page-loading-spinner

Bank

by charleshughsmith

Executive Summary

  • Is it better to hold cash in savings/checking accounts, or securities accounts?
  • Where will the dollar likely from here?
  • What will likely happen with retirement accounts?
  • Ways to diversify your cash risk

If you have not yet read Part 1: The Cardinal Sin Of Investing: Permanent Impairment Of Capital available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The Role Of Cash In The Informal Economy

In stagnating formal economies burdened by over-regulation, high taxes and financialization, one of the few bright spots for employment and entrepreneurism is the informal or cash economy.  The more stultified and elite-dominated the economy, the larger and more vibrant the informal economy.  In some highly regulated, high-tax European nations, up to 30% of the economic activity is underground/cash.

The elimination of central bank currency will not eliminate the informal economy. Rather, the participants in this sector will adopt non-central bank issued forms of cash—precious metals, coins, other nations’ paper money, perhaps even digital currencies such as bitcoin or its gold-linked cousins (Bitgold, etc.)

Those with little income often do not have bank accounts, as the fees are costly. Eliminating cash will hit the poor who earn money in the informal economy especially hard. Though the poor are essentially powerless in our influence-is-auctioned-to-the-highest-bidder system, this could change once the working poor who benefit from the cash economy are pushed even deeper into poverty by the banning of cash.

That might spark…

Smart Strategies For Building & Managing Your Cash Savings
PREVIEW by charleshughsmith

Executive Summary

  • Is it better to hold cash in savings/checking accounts, or securities accounts?
  • Where will the dollar likely from here?
  • What will likely happen with retirement accounts?
  • Ways to diversify your cash risk

If you have not yet read Part 1: The Cardinal Sin Of Investing: Permanent Impairment Of Capital available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

The Role Of Cash In The Informal Economy

In stagnating formal economies burdened by over-regulation, high taxes and financialization, one of the few bright spots for employment and entrepreneurism is the informal or cash economy.  The more stultified and elite-dominated the economy, the larger and more vibrant the informal economy.  In some highly regulated, high-tax European nations, up to 30% of the economic activity is underground/cash.

The elimination of central bank currency will not eliminate the informal economy. Rather, the participants in this sector will adopt non-central bank issued forms of cash—precious metals, coins, other nations’ paper money, perhaps even digital currencies such as bitcoin or its gold-linked cousins (Bitgold, etc.)

Those with little income often do not have bank accounts, as the fees are costly. Eliminating cash will hit the poor who earn money in the informal economy especially hard. Though the poor are essentially powerless in our influence-is-auctioned-to-the-highest-bidder system, this could change once the working poor who benefit from the cash economy are pushed even deeper into poverty by the banning of cash.

That might spark…

by Chris Martenson

The title of this piece is The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing.  The subtitle is Why Your Bread Is Going to Cost More.  I connect these two in reflecting on my recent podcast with David Collum, in which he stated that our money has no value and that this fact is distorting everything.

What he meant was, if you take your money to the bank to deposit it, the bank offers no interest on that money, implying that money has no value to them.  If they valued it or had a legitimate use for it, they would offer you something for its use.  Obviously, money doesn't have zero value to the banks; they can place it on deposit with the Fed for 0.25% yearly interest.  But by any historical measure, money has no value right now.

That's just what happens when any commodity – which money happens to be – becomes too abundant.  It drops in price.  What 0% rates on money tell us is that there's just an enormous amount of it sloshing around – and that, my dear friends, distorts everything else.

As I have said many times, when you misprice money itself, everything else becomes mispriced, too. 

The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing
PREVIEW by Chris Martenson

The title of this piece is The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing.  The subtitle is Why Your Bread Is Going to Cost More.  I connect these two in reflecting on my recent podcast with David Collum, in which he stated that our money has no value and that this fact is distorting everything.

What he meant was, if you take your money to the bank to deposit it, the bank offers no interest on that money, implying that money has no value to them.  If they valued it or had a legitimate use for it, they would offer you something for its use.  Obviously, money doesn't have zero value to the banks; they can place it on deposit with the Fed for 0.25% yearly interest.  But by any historical measure, money has no value right now.

That's just what happens when any commodity – which money happens to be – becomes too abundant.  It drops in price.  What 0% rates on money tell us is that there's just an enormous amount of it sloshing around – and that, my dear friends, distorts everything else.

As I have said many times, when you misprice money itself, everything else becomes mispriced, too. 

Total 3 items