Back to the Futures
By Gordon Philips, Director of Trading and Research
Institute of Higher Earning
Today we risk a breach of competition lawsuit from Shirley MacLaine and
attempt to predict the future.
You've heard of time capsules where artifacts from the present are sealed
for opening by people from the future. Phrased that way, it almost sounds
like science fiction, doesn't it?
Mystics tell us that time is an illusion, a human contrivance; that time has
no beginning and no end. Oh, yeah? Try telling that to my sagging derriere.
In a recent laboratory experiment physicists caused light to move backwards.
If light can move backwards, then perhaps time can move backwards as well
and we can finally know what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.
In the back of each month's edition of Wired magazine is a feature called
'Artifacts From The Future.' Here is a practical application I can already
envision: a limited-duration time travel device to assist spatially
challenged drivers in backing up a car. They would simply switch the device
on, wait 10 seconds (while adjusting their hair) then drive forward. Sorry.
I enjoy predicting the future, but find it much easier to predict the past
where my track record approaches 100%.
My future prediction rate has been close to 100% as well, it's just that
some of the things I predicted haven't happened yet. See? I'm using that
device already.
Based on all that has happened over the past 200 years, here are some
predictions for the next 100 years that I will place in an envelope and give
to my children to open one day, long after I am pushing up begonias.
These predictions are not meant to be pessimistic. They merely extrapolate
recent and current trends into the future as I see them developing.
POLISHING MY CRYSTAL BALL
- The prices of gold and silver will go into orbit.
- Gold and silver bullion (excepting numismatic coins trading at at least
twice spot) will once again be confiscated by the U.S. government.
- The so-called 'War On Terrorism' will last at least another generation. A
future stage of this 'war' will include acts of terrorism on U.S. soil,
including suicide bombings.
- America will once again openly use a nuclear weapon against a declared
enemy.
- A military draft will be reinstated and will include women.
- The America Empire will go the route of the British Empire.
- The 21st Century will close with China running the show.
- All forms of alternative, free market money will be criminalized and
eliminated.
- Metal detectors (and/or facial recognition scanners) will be in place at
most shopping centers and public schools.
- The United States economy will purge the credit excesses of the past 50
years by passing through the 'Fall' and 'Winter' phases of the Kontradiev
Cycle.
- Unfunded entitlement programs and an escalating war economy will cause the
dollar to collapse.
- Paper money will be eliminated, outlawed and replaced by mandatory debit
and credit cards.
- A rough coalition of China, Russia and various Islamic nations will unite
to confront the U.S. militarily.
- Islam will overspread the world and Christianity will go underground once
again.
- The filing of IRS income tax forms will be eliminated and replaced by an RFID-based system that extracts an excise tax from even the smallest
transactions, at the point of retail purchase, in real-time.
- A national financial account will be required of each citizen. It will
probably be called the 'USA FREEDOM ACCOUNT' or something similar, and sold
to the public as a necessity in order to combat financial terrorism. The
account will consolidate all checking, savings, CD's, trading, IRA, 401(k),
investment and other financial accounts into a single, master account (or at
least you will have to login to this account first, prior to accessing your
other, individual accounts). The government will use this account from which
to deduct unpaid child support, taxes, fines, fees and other penalties.
- Many nutritional supplements will be outlawed (as alcohol and hemp
variously have been).
- The airline industry will be consolidated into a single quasi-governmental
entity similar to Amtrak.
- A license will be required to own a domain name and operate a web site.
- Web sites questioning the official version of reality will not be granted
a license.
- Positive biometric identification will be required for any user to logon
to the Internet.
- U.S. citizens will be required by law to carry at all times a federally
approved identification card.
- At least one state (California? New Jersey?) will establish border 'check
points' and require anyone passing in or out of the state to 'show your
papers.'
AND NOW FOR THE INVESTOR ANGLE
If unstoppable social and political forces should cause gold and silver to
go straight up and the U.S. paper dollar to go straight down, what will you
do? Suffer, or profit?
First, we should probably address my presumptive use of the term
'unstoppable'.
A cursory examination of history teaches us that the public never bands
together to resist the forces that oppress them until it is too late. Not
only do they not resist their oppression, they actually enable it with
voluntary donations of their own labor (taxes).
Etienne de Boetie attempted to warn the world of this tendency in 1552 in
'The Politics of Disobedience,' a landmark essay that has not become
required reading in the public schools.
A few hundred years later in 1849 Henry David Thoreau followed with 'Civil
Disobedience,' another watershed piece that just about nobody has read,
either.
You could add to this rarified list the writings of Lysander Spooner, Ayn
Rand, H. L. Mencken and others, all of whom thought just a little too much
for their own good.
When oppression becomes intolerable a revolution erupts, freedom breaks out
all over (for a little while, anyway) and the pointer on the Freedom Wheel
points straight up to 'Liberty.'
As time inexorably passes and the wheel turns, the pointer points in
succession to Prosperity, Abundance, Satisfaction, Complacency, Sloth,
Amorality, Slavery and finally back to Revolution, when the lid blows off
and (Boing!) the pointer stands straight up once again. Vive la Liberté!
But that's probably a ways off from now. All of which reminds us of the joke
about the farmer who went to visit his friend. They sat down to rock
together on the front porch with an old yellow dog lying between them.
Every once in a while that old coon dog would raise its head and go 'Ow-ooo!
Ow-oooooo!' This went on for a while until the friend asked, 'Why in
tarnation does he keep doing that?'
The farmer answered, 'Well, you see, there's a nail sticking up through that
porch and Old Yeller's laying right on top of that nail. It's not sticking
up far enough to make him get up and move, so every once in a while he just
lets out a yowl.'
So our premise is that until things become unbearable the current course of
history will 'stay the course' and the kind of dystopic 'Clockwork Orange'
world in which the above predicted conditions could exist will probably
evolve.
If you believe as I do that all this is not only possible but likely, what
do you do to protect your children, even if it's too late to do much to
protect yourself,
perhaps due to age or economic circumstances?
The answers are simple. Invest in (BUY) those things whose prices will rise
dramatically as the result of the inevitable actions of governments (and the
people who feed them), and SELL those things whose prices will fall
precipitously for the same reasons.
Once this decision has been made, a portfolio must be created with proper
diversification between paper denominated assets (such as gold mining
stocks), and physical assets (i.e., the real thing, like gold coins), as
well as diversification between domestic and international stocks, etc.
Question: If you're surfing in the ocean and a 100 foot high financial
'rogue' wave approaches, what do you do? Hold your breath and dive down deep
(along with your portfolio)? Stay still and pray for a government
helicopter?
The best bet would probably be to get on your silver surfboard, oil it up
and ride it in. When you get home, don't forget to make sure your children
learn Chinese.
