Saturday, September 26, 2015

The Million dollar Postage Stamp


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The Million dollar Postage Stamp

By de Andréa, Opinion Editorialist
for ‘THE BOTTOM LINE’:
Published September 26, 2015

I would be remiss if I didn’t share this with my subscribers.  You can do whatever you want with this Information. Ignore it as I have for years, or add it to you preparedness list.  In 2012, I published The complete Guide To basic Preparedness, as well as give presentations in the area where I live.  If you haven’t read it or haven’t even begun to prepare for some kind of long term disaster, I would highly recommend it. It isn’t too late, yet.  But the guide is basic as it is represented. In other words there are a few things not covered in the Guide. Here are a couple of them.

 

During WWII when I was growing up one of the things I did besides collecting tinfoil for the war effort, (which never got used by the way) was to collect stamps. And still today I have a Germen stamp from the 1930’s with Adolph Hitler’s picture on it and a value of one million marks, which is the German dollar.  It’s not that stamps cost so much it’s that the mark had become worthless.  People had to spend their pay every day which was generally cash, wheelbarrows full of it, on the day they got paid, because the next day the mark would be worth 10-20 % less. At the end of every week the mark would lose 100% of its value. Soon there wasn’t enough currency to buy even the most necessary things. So the government printed more and more money inflating the mark even more, until…yes even a postage stamp to mail a common letter literally cost a fortune. It’s called runaway inflation my friend. But it couldn’t happen here…or could it?  

 

Well it very nearly did in the late 1970s during the Carter administration.  We had 12-14 % inflation until Ronald Ragan was elected president and balanced the supply of goods against the supply of money. Called “Supply Side Economics.”

 

Now bear in mind I am not an economist nor a financial wizard but I do have the common since that God gave a mule. Which is more than I can say for most of the people in government.  Most of them are lawyers or career criminals and are not economist either. At best they are programed robots, at worst they are stuck on stupid or as I said, career criminals, else we wouldn’t be in the predicament that we are in now. 

 

After the 2008 economic bust, the government printed billions of dollars bailing out corporations and financial institutions.  The money printing went on and on until they had printed trillions of dollars. The corporate recipients, banks and insurance companies that received all these trillions of new crisp dollar bills for the most part, just sat on them. Banks didn’t loan it, not at such low interest rates set by the FED. Corporations aren’t spending it because they don’t know what the government is going to do next.   Manufacturing of goods went down and people lost their jobs.  So far very little inflation. 

 

But what happens when the FED raises interest rates off of nearly zero.  Banks will start loaning money, corporations will start expanding and all those trillions will hit the economy like a sack of rocks. Suddenly there will be tons of money and nothing to spend it on, because there will be to little goods chased by too many dollars.  The low supply of goods will demand more money.  And the prices will climb and climb the dollar will inflate to 20-30-50-70 percent of its original value. Soon there will be a shortage of dollars to pay these outrageous prices. So the Fed will print more money to meet the demand so the prices will continue to climb and more money will be printed and so on and so on until a stamp cost one million dollars. 

 

In the meantime your savings won’t buy a days’ worth of groceries and your retirement won’t pay your utilities for a month. 

 

This may be an over simplification of the truth but ‘if’ the government continues down this road my friend, this is where it leads.  And I say again…”If.”

 

So what should you do? Well that my friend, is between you and your financial advisor. I wouldn’t pretend to tell you exactly what you should do. Except you do need to do something.

 

      All I can do is to pass on some general common since ideas.  Mostly what not to do, and that is obviously not to horde a lot of cash, either at home in your mattress or in the bank, especially not in the bank. Whatever you do, do it in moderation.  If cash is going to lose its flavor on the bed post overnight then hard goods that you need every day would obviously be more valuable than money, especially if the prices go up.  This is basic, found in my  complete Guide To basic Preparedness.

 

Next I would trade some of my dollars for something that will hold value such as toilet paper…well…one can only store so much toilet paper. But I hope you get the idea stored food, soap, everything you use every day. Then…you might consider some gold, silver, platinum and palladium coins. They have never been worth nothing.  When and if the dollar becomes worth less, the coins will be worth more.  Just do it as I said in moderation no more than 10 -15 % of your net worth. 

 

The other Issue not covered in the Guide is…if you have been smart enough to prepare. And your neighbors haven’t, and if they get wind of the fact that you have what YOU need and they don’t. The natural thing for them to do - might be to take it all away from you.

 

Now if some woman comes to my door begging with three dirty starved little kids I am certainly not going  to send them on their way without something, after checking to make sure there are not several thugs waiting in the bushes to run at my door. But if someone comes to rob what I have for the survival of me, my family and dog, then I had better be prepared to defend it.   The appearance of a Mossberg 500 12 gauge might be just the deterrent needed…or not…in which case you might need to demonstrate what a 12 gauge short barrel with 00 Buckshot can do at close range.  Trust me it’s devastating.  It’s the world’s best all-around home self-defense weapon.

  

THE BOTTOM LINE: As I said earlier I am not a financial genius or an economist but I am not a fool either.  Before you do anything like this you should check with your financial advisor, but don’t just do nothing and watch your dollars become valueless. 

 

This may not happen at all, but what I do know is if the government continues on this path to nowhere that is exactly where we will end up.  Nowhere, with nothing!

 

If for some reason the government develops some guts and decides to do something smart or just get out of the economics business, step back and let this capitalistic economy do what it does best, and our economy recovers, then you really haven’t lost anything.  Stored food can be eaten, soap can continue to clean you, toilet paper…well… you know what to do with that.  And gold, silver, platinum, and palladium has never be worth nothing.

 

Thanks for listening – de Andréa  


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