Tag: alternative financial blog

Saving

submitted by jwithrow.Fishing Boat

We have been hearing all about how most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and not saving any money as justification for the brilliant (*cough*) myRA government savings plans so we felt that it would be prudent to take a deeper look at what ‘saving’ is.

You see, we don’t think that saving is about money. Money is involved, but it is not the focus. Saving is really about storing our productive efforts.

It goes back to the days of barter…

Back then the fisherman would catch extra fish in the morning and take them to the market in the afternoon to trade his extra fish with the farmer for vegetables. His wife liked to have vegetables with her fish for supper so he had to trade for vegetables instead of the painted rock that he really liked.

The fisherman had learned that fish would start to smell bad the day after being caught so he had no choice but to trade all of his extra fish every afternoon and go fishing for more again every morning.

Until the fisherman discovered gold. Then the fisherman could trade his extra fish for gold and take the next day off. The fisherman didn’t really care about amassing gold; he just figured out that gold would let him store his production so he didn’t have to go fishing every single day to feed his family. And it turned out that three day old gold smelled much better than three day old fish – this was a bonus.

So saving was born!

Somewhere along the line we forgot this and started to think that saving was about amassing money. And on top of that we started to think that money was paper and not gold. We are so forgetful!

So when saving became about money and not about production we opened the door to debt. We started to think that instead of saving we could just borrow whatever money we needed. After all, the credit money still bought stuff just like the saved money except we didn’t have to wait to use it!

But then when we had to start using our entire paycheck to pay back all of the credit money we found out that we had to be even more productive now than before we went into debt. Our plan backfired.

We didn’t learn from our smart fisherman ancestor and now we had to go fishing both in the morning and in the afternoon to have enough fish for our supper and also enough to trade for vegetables so our wife won’t get mad and also enough to give to the banker to pay him back for the credit money that bought us the really neat painted rock.

Darn painted rocks.

Why We Don’t Yet Live in the “World of Tomorrow”

By Paul Rosenberg,

physics

The following is a quote from a digital currency mailing list, posted at some time in the late 90s or early 2000s:

Consider that up to say 1970, people invented and developed Major Shit left, right and center. Jets, spacecraft, fiber, chips, laser… plastic… satellites… it goes on and on.

In contrast, the world’s done Absolutely Nothing for a good 20 years – at best, refinement. (“TV now has OVER 100 channels! and MORE PIXELS.”)

Indeed we presently live in a time of sort of… fantasy inventions. “Nanotech!” “Robots!” etc — all fantastic on paper, but totally nonexistent.

However flamboyant, this statement is true. Since 1970, there have been very few primary inventions. What we do have are mere improvements.

The Laws of Physics Are Old

Physics has gone almost nowhere since the 1960s. Here’s a short list of developments in physics:

Gravity: The laws were defined by Galileo and Newton in the 17thcentury.

Planetary motion: Defined by Kepler in 1609 and 1619.

Mechanics: The base laws were defined by Newton in the 17th century. Other specific laws were understood as far back as ancient times.

Gasses: Boyle defined his law of gasses in 1662.

Hydraulics: The laws and uses were developed between the 17th and 19th centuries.

Electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell defined these laws in 1865.

Relativity: Galileo defined the first laws of relativity in the 17th century; then Einstein defined new ones in 1905 and 1915.

Quantum mechanics: Einstein expanded upon the work of Max Planck and defined the quantum effect in 1905.

Atomic theory: The modern model of the atom was clarified by Neils Bohr in 1913.

Superconductors: Superconductivity was discovered by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 and clarified by Fritz and Heinz London in 1935.

Quantum electrodynamics: Defined by Feynman, Tomonaga, and Schwinger in about 1962.

And what has physics done since then? Not a lot. Most visibly, physicists argue about theories that require twenty six dimensions and smash subatomic particles together.

In other words, physics has turned into a major yawn. Even the few exciting developments we have seen, such as cold fusion and high temperature superconductors, have gone nowhere. And exciting inventions like 3D printing, public cryptography, and cryptocurrencies have not only come from outsiders, but have been attacked by institutions.

Consider the major inventions that erupted between 1870 and 1970: railroads, telegraph, telephones, electricity, radio, TV, airplanes, cars, rockets, spacecraft, plastics, fiber optics, etc., etc., etc.

In the forty three years since – nearly half that time-span – what did we get?

That’s right: louder speakers, more pixels, and smaller screens.

So… either science has been hobbled or we’ve already discovered almost everything.

The Prison of Science

Since I don’t for a moment believe that we’ve discovered all that can be known, the obvious conclusion is that physics is being held in a sort of stasis.

My argument has been this:

Institutions are oppositional to individual will, and individual will is the only thing that creates breakthroughs in science.

Albert Einstein agrees with me, by the way. See this:

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.

And this:

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.

And this:

Great spirits have always been violently oppressed by mediocre minds.

Within an institution, a scientist must either please the authorities or see his work jettisoned. And scientific grants always have to please authorities.

So, who are these “authorities”? They would certainly include government bureaucrats, but the authorities that really matter here are older scientists who have given themselves over to institutional politics. These are the more common oppressors of new and different ideas.

There’s an old joke that reflects this:

Q: How does physics progress?

A: One funeral at a time.

The oppressors of new scientific theories are entrenched in scientific institutions. From there, they either allow or disallow almost every research project. And anyone who is not part of those institutions is ridiculed, excluded, and ignored.

It was farm boys, outsiders, and self-educated people who invented radio, television, the airplane, the electric light, the telegraph, the phonograph, the automobile, radar, and much more.

The creations of institutional science have been considerably less impressive. And those advances generally required the inventors to suffer along the way. Young Albert Einstein, after all, was rejected by all the institutions of his time. He made his great discoveries while working as a mere patent clerk.

God only knows how many wonderful things have been lost to institutional politics.

All of this is not because of “certain bad people” – institutional power turns good people into bad people. (Ask a grad student.)

Is There an Answer?

Sure there is! The same thing that worked in the 19th century: the separation of science and institution.

If you believe the line coming from today’s universities, you’d think that nothing scientific could exist without them. But to believe that, you’ll have to pretend that the previous, non-institutional era never happened.

But it did happen, and the pre-institution era of science produced far more basic discoveries than the institutional era.

We may have been indoctrinated by these institutions, but that has nothing to do with truth.

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

The Economy Can Never Fully Recover as Long as This Remains…

By Paul Rosenberg,

government regulations and business

When I was a young man, the older men I admired were the independent businessmen. Being a corporate suit issuing orders to underlings never appealed to me, but being a successful man who controlled his own life and business… that did.

Perhaps as a result, most of my friends are independent business people of one sort or another. Not long ago, I had a notable conversation with one of them, during which he said:

You know, Paul, business used to be fun. I’d take my children around and show them what we were doing, and explain the differences we’d make.

I waited just a beat as he winced and then continued:

Now, I don’t want to drag my kids into my business. Every time I move, there are regulations, permissions, forms to file. It takes up most of my time, for nothing. Business isn’t fun anymore. If I could find something else, I’d get out.

And this is a man who has been in his business since childhood, who loves to tell stories about it, and who used to enjoy his work immensely. If this guy is looking for the exit, the problem is dire.

It’s pretty obvious why

I have limited faith in government statistics, but there are a few informative ones on this subject:

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) recently reported that the annual cost of complying with government regulations is more than one trillion dollars per year and has been since 2005.

It goes on to report that big businesses (500+ employees), pay about $7,550 per employee to comply with the regulations. Small businesses, on the other hand (up to 20 employees) pay about $10,600 for every person they employ. And this is just one reason why small, independent businesses are being swallowed up by giant corporations.

Also bear in mind that this is just the cost of compliance with federal regulations. States also impose regulations on businesses. So do most of the county and city governments, especially large city governments.

New rules are produced constantly, and the cost of compliance rises constantly. In the US (and many other places), the cost of doing business has long since become prohibitive.

The Work-Arounds

Clever folks always find ways to get around this insanity, of course. But those ways are extra work and probably help relatively few people.

#1: They get rid of their employees

They find niches in their fields that allow them to escape the endless paperwork, penalties, and senselessly wasted time that comes with being an employer. (If you’ve ever had employees, you know what I mean.)

And what of the workers? Well, some get hired by the few related-industry employers that remain, while others have to take a mind-numbing mid-level corporate job just to pay the bills or get insurance. The rest are living on food stamps, disability, or a dozen other welfare programs.

#2: They go offshore

If your business is not resident where the regulators are, they usually can’t say anything about it.

Not many business people have moved abroad, but lots of them have set up offshore companies and are conducting business on the Internet. These people get their lives back… if they can find a way to make it work.

That is the dirty little secret of offshore companies, by the way: It’s not about escaping taxes; it’s about escaping all that ridiculous, insulting, pointless paperwork. No more spending days crunching numbers at tax time, no filing new reports every time you do something. You just take care of your customers and deliver good product. (Which ought to be enough.)

#3: They pay politicians for protection

Why would anyone donate thousands of dollars to a politician unless they expected to get something in return?

Big businesses pay politicians so that they can make a phone call to get problems that arise fixed. Small businesses can’t afford that, and most small business owners have moral problems with bribery.

Legit Is Dead

Unfortunately, the old “American way” of working hard, conducting honest business, and succeeding is gone, dead, and buried. It may still happen from time to time, but infrequently and off the beaten path.

Not long ago, I found this sign posted on a streetlight in Chicago:

business and government regulations

The sign is right – the old “legit” way of doing business is dead. If you want to get ahead these days, you either try to play a game that is rigged against you, you pay politicians to bend the rules for you, or you avoid the situation entirely.

It seems that the best and brightest – the would-be drivers of the economy – are choosing the last option.

What does that say about where things are going?

Paul Rosenberg

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Click here to get your free copy.]

Non-Profit Skepticism

submitted by jwithrow.501c3 Stamp

We think that the idea of non-profit organizations, as the 501(c) code exists, is un-American.

Hold on! Hear us out on this one before you call us heartless capitalists – we have a good reason. Actually several reasons.

The non-profit structure as it currently exists violates the equality under law principle upon which America was founded. 501(c) organizations receive favorable treatment by law relative to for-profit organizations.

But the American vision of limited government was such that it should protect equality under law rather than promote inequality by law. Equal opportunity as we used to say.

Additionally, the 501(c) structure reinforces Marxist principles in the minds of Americans in a very devious way. This we really don’t like.

The Marxist ideology is opposed to profit because it violates their “from each according to ability, to each according to need” credo.

In granting favorable status to non-profit organizations the government is actually supporting the belief that non-profits are more desirable than for-profit organizations. Think about it – why else would 501(c)’s be granted privileges if they weren’t seen as deserving of such favoritism? So in a sneaky kind of way this sows the seeds of Marxism by silently stating that the profit motive is not to be commended while the non-profit motive is superior ideology.

Which brings us to our last point:

The whole non-profit part of 501(c) organizations is fraudulent!

Sure, the organization itself does not show a profit but have you ever looked at the executive salaries at these “non-profit” organizations?

We have.

They are systematically much higher than average wages. MUCH higher.

Sure looks like profit to us.

Now there are some very good non-profit organizations out there. We have donated to some good ones that we knew were good because we knew the people running the show and we could see the charitable work being done. But most of the giant non-profits are frauds and we would steer clear of them. A good rule of thumb is that if a non-profit has a commercial on television then it is probably not worthy of your attention. Otherwise it wouldn’t need a commercial on television.

Also, don’t get us wrong, we like the fact that non-profits are tax-exempt. The less money appropriated by the Feds the better, in our opinion.

But we think that a much better idea would be to get rid of the corporate income tax altogether. Then you wouldn’t have a need for special non-profit treatment. And you might even notice some jobs sneaking back into America also – as long as the corporate income tax was repealed and replaced with nothing.

Of course this is just our humble opinion. Maybe the bureaucrats know better than we do.

Forget the Interest Rate – It’s the Quantity of Interest That Matters

submitted by jwithrow.Mastering Interest

Financial success is all about understanding and mastering interest. You see, there are only three choices when it comes to financial matters:

  • Pay interest
  • Receive interest
  • Forego interest

That’s it.

All you must do to get ahead financially is to arrange your financial affairs such that more interest is coming in than going out.

It is the quantity of interest that’s important. This concept is not often discussed so most folks focus exclusively on the rate of interest instead.

3.5% for a mortgage? This is a great rate!

2.87% for a vehicle loan? We’ll take two!

.05% on a savings account? Well, we suppose something is better than nothing.

So the average person pays interest for their house and their cars and they forego interest when they buy their groceries and pursue entertainment. The interest that they do receive is negligible in comparison because they offer whatever capital they have leftover after expenses for a pittance.

So what’s the common man to do?

CNBC will say that the stock market is the only way to go.

What they will not tell you is that the stock market is ripe with risk. Getting into the stock market requires you to give up control of your capital and place it 100% at risk. All the while you have the hedge fund high frequency trading machines and the Wall Street insiders chomping at the bit to take your capital from you.

These forces are focused on the stock market every minute of every day, not just during business hours.
If you have the same amount of time and energy as well as access to the same amount of information as the insiders then you may be able to play the stock market and come out ahead in real terms.

We think that it is much more likely that you will only come out ahead in nominal terms at best if you come out ahead at all.

We think it a far better strategy to capitalize an IBC policy and then focus on employing that capital to develop sustainable sources of income.

The IBC policy ensures that your capital is generating a little bit of interest no matter what happens and your employment of that capital can be used to significantly increase the amount of interest coming in.

After all, what good is a 3.5% mortgage if you are not generating at least 3.6% in interest income consistently?

You see, interest rates are not terribly important – it is mastering the control of interest in vs. interest out that is truly the name of the game.

The Stock Market Deception

submitted by jwithrow.GW Paper Money

The stock market is comprised of numerous exchanges through which buyers and sellers can trade securities. The New York Stock Exchange is the world’s largest stock exchange followed by the NASDAQ. The Tokyo Stock Exchange and the London Stock Exchange are third and fourth in terms of market capitalization.

As we mentioned, the exchanges enable buyers and sellers to trade securities with one another.

We repeat this statement to emphasize the next one:

The exchanges are not where businesses raise capital unless an initial public offering (IPO) is taking place.

We think it is important to recognize this fact.

The vast majority of trades on a stock exchange are simply speculative – there is very little productive activity taking place. Even IPOs are usually not terribly productive as the intent is often not to raise capital for business operation but rather to enrich the owners and private investors.

So if most trades are just speculation then why do we view the stock market as a gauge of economic health? Why do we assume that the underlying economy is good when stock prices go up?

We do not assume that the economy is good when corn or oil prices go up. But corn and oil contracts are also traded on futures exchanges and there are speculators who profit when their price rises.

Conversely, why do we assume that the underlying economy is bad when stock prices go down?

Nothing real is destroyed when stock prices fall. Buildings don’t collapse. Equipment doesn’t break. Goods don’t go up in smoke. Engineers don’t lose their knowledge.

Maybe there was a time when stock prices somewhat reflected the financial health of individual companies, but those days are long gone. With mark to unicorn accounting, leveraged stock buy-backs, and all other manner of financial wizardry, CEO’s can and do manipulate stock prices regularly.

Additionally, the Federal Reserve has spent the past three decades ensuring that liquidity flows directly into the stock market so that equity prices continuously rise in unison over time.

The point is that there is a huge disconnect between the stock market and the productive sector that mainstream finance pays no attention to. In fact, mainstream finance has convinced most people that speculating in the stock market is the _only_ way to invest for retirement.

There may be a place for stocks within your asset allocation model, but it is important to recognize the stock market deception for what it is and understand the game you are playing if you do delve into the market. I would highly recommend enlisting the services of independent financial analysts if you do allocate some of your capital to the financial markets.

As we have touched on in a number of other essays here at Zenconomics, financial planning should be comprehensive and diversified according to your own unique circumstances. Simply amassing paper equities denominated in fiat currency is a very fragile plan.

As Nelson Nash says: “If you know what’s going on, you’ll know what to do.”

Be wary of the stock market deception and plan accordingly.

**Want more information on how to build a sustainable financial plan? Are you ready to turbo-charge your retirement portfolio? Do you yearn to exit the rat-race? Is financial freedom calling to your spirit?

Do not take a backseat when it comes to your own finances. Learn everything you need to know to master your finances in 30 days by enrolling in Finance for Freedom today!

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out – A Modern Interpretation by Paul Rosenberg

 By Paul Rosenberg, FreemansPerspective.com

This was a big phrase in the 1960s, as young people turned away from
the corporate conformity of the 1950s and decided that they wanted more
out of life than being an adequately-fed cog in a big machine.

Let’s be honest and admit that the modern corporate script involves
selling your own wishes and dreams for paychecks. I know that a lot of us have played along with it because of necessity, but this is not a way of life to cling to, it’s a way of life to escape.

You are meant to live your life. Yes, I know it can seem hard, but
it’s the only life that’s really worth living. You have to give meaning
to your life, and you’ll never get it by following the televised script and hoping for pats on the back from the people who are playing along with you.

This life you have is precious. Human beings are engines of creation;
we are able to imagine and to turn our imaginations into reality. And we
are capable of supercharging our creative abilities by sharing our lives
and loves with other people. We are astonishingly capable creatures.

Don’t waste all your life’s abilities in a corporate cubicle. You’ve
already seen how that goes: Work excessive hours, go home tired, watch
TV, sleep, and start over. Your kids end up in mini corporate worlds
called “schools,” where they are taught to sit, be quiet, obey, and turn
off their internal desires and loves. If you play that game you’ll miss
most of your life in the process, as well as most of your children’s
lives.

Once you get some corporate inertia going, it is all too easy to get
sucked into it permanently. Don’t let that happen to you.

So, here’s my modern (and slightly adjusted) interpretation –
Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out:

Tune In

Wake up and see the world as it is. Turn off the
talking heads on TV and get to know the real world. Stop spending all
your brain cycles on celebrities, sports heroes and gossip hounds – get
to know your neighbor and the old woman who lives around the corner,
strike up a friendship with someone on the other side of the world. Travel. Spend your time with real people; get to know them, and reveal yourself to them. It only seems weird because the people who programmed you didn’t want you to think freely.

Do you think I am being dramatic by referring to “the people who
programmed you”? If so, read this:

Education should aim at destroying free will so that
after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished.

That was from the highly esteemed Bertrand Russel, by the way, and
I’ve got plenty more of them. Take this seriously, because your
programmers have been.

Tune in to yourself rather than your programming: What do you really
want? Most people can list a dozen things that bother them, but not a
single thing that they really want. This is a problem. Find out what you
want. What do you love? What do you want to work for?

Do you remember all those times in the Bible where Jesus berates
people for being “hypocrites”? Well, the real word he used was actors –
as in stage actors. And whether you are religious or not, this is
crucial: Stop acting in someone else’s play. Take off all the masks and
find yourself.

Turn On

Start doing what you love. Don’t wait for someone else, do it
yourself. Start helping your friends and neighbors, spend serious time
with your children – not at a game or a party, but just you and them,
talking. Find out what they love. Tell them what you love, what you are
proud of, what you regret. Tell them you love them. Tell them things you
don’t tell your friends. Let them know you.

Start living, not merely existing. DO the things you feel an urge to
do. And don’t fall into the usual trap of “what if I make a mistake?”
That’s simply fear-based conditioning. Resist it. Do what you love, and
in so doing, you will turn yourself on.

Are you going to go through your whole life and never follow your own
wishes, always sacrificing them to the tyranny of other peoples’
opinions? Please don’t do that to yourself – you’ll suffer greatly for
it when you’re old.

Screw all the expectations and turn on – act on your own will.

Drop Out

Stop wasting your time and energy on governments and arguments and
politics. Drop out of their mindset and start reclaiming all those
wasted hours. Lying politicians are simply not worth your devotion. Drop
the endless party fights and stop arguing about them. Politics is ugly,
and politics on the brain makes us ugly.

Stop paying attention to the hundreds of ads you see every day – they
are scientifically designed to grab your thoughts. Turn away. Stop
buying trendy things, and definitely stop buying things for the purpose
of impressing other people.

Stop trying to fit in, and stop living according to other people’s
expectations. Let them call you weird. Let them talk about you. Stop
caring about it. If they were real friends, they wouldn’t treat you like
that. So if they are willing to call you names, you’re better off
dropping them now.

Don’t fight the system – that just keeps all of your energy and
attention focused on them. Forsake the system and start creating a
better life for yourself, the people you love and the people you
respect. Stop giving all your life’s energy to a barbaric system of
force and manipulation.

Let the system go; all of it. Move on and let it rot where it sits.

But We Need A Plan!

No, you don’t. You need a life!

Let go of the plan addiction. Life is organic, not mechanical.

First of all, you need to identify what you want to create with the
precious life you’ve been given. Not what you want to stop, but what you
want to make.

If you’ve never been told to do this before it may seem hard, but you
can do it if you try.

Don’t sit and wait. Stop talking and start doing.

ACT! NOW!

[Editor’s Note: Paul Rosenberg is the
outside-the-Matrix author of FreemansPerspective.com, a site dedicated to economic freedom, personal independence and privacy. He is also the
author of The Great Calendar, a report that breaks down our
complex world into an easy-to-understand model. Visit his site to get your free copy.]

Avoiding the Identity Trap

submitted by jwithrow.Identity Trap

The identity trap is the belief that you need to conform to what others think that you should be. It is when you feel the need to speak or act a certain way because other people think that you should speak or act that way. It is when you participate in an event or join an organization because others expect you to do so.

While these other people who expect you to conform to certain expectations are typically well-intentioned, you are doing yourself a disservice if you allow yourself to be pressured into the identity trap. Your life will not be harmonious if you are not true to your own inner self.

People, often subconsciously, do not see others as individuals but rather they see others as members of a particular group. They then assume that the other person holds all of the associated group’s beliefs and traits and thus they expect the other person to speak and act accordingly. But everyone is a unique individual and groups are comprised of individuals.

Individuals have a responsibility to themselves to do what they think is right at all times. Individuals have a responsibility to stay true to their beliefs and principles. Individuals do not have a responsibility to put on a façade because other people expect them to be something other than themselves. Falling into and remaining stuck in the identity trap is an impediment to your personal freedom. You can never be free if you must pretend to be something that you are not.

Harry Browne, in How I Found Freedom In An Unfree World, laid out four specific principles to recognize in order to avoid the identity trap. They are as follows:

1. You are a unique individual — different from all other human beings. No one else has the exact same nature that you have; no one else reacts to things in exactly the way you do. No one else sees the world exactly as you do. No one can dictate what your identity should be; you are the best qualified person to discover what it is.

2. Each individual is acting from his own knowledge in ways he believes will bring him happiness. He acts to produce the consequences he thinks will make him feel better.

3. You have to treat things and people in accordance with their own identities in order to get what you want from them. You don’t expect a stone to be a fish. And it’s just as unrealistic to expect one person to act as someone else does. You don’t control the identities of people, but you can control how you deal with them.

4. You view the world subjectively — colored by your own experience, interpretation, and limits of perception. It isn’t essential that you know the final truth about everything in the world; and you don’t have the resources to discover it.

Avoid the identity trap and realize your true individual potential.

MyRA-QE Taper Connection

submitted by jwithrow.Government Help

We have a question for you:

Is it a coincidence that the government has introduced the “myRA” plans just as the Federal Reserve has begun to taper its quantitative easing programs?

Let’s think this thing through for a minute.

We know:

  • China is now a net-seller of U.S. Treasuries so the Federal Reserve has had to step in and purchase U.S. Treasury Bonds in increasing quantities to support government spending.
  • The average American saves for retirement in a qualified retirement plan focusing primarily on mutual funds, exchange traded funds, and stocks with bonds comprising a small portion of the allocation.
  • The proposed myRA plans are designed to focus on U.S. Treasury Bonds.
  • The Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing programs have pumped massive amounts of liquidity into the system which has resulted in a broad increase of stock prices across the board.
  • Tapering QE will withdraw liquidity from the system which will almost certainly result in a broad decrease of stock prices across the board and quite possibly a severe stock market crash.
  • A falling stock market would likely cause many Americans to seek investment options that they deem “safer”.
  • The government is already hard-selling their myRA plans stating that there is “no risk to lose what you put in”.

Hmm.

Maybe our benevolent bureaucrats really do think that myRA plans will help the common man.

But we hold dearly to a personal mantra:

Maximize Capital,
Minimize Crap,
Never Trust the Government.

With that mantra echoing in our mind, we can’t help but be a little suspicious – something funny seems to be afoot.

What do you think?