fiat Archives - McGillespie

Last April, I sent an urgent e-mail to my friends and family urging them to consider taking protective measures against the collapsing US dollar. Now that I have YourOptimal.com up and running I’d like to put forth a more formalized plan and make it available to a wider audience.

(For an update of this bailout plan, see Depression Proof Your Money)

You don’t have to agree with my future predictions to be inspired to protect yourself from our current 10% inflation rate. Do nothing and your $100 today will be worth $86 next year if its in the bank. I will be adding more articles, links and resources that will explore optimizing various aspects of life in light of the dismal state of our US and world economies. The purpose of the plan, below, is to provide an Optimal plan of action in case you are already convinced that action is required to protect yourself from the coming Hyperinflationary Depression. Here’s the plan:

Pay off all debts, within reason.
Move out of all investments dependent on US dollars.
Move all but 3-months of expenses out of banks into tangible & liquid assets.
Decrease your monthly overhead as much as possible.
Get rid of all physical objects you don’t need.

That’s it. Although the economic problems we are experiencing may appear to be very complex Your Optimal Bailout Plan for protection need not be.

Ninety percent of the protections you can achieve from the collapsing US Dollar will come from your complete and thorough implementation of the above 5-Steps. In fact, if you live in the US it may not be possible to save the remaining 10% of your assets since you need to keep some US Dollars in the ‘pipeline’ just to conduct your everyday affairs.

There are many non-financial aspects of the crisis that we are entering. I look forward to addressing those in future articles. For now, there is no point in complicating the plan until you have a handle on the above 5-Steps. Let’s go into detail about each of these steps.

Pay Off All Debts, Within Reason

Since we are entering the most inflationary period in all of US History we have to look at debt a little differently. During hyperinflation some debts become assets for the debtor. You may stand to gain more by making the payments than paying them off. That’s because your debts are denominated in a currency that is losing its value on a daily basis. The contract you have with the bank to pay off your house requires you to pay US Dollars. The actual value (Purchasing power) of future dollars is much less than the value of the dollars now in your wallet. If you can find a way to preserve the value of your dollars, today, then you can exchange that value for many more dollars, tomorrow, and make your future monthly payments much easier.

To give an idea of just how much you can benefit from this technique let’s look at the history of the US Dollar from 1950-1990. The US Dollar lost 82% of its purchasing power from 1950-1990. And it has lost 47% of its 1990 value as of 2007. So there is nothing extraordinary about predicting it will lose its
remaining value. Seventeen other countries lost 99% of their currency value during the same period and Fifty-two fiat currencies lost even more value than the US Dollar! This is business as usual for any paper fiat currency. The worst performing currency on the list was the Argentinean peso. Here’s an interesting comparison between Argentina and the US.

Hyperinflation Can Pay Off Your House Loan

If the US Dollar is worth 50% of what it is today (7/15/2008) in 5 years then a mortgage of $100,000 today will be worth $50,000 in July of 2013. If you make your payments for the next 5 years you will have paid down your mortgage by whatever principle your payments could manage and the inflationary decline of the US Dollar will make an additional $50,000 payment for you!

The reason you rarely hear this advice is that its very tricky to manage. You will have to make sure you can manage all of the following variables:

Store your current dollars in something that maintains its current value.
Keep enough dollars on hand to make the debt payments.
Keep enough dollars on hand to pay for all of your other expenses.
Monitor the value of dollars and the value of your tangible asset.
Be willing and able to translate your tangible asset back to dollars.
Manage your bank account(s) so that you have just enough to meet expenses.
Have the mental and emotional fortitude to stay the course.

Using silver as an example, 1000 ounces of silver could have purchased a median value home in 1980. Some say it will again as as we enter this second round of the most hyper inflationary period in US History. You can purchase 1000 ounces of silver today for $14,000. As the dollar value falls you cash in the silver to make your house payments. If the economy goes like it did in 1980 that’s all the silver you need to purchase the note. But, make sure you buy the actual silver and keep it in your possession. The same technique can be applied with gold, of course.

Most financial people don’t want to get into these complexities. They want to keep things simple. They also know from experience that most people are overwhelmed with the details of everyday life and have limited time left over to tend to the financial aspects of their lives other than their job. You may also not be able to make your debt payments if you lose your job.

If you think you can manage all of the above variables then my advice would be to not payoff or accelerate the payoff of your fixed rate mortgage. If you have an ARM then this advice does not apply. In the case of an ARM you might want to consider a short sale while the climate is socially acceptable and you get the special tax break of not having to pay taxes on the amount that the bank let’s you off the hook.

If you have other long-term debts with an interest rate less than 7% (Student loans?) then you should probably not pay them off either. This is assuming you take the same approach as outlined above by purchasing other tangible assets that can be used to make future payments.

If you have long-term debts greater than 11% then you should pay them off despite the upcoming hyperinflation. Just getting free of the burden of these debts is enough incentive to pay them off. You’ll also be left with that much more resources to put towards the other 4-Steps of this plan.

Between 7 and 11% is the gray area and you’ll have to decide how well you can manage the complexities, above, in holding onto debt during periods of hyperinflation.

Move Out of All Investments Dependent on US Dollars

In 1944 we made an agreement with Saudi Arabia to provide military protection for them as long as they agreed to accept only US Dollars in exchange for oil. Since every country needs oil for energy, and many other things, every country had to start stockpiling large amounts of US Dollars to pay for their oil. This little known backdoor negotiation, along with the Bretton Woods Agreement in the same year, is how the US Dollar came to be the world’s predominant reserve currency.

Its important to understand the ramifications of the US Dollar being the world’s reserve currency in order to evaluate whether any given investment is dependant on the US Dollar. It gets even more complicated when other entire countries peg the value of their currency to the US Dollar. The effects of the good, bad and the ugly management of the US Dollar ends up getting exported to entire world in one way or another.

Because the US Dollar has a world effect unlike any other currency in the history of the world the US had the potential to effect the world in a very positive way. Unfortunately, the US defaulted on its international promise to exchange dollars for Gold in 1971.
This made every currency in the world into a fiat currency overnight. No longer tied to any objective value they have been freed to float at the whims of politicians, Central Banks, the World Bank and the IMF, ever since.

The history of fiat currencies, however, has proven that once a paper currency is not backed by any objective value the issuing government cannot resist the temptation to print more and more of them. Unfortunately, the US has been no exception to this historical rule. We did, however, manage to take the creation of US Dollars to a whole new level by skipping the difficulties of the printing press and going right to computer! And since other countries have to use Dollars to buy oil, and some even use US dollars as a backup or primary currency themselves, we’ve been able to get away with printing far and above the amount of paper dollars any country ever has before causing the currency to collapse.

As of 7/19/2008 the charts showing the value of the US Dollar against gold is remarkably similar to the charts of other countries just before they entered the final stages of hyperinflation. Here’s how it played out in Germany between 1919-1923:

What this means for moving out of any investment dependant on US Dollars is that almost nothing is safe. Conducting business during hyperinflation is very difficult and most US companies do not have the experience to manage the difficulties. To make matters worse, the individual equities of even the best run companies are psychologically tied to the broad market of all equities. When the broad market takes a hit so do all the rest, whether they deserve it or not. Therefore, even the stock of well run US companies is not a safe haven for your money.

Even moving US Dollars into another currency is dangerous because all the currencies of the world are fiat currencies. Although its the US and Zimbabwe in the news, lately, our mismanagement is already causing inflation around the globe as other countries continue to purchase our debt instead of investing the money into their own economies.

Bankruptcies and hyperinflation seem to be the plan for dealing with this crisis. Bankruptcies are the quickest way to deflate the amount of currency in circulation, either real or on the computer screen. And hyperinflation makes all of our debts much cheaper to pay off. What better way for the US to avoid defaulting on their unpayable debts then by paying them off with dollars made worthless through hyperinflation?

But, we don’t even get much of the benefit of the deflationary bankruptcies to balance out the inflation because the Fed conjures up however many billions of dollars necessary to ‘provide liquidity’ for failed large banks and mortgage lenders.

For all theses reasons I believe the only safe thing to do is to park your money in tangible commodities that preserve value. My personal favorite is silver, but, there is also oil, cotton, tobacco, sugar, wheat, copper, steel, gold, brass and anything else China and India need to keep their countries on the rise. If silver is your choice here’s how you can invest in silver.

The worst place to have money is in US Dollars, Checking or Savings accounts, CD’s, US Equities or indexes, T-bills or bonds.

Move All but 3-Months of Expenses Out of Banks Into Tangible & Liquid Assets

When you get a dollar in your hands that you don’t need for the next three months of expenses spend it on something of real value as fast as possible. Pay a bill, pay off a high interest debt, see if you can pay monthly bills in advance for the whole year, upgrade your slow computer and maybe even purchase food items with a long shelf life. When you’ve done all that and you still have money left over then its time to purchase more well known tangible assets.

I can only recommend Silver and Gold to fill this role because I have direct experience with them. The process is difficult enough without complicating it further by trading in and out of commodity stocks and keeping track of the tax ramifications. With silver or gold you can trade in and trade out as much as you need, almost anywhere, with no tax problems to worry about. The VAT makes it difficult to do this in the UK although I’ve read that you get it back upon selling.

If you have a 401K you can’t withdrawal without penalties then consider investing in a commodities ETF, Agricultural index, Natural resources and anything else that mankind requires and cannot do without like cotton, sugar, wheat, steel, iron, brass, silver, gold, corn, etc. If your 401K is limited in its options to invest then you have limited options to protect it.

Decrease Your Monthly Overhead As Much As Possible

Any extra money you have right now should go into purchasing tangible commodities that can preserve current value for when the US Dollar collapses. Therefore, any unnecessary monthly expenses should be cut back or stopped completely. Here’s a beginning list of things to get rid of:

Cable channel subscriptions you don’t watch
Internet subscriptions you don’t benefit from
Expensive Coffee
Excess minute plans for your cellular phone
Consider dropping phone land lines, altogether
Magazine subscriptions you don’t read
Eating out too often
Drinking out too often
Going to the movies when you can rent a DVD
Over insuring your house, car, health, life
Driving too far from home or work for errands or services
Overusing the A/C or Heater when fans, windows or firewood would do
Work at home a few days a week to cut down commuting time & money

Any money you save could go towards paying down debt. If you’re out of debt then consider taking the money saved and purchase silver coins at your local coin shop.

Get Rid of All Physical Objects You Don’t Need

Anything you own that you don’t need or use is a drain on your limited resources of time, effort, money, space, insurance, storage fees., etc. Your life will improve whenever you get rid of things you don’t need, now more than ever

Clean out the garage
Sell, donate or throw out the items in the garage you don’t need
Sell any cars you don’t use or need.
Hire a student or family member to put items on ebay and manage the sale
Donate items to others that are too bulky to sell