E-Mail 'Blowing Bubbles for Fun and Profit, by Gary Christenson' To A Friend

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1. People need Food, Water and Shelter. Survivalblog recommends tangible investments >too, as Stock Market ‘bubbles’ ~ will pop periodically. Paying-off a house mortgage early is a safe investment [Warren Buffett owns his house].

   People should do some reading about the Stock Market, before investing; Price to Earning Ratios, Book Values, and Dividend Rates. For example: “Despite climbing to a market capitalization above $800 billion, with over $230 billion in annual revenue, Amazon still does not pay a dividend to shareholders.” [SureDividend site 3/21/2019]

   There a lot of people that get rich by putting someone else’s money in their wallet. They rely on investor naivete. = “Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered” is an old Wall Street saying that warns investors against excessive greed. (From the ‘Fool’ investment site)

2. A good article, I agree with most of what he said. But there are problems he didn’t discuss and worse he offered no solution. Government spending and debt are out of control. That is essentially because voters vote for congressmembers who bring free stuff back home. And of course congress votes to pay of influential donors and potential future employers. How do you stop that?

   The debt will cause a crash and/or a quiet but aggressive printing of money and tranches of this money being dropped off at banks and businesses too big to fail. For the little guy this means inflation. We have had inflation for decades and the government rewrites the measures of inflation so that it doesn’t qualify. But we all pay the higher prices for everyday goods and services and know the official inflation numbers are a lie. But with a real crash inflation will be much bigger and much more difficult to hide.

   We all know or can surmise what the effects will be from a real crash, something along the lines of 1929 through 1941. If that happens it will be a disaster of biblical proportions. Partly because our ancestors of 1929 were much stronger and better equipped mentally to deal with the great depression. Back then close to 50% of Americans lived on or had close ties to family who lived on the land. Today most Americans live in cities and have no working knowledge of what it takes to survive in a full blown social breakdown.

   Predicting when or how this will all go down is impossible. Those who claim to have done it in the past typically predicted it every year for 20-30 years and were finally right. But predicting that some day these chickens will come home to roost is easy because someday they will. Will it be 2020? Who knows. If Bernie or Joe get elected President maybe it will. If Trump gets elected maybe it won’t.

   But it all begs the question; how do you fix this problem?

3. Some folks have told me to stop sending articles with this kind of content…

   “The normalcy bias, or normality bias, is a belief people hold when there is a possibility of a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the likelihood of a disaster and its possible effects, because people believe that things will always function the way things normally have functioned. This may result in situations where people fail to adequately prepare themselves for disasters, and on a larger scale, the failure of governments to include the populace in its disaster preparations. About 70% of people reportedly display normalcy bias in disasters.”

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias

   Applies to economics as well…

   If someone thinks there is something wrong with the current economy, do they have some kind of cognitive distortion effecting their thought patterns???

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_distortion

   Do economic naysayers need some kind of therapy?

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy

4. This article is similar to all others I have read for the last 20 years.
   The dollar is going to collapse and become worthless or hyper inflation takes hold.
   And the only strategy is owing gold or silver. My question, who are you going to trade your gold or silver to?

   And since the family farm of the 30’s is gone for all practical purpose so what happens to 200 million Americans that do not grow their own food? (Hint-total chaos).

   Again, who and where are you going to trade with?

   These type of predictions are like the book Lucifer’s Hammer that a comet smashes into the Earth, and now what do you do. Nothing.

   I for one do not believe the US ends this way in a Mad Max world
   Scenario.
   The Book of Revelation is frightening enough and I know that will happen

   1. Skip ,,,,,,among people in our group we trade with mostly silver now ,green is not accepted at the trading post , green is still around for use outside the ‘valley’ when I need to hire a chore done I expect to pay in silver rounds ,when I sell a side of beef I expect silver rounds ,we are not Amish but have (far from it) learned from them ,
      And from the lesson in Atlas Shrugged, and 1984.

      Who is John Galt? And what can you learn? And why is it important?
      We make life hard, unnecessarily.

5. From the article: “Blowing bubbles is profitable for Wall Street and the stock market, which is primarily owned by the upper few percent of the financial and political elite.”

   Anybody who has an IRA or a 401K probably owns stocks directly or indirectly through mutual funds and ETFs. Millions of Americans are invested in Wall Street, not just a few percent of the financial and political elite.

   1. I have a 401(k) from work that is mandatory. I don’t expect to see a single penny from it.

      When the children of Israel prepared to flee Egypt, the Lord instructed them to “borrow” as much gold and silver from the Egyptian families that they could and bring it with them. They wound up wandering the desert for 40 years lugging all of that heavy metal around with them. There was nobody out there willing to trade food for their precious metals. Throughout the entire timeline of the Bible, only gold and silver is money. Why is this relevant?

6. The whole point is DEBT. Debt is slavery, whether you are a nation or an individual. Debt is the modern chains of slavery. There is NO way to resolve the problem without substantial pain and agony on the part of us all.

   This is a spiritual battle more than a physical or financial battle. Evil rules the world and we are in it and (of it) if we are in debt. IMHO it has been the goal of the power elite, those that own and control DEBT, to destroy the idea of a Constitutional Republic since it’s inception. They have done an excellent job, BUT THEY WILL NOT PREVAIL.

7. Once upon a time in America, we honored and rewarded the craftsman who produced our furniture and barns. Today, the pencil necked financial sharpie who trades scraps of paper or guts a Cabelas dynasty is the new robber baron.

   Does anyone really believe that when the balloon finally goes up, millions of people will stand silently on the sidewalk and watch the bankers send their henchmen to collect their pound of flesh? Do we really believe that when facing ruin, people will go easily into that good night?

   “Just months before the storming of the Bastille in 1789, everything was calm. The social order ran smoothly. The poor tipped their hats to the gentry. The middle class kept silent. The aristocracy ate cake…… The next day, the elite were being dragged through the streets by their frilly collars like common theives.”

8. Don’t forget to invest in tool steel in the shape of things that can make,maintain or repair things. For want of a nail the kingdom was lost.

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