameras, metal detectors, security guards in every public and even private gathering place.
2. Borders are tighter, money movement is tighter and government reporting requirements on movement has increased.
3. Regulations, fees and taxes have exploded at all levels of government while basic public services are reduced.
4.Personal Information under the Patriot Act has made available unlimited amounts of personal information to the government’s watchful eye. There is no longer any privacy from the government.
5. A more than one $T annual military budget (including an off-budget sheet war) is spent to enforce police activities in over 130 countries yet we can’t implement a ‘half baked’ response to an oil spill on our own shores or assist our own citizens in the wake of a devastating hurricane. These are complete government failures to actually deliver the national security we have entrusted to them.
WHAT IT MEANS TO YOUR FINANCIAL STRATEGY & PLANNING
It is almost indisputable that as future events unfold, the US government will become larger, more controlling and more interventionist. It will exert more power over ever increasing levels of our personal decision making. This will include our investment choices, which will be increasingly represented and framed as what is in the best interest of the state and national security. They will increasingly be policed by taxation, regulatory reporting and predatory restrictions on available options that were previously available.
In EXTEND & PRETEND: A Guide to the Road Ahead I stated:
“Hard assets such as physical gold and silver have traditionally been the ideal vehicle for an environment of high inflation coupled with a currency crisis. I fully expect governments will strip these assets from holders either directly or through predatory taxation, fees or other trading limitations. They will be classified somewhere in the four categories discussed above. Alternatively, if it is not done in this fashion it will be controlled through intervention similar to national currencies in the forex arena. I personally suspect it is already being controlled in some fashion based on the March 25th whistleblower testimony by Andrew Maguire. It is a matter of national security in a beggar-thy-neighbor environment since gold and silver are the only real money in a fiat based system. Protect yourself accordingly.”More...
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