This is real scary stuff. [video=youtube;2N8gJSMoOJc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N8gJSMoOJc[/video]
This is a great story, but I highly doubt its validity as a prediction. When the US collapses, it won't begin with the stock exchange. It's going to be because of another attack on our soil. We're also going to issue a draft, and we're going to declare war on the nations harboring terrorists rather than the terrorists themselves. America is a nasty dragon when you wake it up. Just because we sleep on gold doesn't mean that's all we care about.
Won't be if hyper-inflation take a hold. I think we'll start to see a lot of internet goods priced in Pounds and Euros.
A dollar devaluation won't be the end of the world. Add a couple of zeros to the dollar and you've wiped out the national debt. The issue is the spending. The US is living 50% beyond its means and people are not willing to accept austerity.
"Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people's money." -- Margaret Thatcher
This is true. I'm thinking though that it's not so much as run out of money. The FED can keep printing to pay all debts public and private. The issue is how do you pay for the $45 billion per month trade deficit when China, Japan, Russia, India etc decide to stop hoarding dollars. People are going to go nuts in the streets. The average American collecting welfare has no idea about the trade deficit.
I long ago decided that these people who had abandoned the principles of the founding fathers did not deserve my assistance in staving off the inevitable disaster. I am loyal to principles, not to a plot of land or a collection of fools. In Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand's mythical heroes started a new society in the mountains of Colorado. This is not technologically realistic in the 21st century. Seasteading is also not technologically feasible in 2010. What's in the middle? The Free State Project -- doomed to failure because it is inside another sovereign nation. What options does that leave free men with? In theory, we could peacefully take over the government of an existing plot of land. There are several scenarios for this, but none are likely to succeed. It seems that doing anything together in the physical sense is doomed to failure. My response is to propose that we drop out of the socialist economy, much like the heroes in Atlas Shrugged did before they created Galt's Gulch. We move all possible economic activity to the free (i.e. black) market and let the looters try to prosper by stealing from each other. My vision is a loose network of individualists who succeed in secret, interacting as little as possible with the mass of "normal" men.
That has already happened/is happening. At a corporate level, our economic superstars, like Google, have already dropped out of the "socialist economy" by expatriating all their profits through places like Ireland. Google is not alone on this front. On an individual level, many high net worth individuals have abandoned their US citizenship for practically any other country on the planet (UK is a good choice) that does not charge it's citizens taxes on income earned abroad. Though this process is accelerating in the US, one has only to look at countries like Venezuela or Cuba to see the end result. At some point, taxes alone are not enough to feed the wealth re-distribution process and the government needs to start nationalizing private property to support it's ends. The middle class promptly disappears as those with enough liquid assets leave, and those without become part of the poor. Unchecked, the process ultimately ends in violence, though in Cuba's case, many of those who remember when Cuba was free are now dead. Not a good sign when we have sitting California congressmen and women flying in to Cuba to gush over Castro praise the revolution.
With the middle class being taxed out of existence, each of us has to decide for himself if he is going to be independently wealthy or communally poor. The middle option of getting a decent job and just living comfortably is rapidly disappearing.
The thing with the tax rates are that the wealthy and big businesses can afford to hire lobbyists to write the tax codes in their favor. The small business don't have a voice and are being taxed out of existence. Small businesses create 60% of the jobs. So, unemployment is going to grow through the roof. Should unemployment hit 15-18%, you could see the government confiscate all the gold. It happened during the Great Depression and ownership of gold wasn't legal until 1972. The US faces the threat of riots if there are reductions in entitlements and welfare. A decline is the cities will lead to a 1970s type downward spiral.
Only to make the environmentalists crazy. I am thinking something more along the lines of the Perfectibilists, except whereas Weishaupt's goal was the benefit of all humans mine is less hopeful. My current thinking is that benefiting just the natural aristocracy is a more realistic goal.