Well, North Korea has the bomb, and they're pointing it at the USSA. Thanks, Dennis Rodman. This is either the real life pilot episode of M*A*S*H Part Deux: The Return of Hawkeye, or the final call to get the hell out of Dodge!
On to the feedback…
HAVE USEFUL SKILLS, SHOULD TRAVEL?
Dear TDV,
I am a licensed plumber and steamfitter in Canada. I already make excellent money, but since investing in precious metals over the last few years, and studying GATA and the like, I believe that the system we live in is insolvent. Even took a huge hit lately emptying my RRSP trading account with Scotia Bank (which is likely insolvent and shorting the market). Now I'm left wondering how to structure my retirement and future business.
I am curious whether there is a need for qualified, ticketed tradespeople in these offshore havens that people like Jeff and Doug have set up. Are there jobs in trades where I can start viable businesses overseas in such communities, or will folk just hire locals for 100 times less the cost? Just asking because I'll never be rich, even if I profit from precious metals…. Too young for that.
Just a middle-class wonder-brat…
Melisa
P.S. I just subscribed to your Premium service. No clue whether or not I'll hang around, but I'm listening. Also bought both of your special reports earlier, which I found worth the money!
Jeff's Response:
Hi Melisa,
First, good for you for cashing out your retirement savings from the government plan. I did the same myself in 2008 and I am almost sure both of us will be much better off in the coming years.
Your question about "are there jobs" is a question we hear all the time. Let's get the obvious out of the way first: Everywhere, with the possible exception of North Korea, needs plumbers. Your question, however, seems to be "will they pay me pennies for it overseas". This is a legitimate question as I am sure if you moved to some of the more impoverished countries on Earth, you would literally be making pennies per hour. The places I tend to hang out, however, are doing very well. Mexico and Chile are modern, booming economies.
Thomas Friedman, a well known columnist at the New York Times recently wrote this:
In India, people ask you about China, and, in China, people ask you about India: Which country will become the more dominant economic power in the 21st century? I now have the answer: Mexico.
Mexico has signed 44 free trade agreements — more than any country in the world — which, according to The Financial Times, is more than twice as many as China and four times more than Brazil. Mexico has also greatly increased the number of engineers and skilled laborers graduating from its schools. Put all that together with massive cheap natural gas finds, and rising wage and transportation costs in China, and it is no surprise that Mexico now is taking manufacturing market share back from Asia and attracting more global investment than ever in autos, aerospace and household goods.
Fox News also stated:
Mexico’s economic resurgence is gaining widespread attention. Optimism about the country’s prospects is on the upswing, as evidenced by the term “Aztec Tiger,” a clever coinage by the Financial Times. It’s a welcome change in focus and tone. And by adding dimension to the country’s story, without diminishing the security challenges Mexico faces, it allows a more balanced and accurate portrayal to emerge.
As I’ve also stated in the past there are now more Mexicans leaving the US and returning to Mexico than are going in the opposite direction.
Now, the exact same percentage of people who desire to leave their home country exists in the US as does Mexico.
As for Chile, it has more opportunities in many areas than does the US.
And here is the thing. The US and Canada are headed in one direction: down. Prices will continue to rise and real wages will continue to fall as the governments and central banks of those countries destroy the economy. Places like Mexico and Chile, however, have a much better future ahead of them… especially Chile.
And, unlike the Western countries, they are both on their way up. And while you may not see exactly the hourly wage in Mexico or Chile that you have in Canada or the US, the cost of living is generally lower. In many cases, much lower. More Mexicans are leaving the US now to go to Mexico than vice-versa. I've spoken with hundreds. I always ask why (although I already know the answer, but just want to make sure) and they always respond that there are 2 reasons:
(1) There is much less freedom in the US and (2) there is hardly any economic opportunity there anymore. The opposite is true in Mexico and Chile.
This is a major paradigm shift. I just came back from dilapidated and oppressed New York City and the one thing I took note of is how many immigrants are there. I heard every language while I was there. Many of them came to the US in search of opportunity. They didn't know the language, they didn't know anything… my taxi driver was obviously on his first day on the job from Kazakhstan… you could tell he was stressed and had no idea what he was doing, but at least he was there trying. Unfortunately, he will find out, that the American Dream died long ago and he'll end up living in poverty now… he might have been better off staying in Kazakhstan.
The world is changing. The Western world is no longer the land of opportunities and riches. Places in Latin America and Asia have much more opportunity and no one seems to have noticed it yet. There is value in getting ahead of the curve. If I were to tell you just one place that I think has incredible opportunity right now, it is Chile. I believe it is the best economy on Earth right now and will become the Singapore of South America. That's why we are there at Galt's Gulch. We'll likely be building hundreds of homes there over the coming years and I can guarantee you each one of them will want plumbing. Get out there, make contacts, offer a valuable product and hustle.
A BOMB IS A BOMB IS A BOMB?
Dear TDV,
Surely having a bomb as your symbol rather undermines the whole, "non-initiation of force" and "peace, love, and understanding" thing?
John P.
Jeff’s Response:
That bomb just represents the reality of the dollar's situation. Our daily site is more focused on economics than it is on philosophy, peace and anarchy…But our understanding of the non-initiation of force pervades our understanding of economics. Any violence, especially the "legal" kind of government, that impedes voluntary, free market transaction leads to distortions that will eventually correct themselves.
The dollar is a manifestation of government violence in the form of legal tender laws…and of government theft in the form of inflation. But the dollar, like everything built on violence and delusion, has a limited lifespan. The dollar sits at the center of the distorted, inefficient and violent statist world all around us. When the dollar goes, the entire foundation of the world as we know it will be rocked. The whole thing will likely start a-crumblin' down.
So we think the bomb with the lit fuse and bearing the dollar symbol is very, very appropriate. The dollar is a bomb about to go off and when it goes off the statist world will really start to collapse. But we're not really worrided about that because then all that peace, love, understanding and anarchy we talk about may actually have a chance to flourish.
Remember: we are not physically going to blow up the dollar (that'd be pretty hard to blow them all up at once!)…But the more dollar vigilantes there are (who are selling dollars to buy harder assets) the shorter the fuse gets.
Our job here at TDV is to help those vigilantes to be ready to profit through the collapse. That's why we offer even more economic analysis along with actionable advice to the subcribers to our Premium service. I recently exchanged a few emails with a reader named Terry who told me:
"TDV is the only premium membership I continue to renew, as it is by far the most useful, and with the most actionable, spelled-out advice. Keep it up."
We're glad to help. To learn more about getting access to this sort of useful, actionable advice, just click here.
MORTGAGES?
Dear TDV,
One question that I think would be of great interest to those of us who are stuck in the USSA for whatever reason is one that has been discussed at length several times on reddit.com and is summarized in this posted forum question:
"Given the threat of economic collapse/hyperinflation, how do you guys view taking out a mortgage and buying a house? If the dollar is going to be worthless soon, does it not make sense to take out as much debt as possible (assuming you have the basics squared away)?"
Thank you,
Ron
Jeff's Response:
It could work, especially since there's not much risk of inflation slowing down.
BUT the big question is: what will it look like in the US during the collapse? It’ll be zombieville for a while. I wouldn’t want to own any house unless it was set up like Will Smith’s in I Am Legend where he was the last guy alive on Earth among millions of zombie vampires!
Gary’s Response:
I recently wrote a lengthy analysis of the pros and cons of buying a house in the era of central banking and government "help" for the latest issue of TDV Homegrown. I won't repeat the details here since our Homegrown subscribers have just recently paid for access to the full article. But let's consider the hyperinflation question here…
Sure, it makes some sense to take on a huge debt and let inflation make it easier to repay…or hyperinflation make it really, really easy to repay. But I personally think it's a little foolhardy to play with debt like that unless your pockets are deep enough to make a mortgage the equivalent of buying a scratch-off ticket (looking right at you, Warren Buffett). Despite the upside-down, black-is-white 20th century Keynesian hype, you can never have too much savings, but you can very quickly have too much debt.
In the age of worldwide central banking, we've all been propagandized by the mantra of debt as a tool. But debt is really a form of indentured servitude, a mild form of selling oneself into slavery. I'm not particulary religious, but I'm not above using the occasional catchy and fitting Bible verse, like so: "The borrower is slave to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7). Debt should only be taken on for very good reason and with great trepidation, and ideally only in amounts that you can truly manage.
If you rely on an income to service your mortgage debt, then you could lose your investment and your roof if you were to lose your income. After all, just consider what else would be going on in the economy in order to create the conditions that would make the debt easier to repay. What guarantee do you have that you could keep your job and service your debt in high inflationary or hyperinflationary conditions?
Of course you could always hedge your bet with some gold. Maybe the gold would increase in value enough to pay off your mortgage. Maybe 10 Krugerrands purchased at around $15,000 now would be worth the $150,000 needed to pay off your mortgage right at the same time you lost your job. Maybe not. I'd simply rather enter a hyperinflationary storm entirely debt-free and with an asset column full of things that will hold their value. I personally wouldn't play around with a huge mortgage, even if it had a low fixed rate. There is no guarantee that inflation will help me win before I become insolvent due to other reasons like job loss. Again, ignore all this if betting on a mortgage doesn't present a huge risk to you because you have an unusually large cushion of wealth (especially if that wealth consists of things that will make you wealthier during a dollar demise…like we tell our TDV subscribers about).
There are other reasons I wouldn't get into a mortgage right now and as I mentioned, I go into those in some detail in the latest issue of TDV Homegrown (you can learn more about subscribing by clicking here). I wrote about this in Homegrown because the decision to go into enormous debt for a big, easily found and easily confiscated durable good ties in strongly to one's economic survival in the increasingly turbulent times ahead. Tune into Homegrown to see why a house may actually be a lot cheaper in the not-too-distant future and may — just may — be a whole lot cheaper on the other side of The End Of The Monetary System As We Know It.
And like Jeff noted, it could be zombie-ville in the US for a while during and after the collapse. May be best to wait it out, store up your treasures elsewhere, then buy in when collapse has left nothing but easy-pickings and bargains lying around.
