Economics & Investing For Preppers

Here are the latest items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. And it bears mention that most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of JWR. (SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor.) Today’s focus is on underfunded pensions. (See the Economy and Finance section.)

Precious Metals:

First up, over at Bloomberg, we read: Gold Is Shaken by a Mysterious 2 Million-Ounce Trade

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Also this at Gold-Eagle: Gold Prices This Week And Next Week’s Forecast

Stocks:

On to stocks: Greenspan’s warning went deeper than the stock market

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How the Dow is being rattled by North Korean missiles, Harvey floods and low volumes, in four charts

Commodities:

IEA: OPEC Must Extend Cuts To Balance Oil Markets

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Next, some commentary from Alan Brugler: Storm Clouds

Economy and Finance (Underfunded Pensions):

There are a huge number  of underfunded pensions in America.  Private pensions are underfunded by around $1.8 trillion. Meanwhile, public pensions are underfunded by about $7 trillion. Worse yet, many organizations won’t even admit to the true gap in their funding versus their long term liabilities.

Of course, the Federal government can make up for their shortfalls with taxation. Or alternatively their Quantitative Easing infinite printing press.  In contrast, city, county, and State governments simply don’t have that recourse.  In the long term the best that they can hope for is declaring bankruptcy. Then of course they’ll come begging for some sort of bailout from Uncle Sugar. Pitiful.

One Cause of Underfunded Pensions

Part of these shortfalls can be attributed to the Federal Reserve’s fanatasyland strategy of artificially suppressing  interest rates. They’ve been held at near zero for many years.  So it is impossible for a pension fund to have an adequate return on investment in today’s market. (At least not unless they want to plunge into junk bonds. And that would of course be foolish.)

Here are a few informative articles on the looming pension crisis:

• Government Public Pension Liabilities Are Understated By Trillions: New Study
• Forbes: The Disturbing Trend That Will End in a Full-Fledged Pension Crisis
• World’s Major Economies to Come up $400 Trillion Short on Retirement Savings
• White Paper: 2017 Corporate Pension Funding Study

Seeing The Big Picture:

X22 Report Interviews Brandon Smith of Alt-Market

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Moving on to this insightful piece: The Perfect Robbery, The Cashless Society (A hat tip to DSV for the link.)

Troubling Trends:

On to a link suggest by longtime reader H.L.. It is a piece by Martin Armstrong: Governments to Control Large Cash Transactions

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Gary Christenson had some great observations on the destruction of the U.S. Dollar, through inflation: Debt, Dollars, DOW, War, Silver and Shirts

Tangibles Investing:

Finally, over at The Spruce: Today’s Top Flea Market Trends

Provisos:

SurvivalBlog and its Editors are not paid investment counselors or advisers. So please see our Provisos page for our detailed disclaimers.

News Tips:

Please send your economics and investing news tips to JWR. (Either via e-mail of via our Contact form.) These are often especially relevant, because they come from folks who particularly watch individual markets. And due to their diligence and focus, we benefit from fresh “on target” investing news. We often “get the scoop” on economic and investing news that is probably ignored (or reported late) by mainstream American news outlets. Thanks!