Podcast

If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Part II: Surviving a Currency Crisis

The Biggest Risk

The biggest risk here is not a sudden collapse of the currency that would catch everyone off guard some Tuesday afternoon in a matter of minutes. The biggest risk is in not believing that the collapse is underway. Most people are going to lose most of their wealth simply because they could not mentally and/or emotionally grasp what was actually happening.

Consider that in Greece the banks are under a tremendous run, losing up to 25% of total deposits. Sounds extreme, but let’s look at it another way: Just what are the 75% of remaining depositors thinking? How could they leave their money in a Greek bank for another minute? What are they thinking? Probably that somehow things will get better, or some other rationalization that supports their decision to hunker down and hope.

In reading When Money Dies, a historical account of the events leading up to and through the Weimar hyperinflation in Germany, one sees anecdote after anecdote of families and individuals impoverished by their own disbelief and inaction. Most just sat numbly by waiting for the currency to come back, or buying government bonds because they were asked to as a matter of patriotism, or just trusting that the government would figure something out, hoping that things would soon turn around. 

In Argentina, the same dynamic occurred. We’ve heard in detail on this site from Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre how those who lost most were the ones who hesitated to acknowledge the reality of what was happening until it was too late.

If you have not yet read Part I, available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

Part II: Prepare for the Collapse of the Dollar

The just-released GDP report, which wraps up the 2011 performance of the US economy, made for unhappy reading.

While the headline number was stronger in the fourth quarter, after adjusting for inflation, the reading for the entire year came in at 1.7%. As Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal put it, that is the “final, pathetic growth number for 2011.”

Many writers over the past year, including me, have hammered away at the idea that the performance of the US economy in real terms was statistically indistinguishable from a flatline in the aggregate.

No one disputes that some sectors of the economy, like exports and shipping, are growing. At issue is whether the economy as a whole is operating for the majority and not just segments of the populace. (Again, in real terms.) At a growth rate of 1.7%, we can at least conclude that no meaningful headway can be made in employment. Since the 2008 crisis, the US has been building a multi-million sub-population of people who are unemployed long-term. Only monthly job growth that first utilizes all new workers coming into the labor force will be able to eventually cut into this labor pool. Hence the revelations from the Federal Reserve this week related to targeting inflation, maintaining a zero-interest rate policy through late 2014, and conducting further quantitative easing (QE).

Before we dissect this week’s Fed meeting, let’s take a look at the recent trend in exports.