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He probably means protection against hyper inflation. Any advice for that?
by tocomment 18y ago
He probably means protection against hyper inflation. Any advice for that?
- nostrademons 18y agoGuns & gold. You want enough gold to bribe your way out of the country, and enough guns to ensure that the relevant people take the bribe. Hyperinflation almost always leads to political unrest, rioting, the fall of the current political regime, and usually war. There's no defense against that: somebody will break into your house, kill you, and take everything you own anyway. So if you honestly believe hyperinflation is going to occur, get the hell out of dodge and quit worrying about your finances. This, BTW, is why I don't think hyperinflation will occur. Since it always leads to the toppling of the entrenched power elite, and the entrenched power elite tends to do anything in their power to stay in power, they'll make sure it doesn't happen. Looking at history, every instance of hyperinflation I could find resulted from one of two conditions: 1. There was a large standing army who hadn't been paid in a while and was getting antsy. Or, alternatively, a large rebel group that forcibly appropriated resources from the citizenry and was getting antsy. (Rome 476, Spain 1588, U.S. 1789, Confederate U.S 1865, Hungary 1946, ROC 1949, USSR 1992, Ukraine 1993) 2. There is a large foreign debt, denominated in foreign currency, that the nation can't pay back. (Weimar Germany 1921, Argentina 1989, Argentina 2001.) In both of these cases, the government is going to fall anyway. If you don't pay the army, they have guns, they come in, and they oust you. If you don't pay your foreign creditors, they have guns, they come in, and they oust you. Printing money is a way to buy time; it never works in the long run, but between dying now and dying later, most elites would rather die later. The U.S. is not in either of these situations, though the rise of private security forces (Blackstone) is worrying, as is their addiction to debt. If the U.S. doesn't get its spending habits under control, it's just a matter of time before it starts borrowing in RMB or Yen, and then an ordinary garden-variety inflation isn't enough to erase its debt.