Economics & Investing For Preppers

Here are the latest news items and commentary on current economics news, market trends, stocks, investing opportunities, and the precious metals markets. We also cover hedges, derivatives, and obscura. Most of these items are from the “tangibles heavy” contrarian perspective of SurvivalBlog’s Founder and Senior Editor, JWR. Today, we look at the ill-fated Zimbabwean Dollar. (See the Forex & Cryptos section.)

Precious Metals:

Gold price to hit $1,950 in Q2 2021 – Natixis

o  o  o

Egon von Greyerz: History Tells Us To Own Gold When Central Banks Run Out Of Control

o  o  o

Gold & Silver Forecasts: Both Shining

o  o  o

Goldman hikes gold price forecast on debasement fears and a weaker dollar

Economy & Finance:

U.S. banks are ‘swimming in money’ as deposits increase by $2 trillion amid the coronavirus

o  o  o

At Zero Hedge: Americans’ Biggest Financial Regret Is Not Saving Enough Before The Coronavirus Hit

o  o  o

Governments eye new taxes on cigarettes, homes and tech giants to pay for budget shortfalls

o  o  o

First published in The New York Times: ‘We could be feeling this for the next decade’: Virus hits college towns

Commodities:

Reader D.N. sent us this: With Acreage Surprise, What Will it Take to Get to $4 Corn?

o  o  o

OilPrice News reports: $40 Oil Isn’t Enough To Prevent A Wave Of Shale Bankruptcies

o  o  o

COVID Impact – 1.5 Billion Pound Potato Mountain Trapped In Supply Chain 

Equities:

Get Ready: 10 Reasons a Second Stock Market Crash Is Coming

o  o  o

From reader H.L.:  The Fed Is Now A Top 5 Holder Of The Biggest Corporate Bond ETFs

o  o  o

JPMorgan Concludes The World Is Drowning In Too Much Debt For Stocks To Go Down Again

Forex & Cryptos:

How the Coming Crash in the Dollar Will Unfold

o  o  o

Zimbabwe Scraps Currency Peg Three Months After Introduction. JWR’s Comment:  Regarding the ill-fated Zimbabwean Dollar, the prevailing thought in the Former Rhodesia seems to be: “Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice, shame on me.”

o  o  o

Reader H.L. sent us this: Why Cryptocurrency Traders Are Switching from Spot to Derivatives Markets

o  o  o

Economist: Bitcoin Remains a “Risk On” Asset After Reacting to Payroll Data

o  o  o

UK Regulators Shut Down Crypto Exchange Following £1.5m Scam

Tangibles Investing:

Pending Home Sales Bounce Off Brutal Low, Still -11% from February, -5% from May Last Year

o  o  o

Record-Setting Gun Sales Could Leave Stores Dry

Provisos:

SurvivalBlog and its Editors are not paid investing counselors or advisers. 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 closely watch specific markets. If you spot any news that would be of interest to SurvivalBlog readers, then please send it in. News items from local news outlets that are missed by the news wire services are especially appreciated. And it need not be only about commodities and precious metals. Thanks!




18 Comments

  1. With 8.3 million firearms sold since March, it would seem that the Democrats would give up on their mantra of gun control. The People Have Spoken! As usual, the Libs have maintained their reputation of continuing to produce failed policies, and then repeating the same, over and over. Normally their answer to failure is that we just need to spend more, and of course, raise taxes. I believe this mantra is wearing thin, even within their own ranks. I personaly know of 2 liberal families that never owned firearms that have rethought their positions and are taking training for their new firearms. Their only lament is the lack of available ammo.
    All the media hype about Bidden’s popularity is just smoke and mirrors from a defeated party and media with no answers to real problems. Be sure to vote, and as in Chicago vote early and often.

  2. From your post: “All the media hype about Biden’s popularity is just smoke and mirrors from a defeated party and media with no answers to real problems.”

    They seem to believe that their continued drum beating support will convince people to vote for Biden despite the fact that he is clearly in serious cognitive decline, and would not serve as president, but instead serve as a Trojan horse — delivering radical leftist communists directly and in force into the White House and the Oval Office.

    1. I don’t know who is going to win. I personally think Biden would win if the vote was tomorrow, but the vote is in Nov. In Nov we don’t know yet.

      In some ways it doesn’t matter, as we have to prepare as if either one wins, hedging and balancing our preps in case either wins. No matter who wins a good president can provide leadership and good governance but is really constrained by what happens in Congress and that has been a mess where the Senate has done very little. A bad president can really break things, run the government for the benefit of a few, damage national defense, damage trust, destroy institutions that provide stability and promote civil order and economic success, damage international relationships, basically its easier to break things than to put them back together. A president in four years can break what will take many decades to fix if it even can be fixed.

      If Biden wins the deficit should go down (based on democratic presidents over the last 40 years), the economy should improve from better leadership and policy, economic growth should be better, the coronavirus will be better managed but is still going to cause significant damage on many fronts, taxes on the rich might go up, and gun restrictions could increase. The damage from failed Republican economic policies (tax cuts for the rich, Laissez-faire business regulation, crony capitalism, lack of enforcement of anti-trust laws, public asset give-aways to the rich, deficit spending to no end, national debt at high levels, low interest rates for savers, …) are still with us threatening the economy and an economic depression/collapse. Throw in another black swan event like the pandemic, war, drought, famine, or some of the other effects of climate change and the next economic downward spiral could match the depression or worse. We also don’t know what Congress will do or even be able to do.

      If Trump wins the coronavirus mismanagement and damage to the economy will continue or get worse, more people will die, and the virus will continue to spread rampantly unless the governors can do better, or until a vaccine is invented. The economy will struggle, health care costs will increase, the deficit will continue to increase, our national security will continue to decline, China and Russia will continue to kick our butt and make fools of us, the dollar could be in trouble, rich people will continue to get richer, most people will continue to struggle and fall farther behind, the swamp of DC will be run by more of the swamp rats trump brings in, and the threat of an economic collapse will continue to increase, but Trump would probably stop any national gun control legislation.

      Now what I wrote won’t fit the narrative many of you choose to believe or the narrative your tribe requires its members to believe. I don’t have a tribe, I have no ideology that the world must fit into, that facts must fit into and support, I have no group I belong to that defines what I must believe to belong to the group, I’m free to go where the data, observations and the behavior of others takes me. The country is what the country is. I can back up my observations with logic, data, numbers. Now what I do have is values that guide what I would like to happen in the country. Those values are based on the teachings of Jesus Christ in the new testament. They require some sacrifice on my part and others, they are not easy to follow, and if you find them easy to follow you really aren’t following the teachings of Christ. I haven’t discussed what I would like to happen or those values, just what I think might happen based on what has happened in the past.

      1. No tribe here, but strong support for Donald J. Trump. We don’t agree with everything he does or says, but we do believe he is making significant progress in many important areas — and we will vote for him in November.

    2. More than who gets the White House, this scares me:

      The US reported 50,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the highest single-day total since the start of the pandemic.

      It was in the article on potatoes.

      Sigh.

      Carry on in grace

  3. Best suggestions… Build and diversify your savings, pay down and off your debt(s), acquire the means of production (also the skill sets to go with those), and continue to prepare with a first focus on the most universal risks and then with an eye to specific high risk areas.

    Be aware of the survival timeline too. Before you can survive a year, you must first survive a day, a week and a month. This is especially important for those who are just beginning their preparedness journeys and are searching for ways to focus their efforts.

    Remain steady. Be safe. Stay well everyone!

  4. Many of the Economics/Investment for Preppers articles are full of valuable information but
    others are so technical and complex that understanding is very difficult. I think that when you have to Google a word, a term, or an abbreviation so often that you loose interest.

    It seems that there is no good economic,financial,or investment news in neither the short or
    long term. I don’t think it takes a professional back ground to know what is important.

    We are now in survival mode. Food,water,shelter,medicine,security,and PMs if you can afford them.

  5. I believe that since the democrats’ ‘strategeries’ have failed- Obamagate, attempted coup, Mueller investigation, Stormy daniels, fake news, smear campaigns, impeachment, Covid-19, shutting down the world’s and the U.S. economy, protests over the death of a career criminal, shaming us over confederate/historic/patriotic statues and monuments, and chaos and mayhem/lawless zones- their last hopes rest on these options: voter fraud, more chaos and lawlessness, and one more thing. I believe that they will kick over the table and crash the currency (dollar) JUST BEFORE THE ELECTION.
    If you have any money in the stock or bond market, or in the bank, get it out and buy gold, silver, or other tangibles such as food and water. Get out of debt, ESPECIALLY any variable rate debt such as credit cards. The dollar is going away anyway, my guess is just before the election. Do what you can to get ready !

  6. I don’t have a degree in political science, but it seems to me that the media is constructing a narrative where Biden is wildly more popular than Trump. If Trump wins by a landslide, the media and all their allies will claim he STOLE the election. It’s a manufactured poll.

  7. I read the article about raising cigarette taxes, etc and I had a good chuckle.

    Years ago the State of Alaska did the same thing …. huge tax increase on tobacco and alcohol. Of course, the liberals that fostered this plan sold it to the public by saying the money will pay for better mental and physical health (and adding more political employees to implement it).

    A couple years later I attended a meeting and the same people were lamenting that the sin tax didn’t work. The outfall of it was the “poor children got even less milk and good food”. Well, SOMEBODY had to pay the tax. People sure as hell didn’t stop smoking or drinking so they cut back other essentials.

    The politicians never did figure it out but they sure as hell ushered me out the door early (with a pension).

  8. Just today Seattle passed a new “Jumpstart Tax” – Under the measure, businesses with at least $7 million in annual payroll expenses will be taxed 0.7% to 2.4% on the amount they pay Seattle-based employees, with tiers based on individual salary amounts above $150,000. The highest bracket targets companies like Amazon with annual payroll expenses above $1 billion. Those companies will be taxed 2.4% for employees making more than $400,000. Seattle expects to raise $200 million/yr.
    How FAST will those companies be leaving Seattle ? Pretty Darn Quick unless I miss my guess.

Comments are closed.