Economic meltdown? I told you so!!
Worried about the headlines? You should be.
I quit my job on the 31st of December 2005, because I wanted to protect my kith and kin from what I thought then, will be a recession of major proportions. Have I succeeded? Not yet. Am I in despair? Not yet. But enough about me, let’s talk about you.
Banks, hedge funds, insurance firms, brokerages, and stock markets (even entire countries i.e. Iceland), are collapsing left right and centre. Did you ever think this would happen? Why not? Far better minds than me have been warning of the fragility of the global economy for years. They have been getting more strident and detailed in their prophecy of doom for the past half decade, but most people paid them little or no heed at all. I’m sure there are some that are still clueless.
There is no single cause for this crisis, so there is no point in pointing fingers. It’s all of our faults. This is a calamity that is the fault of the entire human species. We chose fiat currencies over gold and silver, we chose bigger and better SUV’s to move our butts from A to B, we chose to eat and live like kings.
How bad will it get?
Grain reserves (food) are at levels so low globally, it’s not even funny. The central banks seem to be choosing to go down the road that Japan has already gone through, by setting things up for a deflationary depression, which will be very painful whichever way you look at it. The climate, sea levels and plate tectonics are continuing to change according to their cycles, which are beyond our ability to predict, except to say that the surface of this planet is becoming a tad more dangerous. The man on the street, whichever city that may be, is losing faith in his government and the experts, and rightly so, but this will also mean a concomitant and continuous rise in crime and anarchy. A lot of jobs will enter the endangered species list, especially if the job has nothing to do with the production, transportation, refining and retailing of food, energy, water, security, weapons, alcohol, drugs, and other things (like bicycles) that we cannot survive without. I could go on and on.
Should we panic?
No. Let’s look at the US of A. It’s about 20% of the global economy, and Obama notwithstanding; it’s up the proverbial creek. Guess which nation was 20% of the global economy 200 years ago? If you guessed China, you are close, now go a bit south and west. If your finger lands in India, you are right. So the US of A should bounce back, in a couple of hundred years or so. We have been through depressions and worse calamities before. What is at risk is not our lives, but our lifestyles.
How to survive this relatively unscathed?
You will need brains and balls. Brains to identify the opportunities and changes that you will have to make, and the balls to do them. Learn…
- How to trade the global markets
- How to hoard gold and silver
- How to buy the right stocks when they are getting cheap, like now
- How not to buy the home you live in and the car you drive by installments
- How to grow your own food (just in case)
- How to survive on different diets (insects can be yummy, with the right sauce, I hope) Vegetarianism helps as well.
- Improve your immune system (very important, if you can’t drink tap water without falling ill, stick to beer)
- How to ride a bicycle (in case oil goes to 200 bucks a barrel, which it still might)
- How to watch less TV
- How to read more non fiction (knowledge has the habit of being useful)
- How to be nice to your neighbours ( just be nice to everyone, might safe your life someday)
- How not to follow the herd (if everyone is selling, you must be buying, unless it’s LV bags and Armani coats they are selling, then I hope you had sold yours before they did)
- How not to be superstitious
- How to keep the faith.
There are tremendous opportunities now; I hope you can see them. Anyway, the winter we are in right now, won’t last, and spring will be here soon enough. Good luck and God Bless.
Regards
Jeevindra Kumar
p.s. I am shooting this e mail out to everyone in my address book, so don’t reply unless you want to heap praise on me, or give me money.
